What’s Class Got to Do with It?

Recorded live at the University of Leeds during the What’s Class Got to Do with It? Symposium in October 2025, this special episode explores how social class shapes the television industry - from who makes TV drama to what stories reach our screens and how audiences interpret them. 

Hosted by Professor Beth Johnson, Principal Investigator on the three-year AHRC-funded project What’s On? Rethinking Class in the TV Industry, the discussion brings together leading academics, industry professionals, and creatives including Professor Dave O’Brien, Dr Laura Minor, Professor Helen Wood, screenwriter Philip Ralph, and BBC Head of Audience Engagement and Impact Nicola Crowder. 

Together, they unpack urgent questions about inequality, representation, and precarity in the TV sector - asking how class intersects with gender, race, and disability, and how the industry can better reflect the diversity of everyday life. Delegates and guests from across academia and broadcasting share their insights into how class still matters in the making and meaning of television. 

This episode captures the energy and conversation of a day-long symposium that forms part of the What’s On? project’s mission to rethink how class operates in TV production, programming, and reception - and why now, more than ever, those conversations are needed.

Host

Beth Johnson, Principal Investigator of What’s On? Rethinking class in the TV Industry; Professor of Television and Media Studies, University of Leeds  

Guests 

Nicola Crowther, Head of Audience Engagement and Impact, BBC 

Philip Ralph, Award-winning writer for television, film, stage and radio 

Laura Minor, Co-investigator, What’s On? University of Salford 

Dave O’Brien, Co-investigator, What’s On? University of Manchester 

Helen Wood, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Aston University 

 

Credits

Podcast recording and editing: Carl Hartley, University of Leeds 

The What’s On? team are: Beth Johnson (PI), Laura Minor (Co-I), Dave O’Brien (Co-I) and Anna Viola Sborgi (PDRF) 

The What’s On? Rethinking Class in the TV Industry Research Project is funded by the AHRC.

Vox contributors
Vicky Ball (De Monfort University),
Mark Taylor (University of Sheffield),
Fran Riando (Brunel University, London).