“I had a profession for 17 years and what am I doing now? What’s occurred to my life? I had one thing that I used to be so pleased with and the factor that I like doesn’t love me.”
Stef Loughrey is a producer who has labored on among the UK’s greatest tv programmes. However in 2023 the regular stream of labor she had relied on immediately disappeared.
The Guardian’s media editor, Michael Savage, tells Helen Pidd that Loughrey isn’t alone: about 70% of freelancers throughout the tv trade are believed to be out of labor, affecting every little thing from gameshows to dramas, from essentially the most skilled to these at the beginning of their careers.
Savage places the shift right down to an ideal storm of things, together with the crash that adopted the post-Covid increase and extra structural points, such because the rise of streamers and shifting viewing habits. The extreme decline in British productions might have an effect on the form of programming that viewers will see, and create a state of affairs the place solely these with the deepest pockets can work within the trade.
Savage explains that whereas some are calling for higher governmental assist or elevated risk-taking on the a part of commissioners, others are hoping to utilize their abilities in different sectors.
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