188194-61259So first off, apologies must be made for the length of time inbetween blogs. 5 months or something like that? The obvious excuses would be that I’ve been super busy, which I have, but then there have been a couple of lazy weekends too. Suffice to say, the blog is alive and well, just slightly neglected.

So what’s been happening in TV in the past few months? Well the credit crunch still seems to have a firm grip on the industry… Even the BBC, who don’t have to worry about advertising revenues seem to be as sluggish as ever in their commission processing. There are fewer commissions in general and they’re harder to get than ever before. It goes without saying that budgets are looking about as grim as I’ve ever seen them, which sort of brings me around to what I wanted to talk about today; the cheapening of TV and poor pay and conditions as a result. I touched on elements of the issue in my rant on the Sony Z1 a few months ago. That was more about production values really, but you can certainly conclude that low production values quite often will be stuck over the top of a particularly shitty budget, like a manky old plaster clinging to the infected flesh surrounding a unsightly gaping wound. (Too strong? Nah, I’ll leave that analogy in for now).

But a bigger problem, I think, is that of freelancer wages. I don’t know about anyone else, but a couple of years ago when script writers in the US all simultaneously threw their pens down and shouted ‘NO MORE’, I couldn’t help but think ‘You bunch of absolute bastards’. Not because they disrupted a stream of awesome HBO Dramas..and ‘Heroes’ (well, maybe a little for this reason), but mainly because I instantly became furiously jealous of the strength of their union.

Its hard to imagine that happeneding within the UK television industry, isn’t it? Do we have just cause for such a revolution? Probably. As a whole we’re expected to take on  more work for less or equal pay. We’re working to tighter budgets, multi-tasking like never before and all while delivering programmes with supposedly the same level of quality. Is this fair? Its not uncommon to see jobs like this on productionbase; ‘Self-Shooting Producer/Director with fluent Japanese must have own FCP suite’.. Undoubtedly paying sub 1k a week.

Is it within our power to anything about it? Yeah, I think so. Now might not be the most appropriate time to begin a revolution, though. Even before the current financial crisis people were relieved to be in work in the freelance world. Now more than ever, there are hundreds of people would take a piss-poor weekly rate over unemployment. My worry is that even once the resession subsides, rates and conditions will continue along the same shitty path that they were long before we were talking about bankers bonuses and negative equity.

Think about how sickening it is when purchasing your Oyster card top-up, knowing that the driver of your tube train is enjoying a nice, steady 36k per annum, 38 days holiday a year, and a health plan to rival a top city executive…not to mention free travel across London. How do these jammy bastards do it? Union. And people need the tube. Well guess what, people need ‘the tube’ too!!

What on earth would happen if suddenly the freelance world went on strike? I’m pretty sure there would be suicides if suddenly there was no X-Factor. You can bet that even amongst a sea of tax-dodgers, benefit scammers and general lay-about scumbags… even the poorest of the poor would rather sell their children to some weird child circus (I’m assuming they exist) than ditch their subscription to Sky or Virgin. So how would the nation cope if suddenly their screens went blank? Would they JUST watch American TV? Here’s hoping that they’d miss out humble contributions.

In order for that to happen of course, we’d have to ensure widespread union membership throughout the industry. While there are still thousands of young-uns coming out of media courses willing to sell their kidneys to work in telly, it just aint gonna happen. The sad fact remains… If YOU don’t want that self-shooting-sound-recording-editing-japanese-speaking-trainee/junior-series producer role for £800 a week, some other cheeky fucker will. And the programme will be shit. But it’ll come in on budget and some mindless morons will love it and make a Facebook group about it too, while you’re at home gutted that someone else got your job because you got precious about how much money you were after….. ‘well not next time!’ you’ll tell yourself… ‘next time I’ll just take the bloody job!’

This is the world as the mole sees it at the moment. It needs to change, but I’m being completely hypocritical by spouting all of this nonsense without doing something about it myself. Maybe that’s the problem.. I find it ‘only just acceptable’ at the moment. In the same way that they seem to set train ticket prices ‘only just’ cheaper than if you drove to work, paid the congestion charge and parked. They know you’ll eat the shit sandwich because its almost too much hassle to complain. Rates are bad, but you can just about survive on them. Workload increases, but I’ll just end up staying in the office later. Crews keep getting smaller, but I’ll just do more of it myself. Programmes feel more and more like, ‘that wouldn’t have been acceptable 10 years ago’, but nobody cares now anyway. You see? A culture of acceptance has crept in! Will I ever be compelled to stand up and rally around support for a strong union? Maybe not. Maybe I’ll just pussy out and quit TV, bitter and miserable like so many others that just give up and start lecturing in a media faculty.

Quick show of hands then…who else is willing to stand up and fight?….

The Mole