WRITERS CLUB ADJACENT: TV IN CRISIS

Hello, Upper Tiers. Thought I’d share this video that I saw on LinkedIn, regarding the current freelancer crisis in TV. It’s a sobering watch, but it gives insight into what's going on in the industry right now.

I don’t know all the reasons for why this has happened – Brexit is one cause, the cost of living crisis, inflation, etc. etc. – but it’s across the board. There’s little money, and few shows are being commissioned. There’s no roadmap to things improving. Everybody seems to be flailing. More TV freelancers than not are out of work, and have been for a long time now.

Looking through my contacts on LinkedIn… we're all in the same boat, having to find new jobs, or get out of the industry entirely, and people feel betrayed and abandoned by the industry.

Suffice to say, I’m luckier than many. Though 2024 has brought virtually no real TV work so far, I had an okay year last year, and between this Patreon and finding myself on Fiverr we’ve managed to survive. It’s still eye-wateringly tight each month, thanks to a tough few years, the cost of living, the mortgage, and (so far this year) not being able to take on as much work as I could because of editing Digi Level 2 and looking after my mum. 

It means we’re left with very little after everything is paid… but I’m still counting my blessings. I feel more respect and appreciation doing what I do now than I ever did working in the TV industry. Thank god for Digi. Thank god for Fiverr.

The other thing that’s becoming clear from reading people’s experiences of the past couple of years is how brutal they’ve always found the TV industry.

I watched a video with the comedian Limmy yesterday – who has turned his back on telly entirely for full-time Twitch streaming – in which he recounts an experience he once had with the BBC.

They'd asked him to travel for nine hours for ten-minute meeting at which they told him they were turning down a sitcom idea he'd pitched them. No discussion, no development, just that it wasn't what they were looking for. 10 minutes of waffle, then another four-and-a-half hours on the train back to Glasgow.

They even asked him to go while they spoke to his producer colleague about another project. I mean… he’s Limmy. A proven, incredibly popular, writer-performer…! You'd think he'd be afforded a bit more respect, but no.

FAMILIAR

It sounded horribly familiar.

I’ve had so many meetings like that where I just feel… kind of disrespected, I guess. Small and insignificant, like I was bothering them by being there. That nothing I have ever achieved - lead writer roles, numerous series, a great reputation, awards - mattered remotely to them.

Atop that, I’ve had to admit to myself that I always felt kind out of place among the middle class producers and commissioners. Heck, even most of the other writers were posher than me. In that environment, I felt I had to punch harder to prove myself.

As a good example of all this, last year, after writing the well-received first ep of a new series of The Dumping Ground, I was asked if I’d also write the finale.

I got up at 4.30am and drove five hours for an all-day story meeting in Newcastle, then drove five hours back home, spent the next few days writing up the story idea, only to get a call from the producer telling me they’d run out of money and were cutting the final three episodes of the series.

I didn’t get paid a penny for my work or time. Barely even an apology or acknowledgement of the time it had taken up.

My response? "Thanks for letting me know."

Thanks?!? THANKS!? I should've screamed invective down the phone.

Nonetheless, when they recommissioned the series this year I put myself forward for lead writer, thinking that because of my experience, and because I’d saved a very difficult episode from disaster (a previous, less experienced, writer hadn’t worked out), I’d be a shoe-in.

Of course, I’ve not even been given a single episode. Apparently, they had a list of people they were reaching out to and I wasn’t on it. 

It’s just… fuck you, y’know? It was a last of many, many straws.

But... it's just as well, because when I asked my agent to put me forward, I also felt this sudden stab of anxiety. Massive fear at the potential workload, the politics, the stress. It was something I felt I should do for the money, rather than actually wanted to. Yes, I'd have been paid well, but I know I’d have had a horrible time, it would've taken up my entire year, and I'd be a lot more battered than I already am.

SO MUCH

There’s only so much of that a person can take, and I’ve been working in TV more or less full time since 2003. Yes, I've been very successful in kids shows, and more than proved to myself that I could do it, but achieving those successes has been brutal.

Everything was a fight; a fight to be heard, to be noticed, to prove myself to others, to get a show made, to keep getting work every year, to get across my passion for what kids really want to watch.

Pushing back on that, there was always that sense of somehow being surplus to requirements. It’s hard to put it into words, really. An undercurrent of disrespect, I guess. A feeling I was disposable, and easily discarded (and clearly I was not only right about that feeling, but I'm not alone in feeling it).

It always felt like balancing on a knife-edge, that anything could go wrong at any moment, that the current project – or the whole industry - would collapse.

And now it sort of has 

I’ve spoken about in the podcasts, but there’s part of me that needed this to happen, to slow me down a bit. I loved working in animation last year – animation people are geeks, and I feel at home there, but live action is just weirdly and unnecessarily intense. Nobody seemed to trust anybody else, too many people seemed to lack confidence in their own ideas, let alone anybody else's. The stakes were always so huge, the entire industry felt like it was built on a foundation of fear.

To do it as long as I have, taking on that much work at a time, was an act of self-flagellation. Plus, I don’t know how I would’ve looked after my mum while also working at the level of intensity I was pre-Covid.

Even so, before all that the work was becoming too much, too all consuming, at a time when I’d discovered making my own stuff for an appreciative audience, and really just wanted to focus on that, if I could find a way to get it to pay the bills.

I was starting to question why it mattered so much to TV execs that we had to write 20 drafts of a script, and work ourselves to the point of collapse. Why was I expected to give up my evenings and weekends? My time with family? Why so many meetings about things that could've been done over email!?!

My priorities were starting to shift, my tolerance for the bullshittery of it all, and my ambition, was no longer there. I still have passion for making great telly for kids, but not all the crap that comes with it.

My heart goes out to all the freelancers affected by the crisis – because it’s never those employed by the big TV companies who take the first hit – but I also hope that they can use the time away from the industry to rediscover what’s really important to them.

Anyway. Writer's Club. Biffo's Brain. Join me tonight at 7.30pm for more insider nonsense, and the true tale of the film what I wrote.