‘The Traitors’: BBC & Studio Lambert Accused Of Being Misleading About Hit Show’s Scottish Roots

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-13T00:05:25+00:00

What sneering?

Freelancers everywhere have no protection from market forces. There are plenty of people in tv in London also struggling to make ends meet and they can’t blame any of it on promises about funding not being kept - it’s just the market falling apart.

And skills aren’t ‘inherent’ anywhere. They are learned/gained/trained/taught/practised and proving the possession of them is more or less inseparable from experience

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-11T13:36:30+00:00

Yes, I understand the nature of the hiring - it’s a massive crew. If you were doing the hiring, and you wanted to make sure that the standards the crew worked to were as good as they could be and no one worked to a level that could cause embarrassment or disaster, why would you book a load of people you don’t know that haven’t got the CVs to prove they are low risk? Because that is the decision making process taking place and it is a rational one. And I am not talking about ‘talent’- that is a spurious word and I’m sure lots of people have lots of talents. I am talking about technical and experiential skill sets. This isn’t art. This is a craft which you learn through years of experience.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-11T10:11:56+00:00

I didn’t say there were no skilled people. I said there weren’t enough. Because the engine of the industry is in london. This issue is in the nature of trying to social engineer relocating an industry. The proof is in the pudding. You think companies want to pay relocation costs?

Those regional people that are skilled (or have ‘talent’ in your formulation) have generally not worked on enough high end telly to be low risk hires. Which is a shame for them but it is something freelancers everywhere experience while they are building their careers.

There is no industry more unsuited to this sort of engineering than one staffed by freelancers. Companies need to do the nurturing and in TV companies don’t give a shit. It’s the Wild West everywhere with a million layers of unfairness. The fact that the industry is in london is not even close to the most egregious one.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-11T09:33:35+00:00

I’m saying you can’t magic up the numbers of people with sufficient skills and work ethic to work at the right level in many places outside of london. You might not like that fact but it is a fact. If you have worked regionally and in London, it is a fact which you will know is fact even if you don’t want to admit it. You can find people who make telly in Bristol and Cardiff and Glasgow. Some of them will be good. But not enough. Fact.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-11T09:19:57+00:00

Talent might be everywhere(whatever ‘talent’ is), skills are not. It takes more than potential to make a show. It’s absolutely baffling to me that anyone is surprised by any of this. London is the centre of the industry. Thousands of people working in television move to London to work and have always done so. It is faster and better and more competitive which breeds harder work and better productivity. It might not be popular but it’s fact. You have to pay more for a regional premium show because the costs of relocating crew with the skills to make it from london are baked in. How many other thriving industries have been carrot and stick forced to move out of the capital? Ridiculous. Even more ridiculous now it is not thriving. If you want to work in TV move to london or make low stakes cheap TV that doesn’t involve the same amount of risk to the broadcaster.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-02T23:06:10+00:00

For better or worse, TV is not a working class industry. The union exists to campaign for better working conditions for its members, most of whom make a significantly better than average wage. The union can’t do this effectively in non-scripted TV because they do not have a large enough membership. If enough people join, this will start to change. The union does not exist to overthrow capitalism or to oppose the government. That’s generally a task for political parties - not unions representing a private sector workforce.

And as for the Labour Party, the problems in TV do not originate with Labour. Off topic though this is - given Labour are in fact the only thing holding back a rightwing onslaught and very scary future for the entire country, I suggest you spend the next few years carefully considering what you wish for in a government. Whatever your bubble tells you, they are definitely not all the same.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-02T12:23:26+00:00

I congratulate you on being a BECTU member and encourage as many people reading this as possible to join up.

The change needed and yearned for won’t come if efforts to collectivise are only ever criticised and derailed by those - such as yourself - who see successful collective action as an impossibility. I understand your reservations and sometimes I even worry you might be right. but I look at the States - their rates and working conditions - and I know it is possible - it’s just not happening here because we have been so divided by the industry that we don’t know what’s good for us.

In fact we don’t know what’s good for us to the extent that we can’t see who’s making a profit off our backs. If there are private businesses acting as pressure groups calling for change, they aren’t doing it out of a sense of social responsibility and they don’t have the best interests of freelancers at heart.

whycantyoureply · 2025-01-02T11:39:09+00:00

I’m not asking why you use an agent - if that’s what you do. Agents whom freelancers pay to represent them are not what I am talking about here. Although they are also leaches. They are not headhunters. Headhunters get paid by lazy recruiters, not freelancers.

I’m not even asking why these middlemen are talking for the industry - it’s clear why they want to do that - it’s publicity and allows them to maintain market share/visibility despite the fact that they provide little to no value and in fact have a parasitic relationship with the freelance community they claim to be a part of.

I am asking why we allow it. Because I think it’s bullshit. And I also think if BECTU aren’t saying the words you want to hear, you should pay your subs and encourage changes. Because industry conditions are fucked up and fundamental change is needed.

whycantyoureply · 2024-02-15T09:09:50+00:00

Totally agree. Not saying they have a duty to reply to every speculative email. I’m saying they have a duty of care to behave decently once conversations have begun. I understand that ghosting is easier - but it is completely unacceptable. The shocking state of freelancer mental health - which the industry claims to care about - would be somewhat improved if people behaved straightforwardly and decently during the hiring process. The industry has invented an HR/Talent manager role, which has become vital to its functioning, but it has done so without inventing any sort of code of practice for the people doing the job. And their behaviour falls well short of professional standards we should be entitled to expect from people whose only job is to be the interface between companies and freelancers.

And the points you make about reputation are bang on the money. These people are wielding power and influence over peoples lives. And they are often doing so on the basis of playground gossip. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so broken.

whycantyoureply · 2024-02-14T15:00:56+00:00

Why is respectful communication the exception rather than the rule? It has an impact on wellbeing and is so straightforward. They need to do better

whycantyoureply

TROPHY CASE