The conception of value in television production work: Production Managers, historical denigration and new possibilities

Beedles, Perelandra

Abstract

Addresses to the exploitative and exclusionary nature of television work are long recorded (Lee, 2011; O'Brien, 2014; Skillset, 2008, 2010; Ursell, 2000). However, the motivation for progressive change in television work has accelerated in recent years, as events have exposed failures of care that are individual and institutional (Aust, 2020a, 2020b) and the television industry arguably wants to be a better place to work. For example, the BBC has addressed its culture post-Savile and other potentials for gender bias (BBC, 2013, 2017-, 2021; MacKinnon, 2018); the pan-industry initiatives the Coalition for Change tries to garner momentum across the otherwise competing organisations ("The Freelance Charter," 2021); there are bodies designed to improve working conditions through an address to diversity, such as the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity at Birmingham City University, or the Creative Diversity Network.

There are, then, identified, persistent issues with working conditions in television that require solving. Some work has begun to address this not through monitoring, but with an address to the feeling of working in TV – whether identifying the requirement for more qualitative work (Malik & Nwonka, 2021) or understanding how feeling can entrench inequities (Aust, 2022). Part of this is an address to value: how are people valued in TV work and how does that make them feel?

This paper addresses the value – and potential undervaluing - of production staff, focusing on Production Managers. There is a historical value system at play here that both devalues women’s work and enacts specifically in TV to undervalue the historically feminised roles of production: the care roles, if you like. What is the power dynamic this delivers to those who are historically valued in a masculinised system (O'Brien, 2014, 2015)? How is this related to the current skills shortage in TV Production Management? We use our own lived experience as exemplary of the divisions between editorial and production (as the departments are known in television), together with data gathered from the recent Production Manager Survey at Bournemouth University (Yossman, 2023), and proposes some pedagogical suggestions as to how the academy might address this devaluing at point of instruction.

Citation

Beedles, P. (2023, July). The conception of value in television production work: Production Managers, historical denigration and new possibilities. Paper presented at Critical Studies In Television Conference, Edge Hill University

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Critical Studies In Television Conference
• Conference Location: Edge Hill University
• Start Date: Jul 5, 2023
• End Date: Jul 7, 2023
• Deposit Date: May 20, 2024
• Publisher URL: https://sites.edgehill.ac.uk/tvresearchgroup/programme-of-the-cst-conference-2023/