On April 10, season nine of "Married at First Sight" premieres. Earlier this week, the participants were introduced and on social media, several people have noted that all the participants, as in many previous seasons, are white. One who is critical is Anitha Schulman, who has the podcast "Little Saturday" and has a background as a caster for reality series.
"SVT's mission is to find a cross-section and represent all parts of the country, which has really not been achieved," she says.
"Aware of the problem"
Christina Hill is program manager for SVT Göreborg and says that they are aware of the problem.
"Both we at SVT and the producers at Baluba have done a lot. We have used search trailers in other channels and feeds than we usually do and we have had ambassadors out in different areas. Some seasons we do better than others, but we are aware of the problem.
Anitha Clemence says that if you only get one kind of applicant, it's the caster's job to find other types of people to remedy homogeneity. SVT, for its part, believes that it is difficult to look outside the search pool when it comes to entering into marriage, because the stakes are so high.
Looking for someone who is similar to oneself
Anitha Clemence still thinks that the production should be able to push the participants to look for something new.
"I guess the participants write in their application what they are looking for. If they're just looking for a white, streamlined person who's just like them, that's pretty scary.
– Nothing indicates that more participants are looking for blonde people, for example, however, it may be that you are looking for someone who is like you. And that can be a problem in this case," says Christina Hill.