Catalan TV channels have not increased diversity on screen in the last decade 

Catalonia's three main television channels: TV3, TVE Catalunya, and Betevé have not improved the presence of diversity in their programming over the past decade. In fact, the presence of older people, immigrants, racialized people, and people with disabilities remains the same or has even declined.  

This is shown in a new report by the Catalan Audiovisual Council (CAC), which looked at all of 2024 and compared the findings with four earlier studies conducted since 2012. The report also analyzed Catalunya Ràdio and RAC1, the two most listened to radio stations. 

While the presence of these underrepresented groups has stalled, the three TV channels have made some progress in the representation of women. A previous CAC report from March showed that over the last 20 years, female voices in news reports increased by around 15 percentage points, although none of the channels has passed the 40% mark yet.  

Enric Casas, the CAC member responsible for content, pointed out that despite more than 2 million foreign-born residents, nearly 680,000 people with a recognized disability, and over 1.6 million people aged 65 or older living in Catalonia in 2025, these groups are still "clearly underrepresented in the main public media of the country." According to the report, topics such as immigration, disability, and ageing make up only around 1.5% of total news and general programming time. 

TV3 is Catalonia's public broadcaster, TVE Catalunya is a separate channel from Spain's public broadcaster and therefore provides content in both Spanish and Catalan. Betevé is a public broadcaster for the region of Barcelona and surrounding area, which like TV3, broadcasts only in Catalan.  

Elderly 

All three TV channels mostly feature adults between the ages of 30 and 64, who are the most professionally active group. In 2024, only 8.8% of the people who appeared in TV3's daily news broadcasts were aged 65 or older, the lowest rate recorded since 2012. TVE Catalunya had a similar figure, with 8.2%, which was lower than in 2022 and 2023. Betevé had a slightly higher rate of 13.3% in 2024, but still below its 2012 figure of 14.8%. 

The report also included data from two smaller, specialist channels, Esport3 (sports) and El 33 (culture), which don't have historical comparisons. El 33 gave 18.1% of its speaking time to older people across its entire programming in 2024. 

When it comes to discussing ageing-related issues such as housing, loneliness, safety, or the Covid-19 crisis, all the analyzed TV and radio stations spent less than 1% of their programming time on these topics. The only exception was El 33, which dedicated 3.8%, mostly through repeated interviews. 

Disability  

The report found no meaningful increase in the visibility of people with disabilities either. Since 2012, they have never made up more than 1% of the people featured in news broadcasts. In terms of airtime, most media outlets spent around 0.5% of their total programming on disability-related topics. Only El 33 stood out, with 1.8%, mainly due to documentaries and films covering the issue. 

Immigration  

The presence of immigrants on TV has not changed significantly, even though there were some spikes related to international events, for example, in 2022 during the start of the war in Ukraine, both TV3 and TVE Catalunya showed higher figures. In 2024,  immigrants made up 4.8% of on-screen representation on Betevé. 

As for airtime dedicated to immigration topics, TV3 and Catalunya Ràdio spent around 1.5% of their news programming on the subject. Other outlets spent even less, except for Betevé, which dedicated 0.3% in news and 2.9% in other programs. 

Sexual orientation and gender identity 

This section was only analyzed in terms of how much airtime was given to related topics, not the presence of individuals, due to methodological reasons. Except for Betevé, all media outlets dedicated less than 0.5% of their airtime to issues of sexual or emotional orientation and gender identity, both in news and general programming. 

Betevé, however, stood out with 0.8% in news and 3.3% in other shows, mostly thanks to a fiction series about diverse romantic relationships among young people.