Where’s Ted Hastings when you need him?

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey” as Hastings would say.

I was chatting to a mate of mine the other day who is a freelance exec. He’s working on a production that was budgeted pre-Covid and, as a result of being in production now, all the numbers and timings are wrong. Since the series was first conceived, costs in the market place for this particular show have risen and working practices have changed. Despite the production company alerting the channel their pleas have fallen on deaf ears - the commissioner’s response was essentially ‘you’ve said you could deliver the show for this price - get on with it’.

The problem with this attitude is the channel would have known things were tight in the first negotiation pre-Covid - this hard-nosed attitude to screwing producers down on price stems from a belief that we’re all on ‘the lam’ when it comes to budgeting productions. But now, during Covid, everything takes much longer and is much, much harder. Predictably the channels are refusing to pay for that time and, as usual, acknowledge that things are difficult - bloody whingers that we are.

Hastings would have hated negotiating / arguing a budget with a channel, “Mother of God.  We’ve been round the houses and down the bloody drains” but, actually, I think there is a bigger case to be answered here - and that’s where we need an AC12 of TV to fight the corner for freelance staff.

This mate of mine is being paid for 2 days exec’ing work a week by the prodco but he is currently working 5 days a week. That’s 3 days a week unpaid. ‘More fool him’ some might say, ‘He should just down tools and refuse to do a penny more until he’s paid’.

However, it’s not that easy. An over-demanding and inexperienced channel exec has already caused the series producer on the project to walk and so the already small team now finds itself dramatically understaffed. My mate, the freelance exec, who is expected to lead by example, feels that he has to fill the show-runner sized gap until a new SP has been found.

It’s very difficult for an exec to plead poverty when you’re at the top of the hierarchy, but he finds himself doing as much work as any on the production, with all the associated risks of responsibility, for way beneath his pay grade. As you can imagine the production company and especially the channel are delighted they have this expertise at such a bargain basement rate.

He raised the question of remuneration with the production company who said that they were already over budget and can’t offer any more.  He has oversight of the budget and knows this is true. He also knows that the channel ‘won’t pay overages’ but, nevertheless, he then raised the fact he was working full time on this project for only 2 days payment per week with the channel exec. The response? 

‘Oh dear’.  

“Hmm, now we’re sucking diesel” would have been the response if snooker player-clad DI Arnott had brought this case to his ‘gaffer’s’ attention.

My mate knows that if he walked the channel would never approve his hire again, and he also knows there isn’t a lot of work out there at the moment - conditions ripe for exploitation.

Hastings would have erupted. “This is clear evidence that the OCG (Organised Crime…err Commissioner Group) knows exactly what they are up to. It’s blatant corruption at the highest level!”

But the problem is, there is no AC12 for telly.

What is the mechanism for freelancers to complain about their treatment which has been induced, not by a terrible production company, but by a channel that has no regard for its contractors and who has knowingly underpaid for its products? BECTU? Not if you don’t want to be labelled ‘a trouble maker’ by the broadcasters.

No, this is problem of profiteering by broadcasters - not production companies as they would have you believe.

The freelancer has no hope of a channel taking their side, as my mate showed when he alerted them, they just turned a blind eye.

Why? 

Broadcaster’s production managers and channel’s controllers are rewarded for driving down costs without thought for the consequences.

It’s not just our industry where this happens either. It’s happened to diary farmers in the UK when the supermarkets knowingly underpaid for the milk and it’s happening in TV too right now. But because it’s TV, no-one really cares. In the world’s eyes we’re already over-paid and because we do a ‘glamorous’ job we are at the bottom of the pile for reform.

So where is TV’s Ted Hastings who can kick down the door of broadcasters and say “Listen up you bastards, this sh*t has go to stop!”

Your lack of empathy, unrealistic expectations and total lack interest in paying fair market prices has caused bullying, exploitation and mass numbers of people to either leave the industry or never join it in the first instance. Not enough diversity, female leadership or working class people in the industry? Look no further than the channel accountants and CEOs who don’t want to pay for any of it but get their press offices to issue statements about how important it all is.

Netflix, Apple and Amazon can pay fairly but if you can’t - well then you shouldn’t be commissioning your own TV content, or at least not expecting it to look like something that’s three times the price. It’s the same for clothes companies - you can get you good-looking t-shirts made for 15p and sell them for £10 if you buy them from a sweatshop in India, but we all know it’s not right.

So how is it OK for a channel to commission a show where freelancers are being exploited not by the production company but the never-ending and unrelenting demands of commissioners? You can’t order a house build, pay for a Wimpy home and expect it to be Sandringham Palace whilst making sure all its planning permissions and health and safety precautions are in place.

“Mother of god, no-one makes mugs of TV’s AC12” is what TV’s anti-corruption boss would have shouted if they existed. But sadly they don’t.

So what does my mate do without TV’s AC12?

Answer, he has to just grin and bear it. He’s white, middle class and middle aged. He’s lucky to have work but finds himself in an industry that doesn’t care about what his working conditions or the younger people who he looks after beneath him - as long as the power brokers in the industry feel they have got a bargain.

Channels care about their public image, they care about whatever the latest ‘woke’ outrage is, but actually the last thing they really care about is their institutional bullying behaviour and the fact they are creating an industry that exploits both the young and the middle aged from all backgrounds, races and sexes.

So if someone important is reading this, pick up the blower and get the CHIS (me) on the line to set up TV’s AC12.

Then I can have the final word.

“I’m interested in one thing and one thing only, and that’s bent commissioners and channel controllers”.