Gay people are almost invisible on the BBC’s flagship channels, according to new research commissioned by Stonewall, in spite of contributing £190 million a year to the BBC in TV licence fees. 

A major monitoring exercise carried out for Stonewall of 168 hours of prime-time BBC One and BBC Two found lesbian and gay lives realistically portrayed for just six minutes, or 0.06 per cent of airtime. A further 32 minutes of programming featured derogatory or offensive references to gay people. These came from a range of programmes including the Weakest Link, hosted by Anne Robinson, and The Lenny Henry Show.

“The stark conclusion of this major exercise is that gay licence-payers receive astonishingly poor value from the BBC,” says Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill. “At a time when the BBC is seeking renewal of its Charter, it’s difficult to argue that 1.5 million households should be expected to continue making such a substantial contribution to channels on which their real lives are hardly reflected, and which are often punctuated with derisive and demeaning depictions of them.”

• Tuned Out, carried out by Stonewall and researchers from the University of Leeds, found
•  Even when they feature on BBC One and BBC Two, gay lives are five times more likely to be portrayed negatively than positively
• Lesbians hardly feature in BBC programming at all
• More than 50 per cent of all references to gay people on the BBC were as jokes
• Gay people living in stable relationships with partners and families are invisible on the BBC – most of the images used are clichés and stereotypes
• Lesbian and gay issues are rarely tackled or even mentioned in factual programmes
• Gay sexuality is frequently used as an insult, with almost no evidence of the BBC challenging homophobia when it arises    
  
• Focus groups of both gay and heterosexual people told researchers they wanted to see increased and better representation of gay people on screen, and better value for money for lesbian and gay licence-fee payers.

The BBC was singled out by focus group participants as the least successful broadcaster at capturing the realities of gay lives. “If you put the BBC against Channel 4, it’s just like the caveman,” said one interviewee from London.

Gay innuendo was broadcast across a wide range of programmes in spite of BBC editorial guidelines which explicitly require staff to avoid “offensive or stereotypical assumptions”.

“The BBC has made strenuous efforts in the last five years to serve minority ethnic viewers more effectively,” says Ben Summerskill. “Gay people are forced to pay the BBC £126.50 a year on pain of imprisonment if they fail. We hope that the BBC will now develop for the first time a similar sense of obligation to lesbian and gay licence-payers.”

The report suggests eight key recommendations to the BBC. These include provision of urgently-needed “balanced and unsensational” coverage in its news and current affairs programmes, developing authentic gay characters throughout drama and soap outputs and including six per cent of gay contestants in game shows, reflecting the wider British population.