The employment landscape

8.3 The employment landscape

From an industrial perspective, the audiovisual sector is part of the enter- tainment industry. Despite the opinion expressed by many programme- makers and commentators that media products are cultural artefacts, the sector operates in a highly competitive market place. In the UK, there are just over 1000 organisations that operate within the audio- visual industry. Some, such as the BBC, are considered to be large organi- sations, with 20 000-plus staff, whereas others are considered to be large only inasmuch as they are a division of a much larger organisation, multinational or conglomerate. There are currently about 50 production houses in the UK that could just about qualify for being called medium-sized enterprises.

With varying degrees of success, the rest of the organisations are: 䊉 Sole traders – freelance staff working under their own name or business

name and providing craft skills purchased at an hourly/daily/weekly rate. 䊉 Very small companies – individuals registered as companies selling more

than just the craft skills. They may own cameras, lighting and transport, and provide the subcontracting package deal for, say, a location shoot. They also contract in other very small companies and sole traders to build the crew and service offering.

䊉 Small production companies – these have a staff of between 10 and 20 people, and could typically be production houses with project-driven staff

needs. These expand and contract as required. They have a relatively low capital value, and are typically start-up film companies formed to exploit

a project. They could also be niche programme providers for a programme strand. 䊉 Small facility houses – these provide equipment and services to the industry, and are often proprietor owned. Two of the biggest equipment and service providers, Optex and Samuelsons, began in this manner.

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䊉 Facility houses – these offer a range of cross-media services; studio space, editing and equipment hire. A high level of investment is needed to

maintain the business at the ‘cutting edge’; some are proprietor owned whilst others have been taken over by media conglomerates to provide

a wider portfolio to potential clients – the ‘one-stop shop’. 䊉 Larger production houses – these have a mixed profile of broadcast,

corporate and industrial programmes, although their broadcast work is not quite ‘A’ list.

䊉 Agencies – these provide crews, performers, locations, accounting services etc.

There has been a huge expansion in the range of opportunities for working in the audiovisual sector. The divergence of channels and the convergence of needed technological skills have provided opportunities for cross-media work for multi-skilled staff. Yet it has been reported by union and industry bodies that the total number of employees actively working in the sector has if anything gone down, with the exception of the multimedia industry.

A feature of the audiovisual sector is that although the total number of organisations and enterprises involved in the sector remains in total relatively stable, the churn (reforming into new companies or associations) is high. Despite failures or successes within a particular production or facility house, individual staff members tend to maintain their relationship with the sector by returning to freelance work or by joining another business – the name changes, but the game remains the same.

Two expressions to describe the economic model can be applied; the ‘portfolio worker’ and ‘flexible specialisation’. For the individual worker in the audiovisual industry, a list of credits and a show-reel was essential. Now this has to be accompanied by a range of transferable skills – a portfolio of past work, and also a willingness to perform a wider range of production activities.

Companies supplying to the large production houses have to provide a flexible and adaptable offering within their area of specialisation. A portfolio and flexibility has been implicit to the working practices within the audiovisual sector from its earliest days, but the impact of digital technology has radically changed the industrial landscape for worker and employer (see The Lab, p. 178).

The audiovisual sector is project based. Unless the project is given the production go ahead, no more than one or two core members of staff are needed to manage the production. In most small production houses there

Behaviour in media organisations and organisational behaviour

is not the throughput of work to retain a full production crew. In most countries, bar the USA and India, there is not a critical mass of activity to guarantee that as everyone finishes one job they can move effortlessly to the next. ‘You are only as good as your last job’ remains a key determinant of future employment.

To negotiate the next contract, individuals carry their portfolio of past successes around with them as a showreel to prospective production partners or employers. Freelance workers have to be able to function successfully in the job they are doing and negotiate for new opportunities whilst the current project is still in progress. This is reflected in the claim that the film and television industry had one of the highest take up of mobile phones in the early 1980s. It was seen as a key tool to negotiate the deal (and it looked good!). It is still quite usual to observe the crew during production breaks, Palm Pilot or Filofax in one hand, mobile telephone in the other, discussing with their various contacts the next project on which they are anticipating employment.

The casualisation of staff has ebbed and flowed in both film and television industries. A stable model for the ever-growing and changing multimedia industry has yet to emerge fully. In the 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood moved from employing hundreds of staff, including the performers, to a model of

flexible specialisation as described by Michael Storper 2 . This model, now inherent in the television sector in the UK, relies upon specialist subcontracting organisations to provide the skills needed by the main contractor or producer. In addition, the UK television industry has changed from having sufficient permanent staff on standby to meet all the needs of production (in the vertically integrated production model) to a business that retains only a few key members of staff. These staff are those required in highly specialised areas.

In the mid 1980s, several of the larger studio facility houses in London and the home counties sacked most of their camera crews. The decision to do this was taken because there was no longer a need for the camera operators to understand the idiosyncratic aspect of camera technology associated with a particular camera and its manufacturer. As technology has converged, first by analogue techniques and more recently by digital techniques, the differences between cameras, vision mixers and VTRs have become negligible – notwithstanding the personal preferences expressed by operators and the technical crew. Modern digital cameras are ‘point and shoot’. They no longer require complicated and complex line-up procedures that need two or three technicians just to ensure that cameras match each

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other in a studio environment. This market place has made it tougher for all concerned. At one time in the larger production houses there was a clear division between the technical infrastructure and the staff needed to maintain it, and project-based production staff. Now machine operators have become interchangeable.

The advances in technology have eliminated the need to provide a management structure and hierarchy for technical services. With no technical continuity and specialist skills required, training has also been degraded.

The BBC took this to its logical conclusion by removing the heads of craft departments. Their role was to train and develop the careers of new camera operators, editors, sound recordists etc. They were replaced by resource allocators, who hold an administrative role.

With these changes to working practices and technology in mind, let us consider one group of individuals in the UK TV industry; broadcast engineers. In the early days (1920s–1950s), the BBC engineers were drawn from a traditional technical background. They joined the organisation with an engineering career in view and, in the first instance, not really with an interest in the programme-making as such. (This statement has not been subjected to academic rigour; this attitude has been reported by several ‘second cohort engineers’.) It was not until the early 1980s that ACTT had its first requests for

a freelance engineering grade in the union. The ‘three cohorts’ of engineer in the broadcast industry could be presented

in the following manner:

1 Cohort 1 (1920s–1950s). These were the engineering production staff who joined the BBC and stayed with the organisation from its very early days, circa early 1930s, through to 1957, when the first franchises for the independent companies were released. Their electrical and electronic skills were based on City & Guilds, HNCs, HNDs and degrees in the subject area, and not on television as such. They were trained further by the BBC.

2 Cohort 2 (1950s–mid-1980s). This cohort is typified by those engineers and production staff who left the BBC to join the independent companies. By doing so, they earned considerably better salaries. They were also in a position to train and educate those members of staff who were direct entrants to the independent sector. Thames Television was one of the few independent production companies to run a formal (albeit short-lived) graduate entry programme and training scheme. Thames was also (to its credit) the first independent company to explicitly take on women as trainee camera operators and film editors.

Behaviour in media organisations and organisational behaviour

3 Cohort 3 (1980s–to date). Government policy and changing technology brought about: (a) The creation of Channel 4, which stimulated the growth in the

independent production sector and many more facility houses to support this sector.

(b) Recording and camera technology that provided, for the first time,

portable and ‘lightweight’ location equipment. High Band U-matic gave the opportunity to record, on a cassette format, a broadcastable image that was acceptable for news or current affairs.

(c) A more cost-driven (though not quite yet least cost) producer working

environment in the television industry. These factors shifted the requirement for the broadcast companies to retain

engineering skills within the firm. From an operator’s perspective, equipment technology has converged and is inherently more reliable. The professional engineer has returned to the equipment manufacturer.

Who has the skills – film to tape?

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a major row blew up between studio- based camera operators and film crews. Until that time television cameras were not just earth bound, but literally bound to a large truck with lots of technology and a very heavy length of cable to send the video signals from the camera to the VTR. The introduction of a cassette format and lightweight cameras enabled a crew of two to record news items or documentary material in what the industry terms a ‘film-style shoot’ – with a single camera. Prior to this date, a crew of 10 did the same job.

The argument that ensued was about whose skills were most appropriate to use this new equipment. Was it the technically competent camera operators who had so far been studio-bound or part of heavily engineered outside broadcasts? They had the technical competencies. Or should the work go to film camera operators, who knew how to work on location with a single camera in the film-style technique?

It took many months of negotiation with ACTT to find a formula that all sides – film, studio and management – agreed upon. Meanwhile, engineers were learning how to use cameras that were almost obsolete before they were used.

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Given the inherently unstable working environment for all in the audiovisual industry the question posed is; who wants to be in the industry?

First let us examine the options available. Places to work include: 䊉 The UK film industry.

䊉 The BBC. 䊉 Independent television companies. 䊉 Channel 4. 䊉 SC4 (the Welsh fourth channel). 䊉 Independent television news. 䊉 Channel 5. 䊉 Cable and satellite companies. 䊉 New media. 䊉 Multimedia, cross-media, world-wide web. 䊉 Independent production companies. 䊉 Facilities houses (studios, editing suites, recruitment agencies). 䊉 The corporate sector, for example Barclays Bank, Shell International,

Unilever, BP, British Gas – these businesses and many more like them have had a long history of high quality production work using staff broadly drawn from the film and broadcast industry to produce their in-house communications and training programmes.

䊉 Equipment manufacturers – throughout the UK many people with an engineering background have found themselves becoming involved in the

television industry in the fields of designing camera, mixers, light filters, lighting systems, generators, camera technologies. Some of these businesses, like the very successful Optex and Samuelsons, were formed by operators who saw a need in the market for better support services for their colleagues in the industry.

䊉 Education – joining the Open University production centre was at one time a path to mainstream production and working with the BBC. Now

many more universities and colleges are using television cameras as part of their training remit. They use the systems with their own staff and students, and in some cases produce distance learning packs as part of their own ambitions in the national and international education marketplace. The reduction in start-up costs has enabled them to try and compete in reselling class-based materials. The Mori poll of 1999, conducted for the British Council, showed that to the rest of the world the UK education sector is considered second only to the American. As technologies change, the growth in this sector through distance learning and franchised opportunities will offer opportunities for those who want to join the audiovisual industry.

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䊉 Analysis – government, consultancy, accounting, legal. This is more difficult to define, and could be considered peripheral to the main thrust of the

industry. However, just check the CVs of the main players in the industry!

Given the industrial landscape, how do we match the person to the possible job options?