More-diverse casts boost bottom line.

• Position: Hollywood - Hollywood Diversity Report

"The Oscar nominations are out and, they're so white, a grand jury has decided not to indict them." With that pointed joke lampooning the 2015 Academy Award nominations, comedian Larry Wilmore launched his political satire series, "The Nightly Show," two Januarys ago. That line is just as relevant more than one year later, according to the third annual "Hollywood Diversity Report"--subtitled "Busine$$ as Usual?"--by the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African-American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, which examines the relationships between diversity and profitability in Hollywood, and finds once again that audiences, regardless of their race, prefer diverse content.

It also reports that films and television shows with diverse casts tend to, respectively, sell more tickets and earn higher ratings. 'What we've found for three years running now is that audiences prefer content that looks like America," says Darnell Hunt, lead author of the study, director of the Bunche Center, and professor of sociology at UCLA.

The trend of higher ratings and earnings for more-diverse content is reinforced by consumers' online behavior. According to the report, social media engagement, an increasingly important measure of popularity, was higher for more-diverse programming. For example, the study found that, among broadcast TV shows, the median number of Twitter posts was highest for programs with casts that were made up of 31% to 40% minority actors.

Despite the economic advantages enjoyed by programming with diverse casts--and the celebrated success of a few breakout figures--film and TV jobs still go overwhelmingly to white male performers and filmmakers, while women and people of color are denied opportunities to advance in the industry.

Racial minorities, for instance, had 12.9% of the lead roles in the 163 films examined for 2015, despite making up almost 40% of the nation's population. During that same period, women directed 4.3% of the top films, down from 6.3% the previous year.

"While minorities fell back a few steps since the last report in six of the 11 industry...