Radio Times under fire for front covers

Its mix of wholesome entertainment, homely features and television listings has brought Radio Times millions of loyal readers.

Corinne Bailey Rae, a rare black star on the front cover
So they are likely to be surprised to find its editor at the centre of a racism row. Gill Hudson has admitted that black and Asian people seldom feature on the magazine's front cover but insists her hands are tied by commercial considerations.
Miss Hudson, who has edited the BBC-produced magazine for five years, told The Sunday Telegraph: "I do notice when we put an Asian or black figure on the copy and I think, 'Yippee', but it's not often you can do it. We have to sell almost a million copies a week and we have to go for the biggest programmes possible. I can't choose the cover by quota. It's about getting the right programme, not the right ethnic mix."
Miss Hudson's comments came after Noel Clarke, one of Britain's brightest young black actors, whose credits include appearances in Doctor Who and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, accused listings magazines, including Radio Times, the biggest seller, of discriminating against ethnic minority stars.
At a seminar on diversity at the recent Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival, Clarke, 31, said: "I could bring you every cover of the various TV guides for the last year and you'll see maybe one or two people of colour - Radio Times, TV Times, all of them. A friend of mine had a major role in a very big and very popular soap. His family had huge storylines that were the talk of the week. He began asking why his family had never been on the cover of anything. Eventually they said, 'Every time we put you forward, the people who run the magazines say, 'If you put them on the cover, they won't sell'."
Nirpal Dhaliwal, the writer and broadcaster, said: "We are constantly being told that magazines won't sell if they put black and Asian talent on the cover. No one ever bothers to test that theory. I think the onus is on a BBC publication to try a bit harder and take risks.
"Black and Asian talent is not considered a dead cert in terms of sales but it certainly could be with the right push."
In the past three years, only 12 of more than 150 issues of Radio Times have featured someone black or Asian on the front cover. None showed a black or Asian TV personality alone and only one - featuring the singer Corinne Bailey Rae to coincide with the recent Live Earth concert - was dedicated exclusively to a living black or Asian star. EastEnders, the BBC's flagship soap, has eight black or Asian characters.
Even when ethnic minority stars do make the front page, they are often granted less space than their white peers.
A cover dedicated to Comic Relief in 2005 was dominated by the comedian Graham Norton, with David Walliams and Matt Lucas, the stars of Little Britain. The three were featured in front of a small portrait of the black comedian and fellow Comic Relief presenter Lenny Henry.
In 2004, a cover about news presenters featured Sri Lankan-born George Alagiah, the BBC Six O'Clock News anchor, alongside several white colleagues. Fellow presenters Darren Jordon and Moira Stuart, who are black, appeared only inside.
A spokesman for the Commission for Racial Equality said a black face on the front of a magazine "inspires some of our under-achieving black boys to strive for success. It's time we saw some more positive representations of black people in the media." The BBC has often paraded its efforts to raise the profile of black and Asian talent. Last year, Mary FitzPatrick became the BBC's first editorial executive of diversity, charged with ensuring that the diversity of the population was reflected. She drew controversy when, after criticism of Fiona Bruce wearing a necklace with a cross on air, she said women news-readers should wear what they want, including veils.
She also said it was wrong for the BBC to have expressed horror at the manner of Saddam Hussein's execution because doing so "imposed" western values on a different culture.