When Jeannette Francis was studying journalism at university in Sydney, she looked at commercial television – and knew it was not for her.

Francis, who arrived in Australia in 1989 as an Arabic-speaking preschooler from a Lebanese Catholic background, was well aware that she didn't fit the prevailing blonde, blue-eyed network aesthetic. With her olive skin and dark curly hair, why waste time?

"I didn't even consider it," she says. "I thought, 'Focus your energy on places you believe will get you somewhere'."

Australian-born Kumi Taguchi – who has a Japanese father and Caucasian mother – grew up in Mittagong, in the NSW Southern Highlands.

Her parents taught her early on to prize her dual heritage: "We would sit on our knees to have dinner around a low table. I grew up in a country house with horses and ducks and eating gyoza and all this Japanese food."

But as a teenager, she watched television and wondered where all the people who looked like her were. Television was a "vanilla" wasteland.

"Growing up, I just wished I was blonde-haired and blue-eyed," she recalls. When she started seeking a presenting career, news directors told her she had the wrong look.

Yvonne Sampson, raised on a farm on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, celebrates her recently discovered Indigenous heritage. But gender, not race, has been the main hurdle she's had to vault to become one of Australia's few female prime-time television sports presenters and commentators.

Sampson is a passionate advocate for young women keen on careers in sport and the media and encourages a culture of mentoring and networking for women. ("Men are much slicker," she says.) Grandmothers, mothers and their daughters embrace her at games. "They say, 'Finally, one of us'." 

All three women have successful careers in broadcast television in Australia. Taguchi, 41, is the new host of ABC TV's flagship ethics and religion program Compass, stepping into the big shoes of Geraldine Doogue. Francis – or Jan Fran, as she's known to colleagues and fans – is the 32-year-old co-host of the SBS weekday news program, The Feed.

And Sampson, 36, is billed as the hottest property in rugby league after making the leap from Channel Nine's Wide World of Sports last year to be the new face of the game at Fox Sports. All three have had to navigate hurdles along the way, and all have become role models for diversity, whether they set out to be or not.

Taguchi, Francis and Sampson pay tribute to their respective networks for support and encouragement. Their graft, hard work, risk-taking and sacrifices have been amply rewarded with career opportunities. And all three women say diversity is now being taken seriously in Australian television.

I don't do diversity. I just fundamentally believe that Australian screens should reflect Australia

Jeanette Francis

ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie tells Sunday Life the national broadcaster has to embrace diversity if it is to look and sound like modern-day Australia and remain relevant to its audiences.

"A diverse ABC is a strong ABC," she says. "Looking around, it's clear we need to do much more to accurately reflect our community. The ABC must change as the diversity of our nation changes." 

Diversity makes sense both commercially and in terms of audience relatability, says veteran TV news presenter Tracey Spicer, who has spoken out passionately about the sexism and ageism she's faced in her industry.

Spicer details research showing the benefits of diversity. "The authors of Seeing Ourselves, a report into five years of Australian TV by Screen Australia, discovered a diversity dividend in good ratings for shows such as Redfern Now, with Indigenous actors, and The Code, in which the main character has a disability," says Spicer. "Screen Australia plans to reach gender parity in the creatives working on its projects by 2018." 

Spicer also points to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers last year that warned that a lack of diversity is "dragging on the [entertainment] industry's growth". It found that over 80 per cent of people in the entertainment and media workforce are monolingual, speaking only English at home.

"Studies have shown that diversity improves business outcomes," it says. "To move the dial in the entertainment and media industry, greater focus needs to be placed on tackling unconscious bias and similarity attraction in recruitment." This new appreciation of diversity promises opportunities and pathways for female on-screen talent that doesn't fit the blonde stereotype.

It's a no-brainer, says Francis, who cut her teeth on TV, radio and online assignments before joining The Feed. Australia, she says, is a multicultural country and audiences want to see themselves reflected on the screen.

Nursing a latte at a Surry Hills cafe, fresh from covering the Eurovision contest in Ukraine, Francis cuts an animated, striking figure. Raised in south-west Sydney, she points out that commercial networks claim to be "speaking to people in western Sydney. So why not have people who reflect Australia be part of your product?" 

This new embrace of on-screen diversity is paying dividends for Kumi Taguchi, who faced barriers for years in reaching her career goals.

She started at the ABC in 1997 on The 7.30 Report before stints at Triple J and as a news anchor in Hong Kong. She returned to Australia in 2010 to work at SBS before moving to the ABC.

I meet Taguchi outside the ABC in Ultimo on a crisp morning. She is beautiful, with milky skin and high cheekbones. But, incredibly, "a couple of news directors directly told me in my 20s that I'd never make it on TV because of the way I looked. They said, 'Our audiences want to see people who they relate to, and you are not it'."

"A couple of News Directors told me directly I'd never make it on TV because of the way I looked," says Kumi Taguchi. Photo: Nic Walker

How did it feel, then, to replace ABC icon Geraldine Doogue as Compass host? "I thought, 'Gosh, Geraldine's shoes are so big to fill. Can I really take this on?' But because it ticked all the boxes, I felt I had to say yes."

What has the audience reaction been like? "I've had generally very positive remarks," she says. "We thought about the transition very carefully."

Compass series producer Jessica Douglas-Henry tells Sunday Life that Taguchi has made an excellent impression on the show's viewers. "Her intelligence, warmth and engagement really cut through on television and social-media platforms."

For Yvonne Sampson, the diversity battle – at least when it comes to gender – appears to be won. She became the first woman to anchor Channel Nine's State of Origin coverage last year and is now a prized, demographic-broadening asset at Fox Sports after signing a multi-year deal with the network.

I meet her at a Sunday Life photo shoot in a studio on Sydney's lower north shore. She's warm, down to earth and sporting hourglass curves that proudly defy TV's size-eight aesthetic.

Network stylist Amy Haviland says, "Most of our fittings are spent laughing, torturing her with new frocks and shapewear. Yvonne would rather be in the green room watching the game with the rest of the crew."

"I never knew I could be part of a broadcast like State of Origin. There were no women involved, no voices like mine," says Yvonne Sampson. Photo: Nic Walker

Sampson speaks warmly of the support she has received from all segments of the rugby league establishment, from management to legends of the game such as Peter Sterling and Phil Gould. But she still encounters prejudice and a patronising mindset from a minority of supporters who says things like, "What would she know, she's never played the game."

"Women are not held to the same standards," Sampson explains. "A lot of fans say, 'Oh, I love you because you know your footy.' Which is an unusual comment because that's my job."

This scrutiny prompts her "to be my own hardest critic … I probably over prepare out of fear of not getting it right"

What's the next step in making TV more representative? Increased diversity outside the silos of public broadcasting. Sure, The Project's Waleed Aly might have won a Gold Logie but there's still plenty of room for more non-Anglo faces on our commercial networks, not to mention older women.

"We have come a long way," says Taguchi, "but when I look at a lot of mainstream programming, stuff looks pretty much how it looked 20 years ago." 

But she is optimistic about the future. She recently made the decision to not dye her emerging grey hair, in a quiet protest against the fact that older women are mostly invisible on TV.

"I really have to hold myself to account on what ageing means, what it looks like, the image I want to project – mostly to myself, but also to my daughter," she says.

Taguchi takes pride in being a role model. When she speaks at functions for Sydney's Japanese community, parents tell her that their mixed-race daughters watch her on TV and "feel like they have hope".

Sampson concurs. Her mantra is "You have to see it to be it." She says, "Growing up, I never knew I could be part of a broadcast like State of Origin. There were no women involved, there were no voices that sounded like mine. So to me, it was an astonishing moment to be sitting there."

And Francis says, with typical bluntness, "I don't do diversity. I just fundamentally believe that Australian screens should reflect Australia."