TV Watercooler

Nah - wouldn't bother to go the Palace for anything less than a Knighthood

Gosh, that was worth logging on for ...

Quite.
As if there isn't enough hubris
sloshing about the place these days....

Anyway, getting back on topic (at least a bit).

Anyone up for a 6 month maternity cover job as Head of Research:

http://www.grapevinejobs.com/executive_ ... works.html

So some women in television are still having kids - as this is in the "£60K+" salary range I suspect it isn't someone in their 20's (but you never know).

The other stupid thing is that most small companies can actually claim back the cost of maternity pay from the government. Obviously there is a cost / hassle factor in finding a short term replacement but that shouldn't be an issue for most in the current market.

As for my hubris - apologies I didn't see a "tongue in cheek" icon.

TheEngineer, that job is a desk-driving executive position setting up new channels, not a researcher per se. Women in executive positions, even in TV, have the security to have kids.....a salary, health benefits, pension perhaps, probably a transport subsidy, maybe even a childcare allowance. A relative has a nice BBC job and more kids than I care to count, but she is a non-creative executive and not in production.

It is the freelancer / production side of television where women suffer.

I did realise that this was a desk job.

The problem is though, where do you draw the line? If you make the choice to work as a freelancer for whatever reason (and I accept that for many people they do it because that is all that is on offer) then you need to accept that the nature of production is not 9-5. TV is not unique in that regard. There are many other careers that are hard to combine with a family.

Almost all the jobs I have had over the years have been shift based. This has sometimes resulted in missing out on things like parents evenings, school fetes and the like. But I have had to accept that this is the life and job I have chosen and that the benefits (only working 7 days out of 14, sick and holiday pay, pension etc) mean that you have to make sacrifices in other areas.

Of course the current state of the industry / economy has only served to make things worse.

TE

Oh no! Did your poor children not have a parent present on parents night at all?

Or, let me guess, was it your wife who was the one who did all the running around after kids and taking time off to care for them when they were sick, because your job is so inflexible that you can't be expected to do any of those things?

Of course, she had to take time off to have the kids in the first place, so you are now the main breadwinner, and her career is on hold anyway, so its the only sensible thing to do right?

That's why there are still men with families who work in production but not women.

And actually - there is no reason why much of production COULDNT and SHOULDNT be 9-5. The industry has allowed itself to get into a framework when that is not an accepted norm, but it is and can be in much of production apart from news. I once worked for a production company that locked their front door at 5.30pm and we had to work our production around it. We did. It was easy. And we even got home at night in time for tea.

I hate to goad but on re-reading this thread I think most people in production are being fucked over, not just women of a certain age. The demand for more and more TV pap whether daytime or primetime, while creating a lot more jobs in production, has undermined the quality of those jobs and the qualifications needed to fill them. The adoption of formulas in production (the makeovers, the swaps, the turnarounds) means that it's not unusual for someone to move from runner to PD very quickly, because the roles are prescribed, and don't require very much creativity. The fact that there's a massive pool of ever-willing-to-be-fucked-over-next-generation of TV wannabes waiting in the wings exacerbates the problem. People are under-valued and good people find it difficult to shine when the nature of production means that the bottom-line is everything (which it almost certainly is for the people running the companies that make these types of shows). Nearly all contracts are short-term. There is little need to hire the best person for the job: there is however a need to hire the most cost-effective person for the job (which is different from the cheapest). Anyone with childcare issues is unlikely to be the most cost-effective. That is about the end of the argument. Prove to an employer otherwise and things may change: the trouble is that most only think in the short-term. They 're not going to be swayed by arguments about long-term staff loyalty, best minds, thinking of employees as family, morality etc. That's just not on the agenda in today's harsh climes.

In the old days it was really hard to get one of the few jobs in TV production but if you were one of the lucky few who did, you could expect to be treated properly under employment law, and people did combine their roles as parents with successful careers in TV. You also didn't expect to make it to producer or director level without putting in many years of graft and training.

It's just a different world now. TV production is more akin to working at MacDonalds these days.

No. More like the abattoir where their "meat" comes from, with no clear idea of which end of the humane killer you're at (just to strangle the analogy)

At least at Macdonalds you get a qualification at the end of it
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8560468.stm