Deepening precarity – the impact of COVID-19 on freelancers in the UK television industry

ABSTRACT

This article explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on freelancers in the UK television industry. Precarious careers are a dominant feature of the sector and the result of deregulation in 1990s. Employment and working practices which reproduce precarity lead to exploitation of workers, and discrimination and exclusion of those who do not fit perceived norms. Drawing on in-depth interviews with television workers based in northern England, we demonstrate how precarity is reproduced and increased within television when the sector was placed under pressure due to COVID-19 and established structure developed to help the industry function had been eradicated overnight. We find that economic imperatives of those with the power to control production trumped the needs of freelancers with less experience, without access to intermediaries and unable to maintain networks. The most precarious felt they had to take financial, personal and health risks to maintain relationships and gain new work.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• creative industries
• COVID-19
• precarity
• risk
• UK

Introduction

The creative industries are frequently heralded for their positive contributions to cultural and economic life, but this can hide negative factors including the quality of jobs, the variation in the experiences of creative work and the diversity of activities comprising the creative industries. While activities undertaken in the “creative industries” are varied and nuanced beyond what the label suggests (Swords, 2022), across the sector precarity is common. Employment uncertainty, low wages and poor terms and conditions have been pioneered by employers in the sector. Academic focus on pay, hours and contracts in the creative industries has exploded in recent years and can be found on, for example, video games (Bulut, 2015), publishing (Welsch, 2020), music (Smith & Thwaites, 2019), visual arts (Mahon et al., 2018), and fashion (Hammer & Plugor, 2019), reflecting the wider trend of neoliberalization of labour markets across Western economies. However, we should not speak of a precariat across the sector, for as Waite (2009, p. 427) advises, depicting groups of workers as such “is ill-advised due to heterogeneity and an intersection of complex identities”. The experiences of precarity faced by a white, middle-class, Russell Group-educated English female gallery curator is different to that of Black, working class Welsh male joiner in the theatre industry. Many of the underlying causes are shared, however, which we explore in this paper.

The research presented here takes place in the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic. It is already acknowledged that crisis increases work inequalities (Vaughan-Whitehead, 2011) and there is burgeoning work on the impact of the pandemic on creative economies (Banks & O’Connor, 2021; Comunian et al., 2021; Comunian & England, 2020; De Peuter et al., 2023; Eikhof, 2020; May et al., 2022). However, there is scope to know more about the impact of crisis on the television sector in the UK, in particular COVID-19 during which work mobilities were uniquely restricted. We find that the pandemic exacerbated the existing pervasive precarity of the television sector. We highlight the differential impact of the crisis on different parts of the television labour market based on seniority and position in the television value chain. We find that economic imperatives of those with the power to commission programming, fund productions and hire staff has trumped the needs of freelancers in weaker positions, especially those with less experience, without access to intermediaries and unable to maintain networks due to fewer contacts or being geographically isolated. The paper will outline existing literature on precarity in creative industries before focusing on precarity in the television sector. We then outline our research methodology before presenting our findings. The findings are structured into three sections: 1. Reduced mobilities, 2. Network positionality and maintenance and 3. Management of risk. Our conclusions reflect on the short and long term impacts of COVID-19 and what the crisis has taught us about the structural causes of precarity in the television sector in the UK.

Precarity in creative industries

A stream of creative industries research in the 1990s and early 2000s highlighted the role of insecurity, in part driven by globalisation, as a defining characteristic of creative work. Ekinsmyth (1999), for example, draws on the concept of the “risk society” to explore the ways magazine workers are subject to asymmetrical power relations with editors and are exploited through short-term contracts and piecework. Ekinsmyth also highlights “ambivalence and contradiction surrounding employment risk, freedom, insecurity and exploitation, for magazine writers” (2002, p. 233) which is manifest in self-exploitation to get a foot in the door and make connections.

Both forms of exploitation are also evident in contemporaneous research on project networks in the creative industries. Jones (1996) and DeFillippi and Arthur (1998, p. 132) have illustrated the difficulty of getting established and the necessity to take “low responsibility, inconsequential jobs” to make a start. The short-term nature of project working, and the power of project leaders to pick and choose team members, compounds the risk of exploitation and precarity as people seek to navigate limited access and subtle “barriers [such] as informal codes of conduct” (Grabher, 2002, p. 208). To manage the difficulties of precarity in project work, individuals must network to find work, maintaining a good reputation and often relying on friends, co-workers, former colleagues and industry contacts (Christopherson, 2004). This reinforces the power asymmetries between those recruiting workers and the freelancer (within departments) who is seen as only as good as their last job, but also fears getting a reputation for saying “no" to work. These power asymmetries are also found between departments where some production inputs receive greater resources than others, forming a hierarchy across the television value chain (Johns, 2010).

From over three decades of work on employment in the creative industries, then, we can identify a co-constitutive set of factors which produce precarity: short term projects; a need to manage risk; power asymmetries; and a large labour pool. The effects of these factors are compounded by the externalisation of risk and recruitment functions to individuals who have the responsibility to find work. These themes are all highlighted in the contemporary literature on the impact of COVID-19 on creative industries, some of which was published early in the pandemic and made predictions about the effect of the pandemic. For example, Eikhof (2020) predicted that the inclusion and diversity impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic would be driven by more than workers’ differing abilities to buffer short-term income insecurity. Comunian and England (2020, p. 122) acknowledged COVID-19 as “an emergency that exacerbates the precarious structural conditions of the sector” and foresaw that groups who are known in existing literature to be marginalised were likely to pay the higher price. Similarly, May et al. (2022) highlight freelancers as particularly vulnerable to socioeconomic adversity during COVID-19 (see also Comunian et al., 2021). In the next section we examine how these factors manifest specifically in the UK television industry and (re)produce precarity.

Precarity and working practices in TV

With the majority of programming one-offs or part of limited series, the UK television industry’s labour market is characterised by short term contracts and precarity. In addition to the reasons discussed in the previous section, this is a result of two industry-specific factors. First, divisions of labour are narrow: specialisms are defined across multiple dimensions such as genre, technical skills, experience level and job role. The value chain of television production means these skills are only required for part of the production process and therefore contracts are short (Johns, 2010). This has created a variegated labour pool with the majority of workers moving from contract to contract as frequently as week-to-week and continually needing to search for their next job. Some roles are in high demand due to shortages or new specialisms, while others have high supply (entry roles such as runners, researchers).

Second, production companies tend to employ a small number of permanent staff who develop and pitch for programmes, and then rely on contingent labour when they are in production. This model is a response to changes to the TV industry’s structure which accelerated in the 1990s, spurred by government policy to encourage competition and outsourcing from the major broadcasters (1990 Broadcasting Act). Outsourcing production became a way to reduce the risk associated with limited time franchise agreements (for ITV companies) and fulfilled the statutory requirement to commission from the independent sector (for both ITV and the BBC). The result was the growth of independent production companies (aka “indies”) whose business model had to be working commission to commission amongst what quickly became a highly competitive market. This was reflected in employment practices as indies were reluctant to employ staff on long-term or permanent contracts without the guarantee of commissions. After cuts to in-house staff by the BBC and ITV between 1989 and 1996 the number of freelancers in the UK television industry rose 21 percentage points to 60% (Ursell, 2000). The use of freelancers remains dominant, with newer broadcasters outsourcing or buying existing productions to fill the majority of their airtime which production companies treat as discrete projects (BFI, 2022).

Temporary project working provides a series of advantages at different scales. For individuals, it allows opportunities for networking, demonstrating your ability to a wide group of people, reputation generation, flexibility and, for some, opportunities to quickly develop their careers (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994). For production companies, projects are a way to manage the risk from uncertainty about future commissions, externalising it by employing a contingent workforce as and when needed. The temporary nature of work creates power asymmetries between production companies and freelancers which can be of benefit to the former through exploitative employment practices (Johns, 2010; Swords et al., 2022). At the scale of the city or region, projects generate knowledge sharing and industry “noise”, attract a labour pool, foster supporting operations and spur a mix of competition and collaboration (Grabher, 2002). Under the right circumstances these activities can create innovation and competitive advantages over other places, which is one of the reasons we see the agglomeration of film and television production in certain places (Bassett et al., 2002; Johns, 2010, 2016).

This way of working, however, causes a series of disadvantages that are especially acute for individuals. High levels of competition between production companies for commissions can see budgets stretched and therefore rates of pay put under pressure. In addition, it is common practice for rights under the UK’s working time directive to be signed away or ignored completely, meaning hours are long (a 50-hour week is common) and breaks short (Swords et al., 2022). Job search and employment costs are externalised with freelance workers having to spend unpaid time looking for jobs, networking, doing their own finances and taxes, and often commuting long distances for work. Unpaid work is also seen as a way into the industry (Percival & Hesmondhalgh, 2014). Saying “no” or not being seen as “fun” (as we discuss below), can limit future job prospects as people try to maintain a reputation as a good worker leading to further exploitation (Paterson, 2012). These issues are exacerbated for people who don’t fit what is perceived as the industry norm, namely people from ethnic minority groups, working class backgrounds, “the North”, people who are LGBTIQ+, disabled people, and women (Eikhof & York, 2016; Johnson et al., 2020; Lauzen & Dozier, 1999; Ozimek, 2020). Many people from these groups face exclusions, discrimination and exploitation not experienced by their colleagues. Stress levels are high and mental health problems are big issues across the television industry (Wilkes et al., 2020).

It is important to note that against the background of these negative aspects of working in television, there are positives. While hours may be long, once workers have established themselves and gained a reputation, pay is higher than the UK median and work becomes easier to find (Macnab, 2021). There are endemic skills shortages in certain parts of the UK’s TV industry – particularly production managers, editors, joiners and production accountants – which allow people working in these roles greater job security (BFI, 2022). Seeing your work on screen and enjoyed by viewers is a common motivation for TV workers, along with opportunities to travel and work with talented people. Gill and Pratt argue that one of the reasons for long hours in television is the labour of love:

[l]ong hours and the takeover of life by labour may be dictated by punishing schedules and oppressive deadlines, and may be experienced as intensely exploitative, but they may also be the outcome of passionate engagement, creativity and self-expression, and opportunities for socializing

(2008, p. 18, emphasis in original)

McRobbie (2015) argues the ideology of being passionate about one’s work is fostered to counter the problems of work being increasingly precarious. Participants in our study noted working on different contracts across the years provides variety that keeps things interesting. Working on location, staying away with the rest of the crew is also seen as fun and a good way to make friends. Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2008, p. 111) observe that:

[t]here is a great deal of camaraderie and fun involved in working together on a television show – pub lunches, shared jokes, team drinks after work, dancing in Soho bars.

However, this camaraderie is predicated on the ability to commit to working long hours (often away from home). The social aspects can also be exclusionary, making it harder for particular workers to participate. Gaining and keeping a reputation for your skills, ability to get a job done and work well in a team is essential for TV workers. This might include working additional hours, taking on extra tasks, accepting lower pay or “acting up” to roles not reflected in a worker’s contract (Paterson, 2001; Swords et al., 2022). Workers will accept poor working conditions, keeping quiet about bullying and sexual harassment, and putting up with bad practice for fear of being seen as a troublemaker (Johnson et al, 2020). Drawing on existing, and building new, social capital is important too as “know whom” aids job search and career building activities (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994). This means socialising after work, at industry events and “hanging out” in the right places become legitimate work activities (Grabher, 2002), albeit unpaid and exclusionary to those with caring responsibilities, disabled people or those who live geographically distant from such hubs (Aust, 2021; Swords & Wray, 2010).

Proximity and regular, repeated face-to-face interaction are key to engaging in these activities. The advantages of co-location is well established in the clusters literature with agglomerated firms and individuals benefiting from reduced transaction costs and more efficient traded interdependencies (Bassett et al., 2002; Johns, 2010). Recruitment is more straightforward as employers and producers can access a local pool of talent made up people they know, have worked with or whose reputations they are aware of. Leaving the labour market due to illness, to raise children or for caregiving can have severe impacts on an individual’s career. Women are disproportionately impacted by this dynamic and one of the reasons there are fewer women over 40 in the industry, and many of those who remain do not have children or have had their career setback by time out of the television labour market (Paterson, 2001; Wreyford et al., 2021). Clusters also generate noise or buzz when people interact frequently in work and social contexts (Grabher, 2002, p. 254). This generates sharing of various types of knowledge and as part of this, individuals learn of future opportunities for work. Crucially, proximity alone is not sufficient to benefit from these dynamics, maintain a reputation and find work: sociality is crucial for building relationships that produce employment. The COVID-19 restrictions in the UK stopped this entirely in the first phases of the Government’s pandemic response. As restrictions for the public and specifically the film and TV industries were relaxed, the kind of interaction that was commonplace was still restricted and led to a series of impacts we outline below (Lee, 2023).

Researching precarity in television

To understand the impact of COVID-19 and associated restrictions on the UK television sector and workers therein, we interviewed a range of freelancers based in Northern England. The TV sector in Northern England makes an interesting area for examination because it exhibits different characteristics from the UK’s dominant hub for TV production in London in terms of both scale and scope of the production complex. Greater Manchester has long been an important base for television production with a significant independent sector built off the success of Granada, a regional franchise of the ITV network, established in 1956. The BBC has had a presence in Greater Manchester since the 1920s. This was expanded when the BBC moved its Children’s, R&D, Sports and Learning departments to Salford, along with one of its national radio stations 5Live to MediaCity in 2011. Although not as large as the production cluster in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds are cities with significant production hubs. Across the Pennines in Yorkshire, many factual and factual entertainment production companies are based in Leeds and in 2020, Channel 4 relocated its headquarters to the city. The wider Yorkshire and the Humber region has seen rapid growth in its screen industries, outpacing the rest of Great Britain for employment increases (Swords & Townsend, 2019).

This region was also chosen for practical reasons as it is where we have done (references redacted for review), or are doing related research (references redacted for review), and thus we had existing networks we could tap into for participant recruitment and other insights. This was especially important at the start of the research during the UK’s first lockdown which limited our mobility and ability to form new networks.

Participants were recruited through existing networks, snowballing and through a request on a Facebook group dedicated to freelancers working in Northern England.¹ Forty interviews were undertaken with 31 different individuals who had jobs across the TV production network (Appendix). Our sampling strategy was purposeful but was also influenced by our snowballing as individuals suggested others in their network, creating over-representation of those in their 30s and 40s over those in their 20s (also a reflection of the degree to which individuals are connected to industry networks, particularly during crisis). Several freelancers aged in their 20s were approached for interview but many were working in alternative forms of employment and were unavailable as a consequence. The gender split of the interviewees (60:40 male:female) broadly reflecting the gender balance in the sector as a whole (Ofcom, 2019). As Eikhof (2020, p. 243) reminds us, there are longstanding problems with collecting data on creative industries, particularly around the measurement of social class, disability and race. Our sample does include individuals with disabilities (3), from the Global Majority (4) and are working class (10) but we do not include data in the Appendix that may make individuals identifiable.

Each person was interviewed in the early summer of 2020 with 9 revisited in the autumn. Not all were interviewed twice due to time constraints (ours and theirs), some only signed up for one interview and the impact of the pandemic made the process of undertaking research about the pandemic while living through it difficult. Some interviewees wanted to be interviewed again, wishing to update on their circumstances, particularly where they had been waiting for projects to start or to secure work. Interviews lasted between 30 and 90 min and took place remotely using Skype, phones and Zoom. Interviews were recorded and transcribed before being analysed using Nvivo. Deductive and inductive coding was used in the analysis.

It is important to note the difficulties of undertaking research during a global pandemic. The uncertainty faced by both the researchers and participants was palpable in many interviews. Conversations focused on the general unknowns of how COVID-19 and associated changes to day-to-day life would impact our lives, as well as the impact on the TV industry and the higher education sector. We remained conscious of our role as researchers, acknowledging that the crisis provided us with an opportunity to gain deep insight, but that the sessions were not intended to be therapeutic for either interviewee or interviewer (Birch & Miller, 2000). All interviews were conducted online, bringing advantages around time management and flexibility of interview scheduling. While our online interviewing was forced upon us due to COVID-19 lockdowns, we highlight the strength of this method, finding that online interviewing is a viable option to the researcher rather than as an alternative or secondary choice when face-to-face interviews cannot be achieved (Phillips & Johns, 2023).

Findings/Discussion

Initial impact of lockdowns and pervasive uncertainty

The UK Government announced a national lockdown on 23rd March 2020. A stay-at-home order was put in place and the majority of the population stopped going to work. Most television production was halted. News, current affairs and some factual production continued, and broadcasters maintained their schedules with shows already “in the can” or repeats, but tens of thousands of freelancers were sent home with very little notice. However, even before this the impact of the pandemic was being felt on the UK television industry. Production companies and broadcasters were wary of restrictions so slowed down production timelines or stalled non-essential work. With travel restrictions to countries already under lockdown in place, overseas travel was difficult for cast and crew. Compounding this, production insurance was becoming more expensive or impossible to get for future work:

We were let go of on Friday 13 March … We were basically let go because the insurers wouldn’t insure us to go ahead. I think we were one of the first to lay down tools.

(Production secretary, female, 30s)

From the end of March 2020 participants reported a period of heightened uncertainty experienced in a series of interconnected ways which exacerbated pre-existing risk and precarity inherent in the TV industry and were therefore felt unevenly. For example, the lockdown hit at the worst possible time, just as filming was ramping up after the traditionally quieter period post-Christmas. People prepare for it financially, but those in the most precarious positions had just got through the leanest time of year and future work was cancelled.

With very little work available, freelancers asked employers for news about work they had booked (sometimes months in advance) but requests were frequently ignored while broadcasters and production companies dealt with more immediate issues. The lack of opportunities to socialise with colleagues regularly and face-to-face to find out about upcoming work while on jobs caused an information vacuum. Without knowing what was happening with contracted jobs, participants could not arrange other opportunities. After an initial period of uncertainty many shows slated for production in the spring of 2020 were either cancelled entirely or mothballed until decisions to proceed could be made.

Uncertainty around contracts is an almost natural state of affairs in the UK television industry, but this was qualitatively different. Few freelancers knew where their next job was going to come from, but the difference was not just fewer jobs – there was a different kind of uncertainty. The industry was not functioning as normal and nobody knew what would happen next. The traditional sources of industry information – which tend to be broadcasters and production companies from which news of new projects and funding trickles down – were uncertain about the short-term prospects for the sector. As such, established structures, norms and conventions developed to help the industry function had been eradicated overnight. This exposed workers to different levels of uncertainty and new kinds of precariousness based on being unable to access information (as little information was available to anyone) or were unable to strategise about which network relationships to prioritise (in anticipation of some types of filming restarting before others), typically due to inexperience (length in industry and/or narrow experience in terms of types of filming).

While at first the impacts of the lockdown were relatively evenly spread across the sector, as the situation evolved the impacts were felt more by certain parts of the production chain and by particular kinds of workers. For example, for some people working in post-production (e.g. editors, edit producers, VFX artists, dubbing mixers) arrangements were made to allow them to continue work from home. Those with established careers often had mixing desks or editing equipment at home, so they could continue to work if it was still greenlit by commissioners.

Interviewer: I also presume that having been set up working remotely for seven years meant that actually working right through the lockdown wasn’t that different?

Participant: Yeah very much so, yeah. I mean it was business as usual in many ways. It was more different for the clients

(Editor, male, 40s)

Similarly, as more production was eventually brought back on to production slates – often supported by the Government’s £500 m “Film & TV Production Restart Scheme” when insurance was difficult to get (PACT, 2020) – some pre-production work was possible to do from home. People in the production office (e.g. production coordinators, production secretaries, producers) could begin planning and make bookings, albeit with large unknowns and without the advantages of sharing an office space. In contrast, freelancers who work in the filming stage of production were unable to work while lockdown restrictions were still tight. This was especially difficult for facilities and equipment suppliers, and individuals who are expected to provide their own kit, because their overheads were unserviced. As a gaffer and lighting equipment supplier explained:

I’ve got nothing going out rental wise but I’ve still got to pay for certain things like the rent.

I’ve agreed to pay only half the rent for the business, but I’ve still got to pay the insurance … £1,000 a month.

Last year I took a finance agreement out, because I bought a load of equipment for a job that we’d got. I managed to take a three month payment holiday on the finance, but that comes back in July.

(Gaffer and lighting company owner, male, 40s)

The UK Government established a furlough scheme – the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) – designed to subsidise the wages of workers employed by organisations forced to close during the lockdown. It launched a month after the stay-at-home order (April 2020), and was designed to pay 80% of the wages of employees employers decided to furlough (House of Commons Library, 2021). In July 2020, flexible furlough was brought in to allow people to continue some work while being furlough for time not working. This allowed the Government to manage risk to the economy and for companies to retain workers, however, the CJRS didn’t cover every worker:

New starters and freelancers who were not employed on the cut-off dates could not be furloughed. Workers not paid via PAYE², like those in the gig economy, were also not eligible. (House of Commons Library, 2021: online)

This had a large impact on the TV industry with a high proportion of workers not eligible. Some of the gap was filled with the Government's “Self-Employment Income Support Scheme” (SEISS) which provided grants for lost income. But again, not everyone was eligible as many TV workers are required to operate through Limited Companies (for insurance purposes) and therefore pay themselves as directors. Early figures suggested “[t]ens of thousands of freelancers working in the UK’s creative industries say they face financial hardship as the way they structure their tax affairs means they do not qualify” (Barrett, 2020). There were further criticisms that payments were only made to eligible claimants every three months which was unaffordable for most (Creative Industries Federation, 2020). This demonstrates the level of risk freelancers face as even with massive support schemes implemented by the UK government, many workers were left behind.

Here we can see how structural modes of employment led to pandemic restrictions affecting people unevenly. The decisions individuals had made in the past about their employment type determined the help they were able to access, creating profoundly different experiences even between individuals with the same job role and experience levels. Interviewees reported that COVID-19 and the different forms of government support based on employment type highlighted these differences between peers – and caused them to discuss how they manage their finances in precarious employment in ways that they had rarely done before the pandemic. These differences cut across seniority levels and also highlight class dimensions to precarity. Those individuals with more affluent backgrounds are aware of different ways to be paid and taxed and are more likely to use the services of an accountant and gain the financial skills to support their freelance employment.

Maintaining networks

In comparison to the unevenness highlighted in the previous section, the problems illustrated here relate not to freelancers’ role in the value chain of the industry, but to career and life stage and how the inability to engage in networking impacted the ability of participants to find work. The initial stay-at-home order and subsequent regulations on who could go to work, social distancing rules and the closure of pubs, bars and restaurants had a major impact on the amount of face-to-face interaction television workers could engage in. As discussed above, this sociality is crucial for building relationships, networking and developing trust amongst television workers and thus they had to adapt. Many participants reported drawing on existing networks and using technology to maintain them:

the production team that I worked with on a job two years ago, we have [an online] games night, do a quiz night … that’s quite nice, there’s quite a lot of them and they’re based all over the country but that’s my social networking I guess. But, always handy, those are the people that help you get a job and I also like them obviously!

(Production coordinator, female, 30s)

Workers without established networks to tap into, however, lost out as they were unable to build the relationships needed to find work. Participants discussed looking for other work to tide them over and reported friends who had decided to leave the industry completely. This was the case even for participants located in Leeds and Greater Manchester where pre-pandemic employment had been booming (due in part to the relocation of divisions of two broadcasters to the cities) and where work returned more quickly than elsewhere. Despite proximity to the TV industry, the lack of opportunities to access its networks was the major constraint. Issues of access have been documented across the industry, especially for those for whom caring responsibilities restricted access to established modes of work and networking. In a survey of mothers working in television, Wreyford et al. (2021, p. 10) found 49 percent of respondents said they had been unable to accept work due to childcare related issues.

Career stage was also a factor in finding work during the pandemic. More senior freelancers are likely to have agents (e.g. cast, heads of departments) who played a mediating role. Agents sought out information, ideas around upcoming work and, when filming did restart, negotiated the conditions of that work.

I had an advert casting last week, which I filmed myself and my agent did come back to me with it because it was going to be filming in Greece. And it was a list of checks. Are you happy to travel you happy for this? You happy to work in these conditions? I think my agent is asking those questions

(Actor, female, 30s).

We can therefore observe more experienced freelancers with agents having a less isolated experience as they came to rely on the contact with their agents.

Established actors sometimes need less support as they are already more established to an extent, when you sign them you are promoting them, enhancing them. New people at the beginning their earning capacity is more limited. COVID-19 has shaken this up a bit though, I’m having to support all my clients through this, but it’s my experienced actors who’ll be working first

(Agent, female, 30s).

COVID-19 did impact the agencies themselves, with less staff available to support clients.

My acting agent. She's asked for two weeks off … .and all the assistants [at the agency] got furloughed. I'm assuming that's down to stresses and pressures

(Actor, male, 40s).

As one experienced participant explained early career workers were losing out because of social distancing rules and restrictions on the size of crews allowed:

I think lower end people, so like trainees, are going to really struggle to find work as crews [are] cut back because of the additional costs … I think for students coming out of university this year, it’s an absolute nightmare time.

(Editor, male, 30s)

There were not just new obstacles for entrants into the television industry, it also impacted those wanting to make progression:

Anyone sort of at my level ready to take that step up, who's sort of been on the verge of getting a promotion … you're going back down.

(Researcher, female, 30s)

Several interviewees felt that the reduction in the volume of work, and increased cost pressures on those productions that did go ahead meant that freelancers were being “forced downwards”, “selling their skills for less” (Editor, male, 30s). Competition was more fierce, so freelancers were accepting work at lower levels than pre-COVID-19, just to secure paid work. This “step down” has significant implications as it pushes new and less experienced freelancers out of the labour market. This may be temporary, or could be permanent as these less experienced workers will then be competing with a larger number of new industry entrants as time progresses. We also observed that freelancers working in less valued parts of the television industry value chain (such as lighting, catering, make-up) tend to hold less connected positions in terms of their networks. With fewer contacts their vulnerabilities were exacerbated and many of their networks evaporated as other vulnerable freelancers and supplying firms withdrew from the industry.

Managing risk

Existing ways of externalising risk from broadcasters and/or production companies continued and in most cases were exacerbated by the impacts of COVID-19. The methods are the same as those adopted pre-pandemic and they have been justified as an economic necessity. In this section we highlight the externalisation of risk through who gets employed, work requirements, health and safety issues, employment types and recruitment approaches. The pandemic has shown that maintaining power asymmetries is to the detriment of people already facing exclusions, discrimination, and exploitation in the television sector. The economic imperatives of those with the power to commission programming, fund productions and hire staff has trumped the needs of freelancers in weaker positions.

With smaller crews allowed, experience levels were seen as a key factor in deciding whether to employ someone or not. A participant explained the risk to the budget and timetable of repeating a day’s filming when deadlines are tight because broadcasters needed to fill schedules:

 … with a producer/director … you take a big risk if you bring somebody in who's less experienced, and if it's too late, if you wait till the day, and then you see they haven't done what you need them to do … you just have to manage that very carefully

(Producer, female, 30s)

Other participants agreed that with smaller crews due to social distancing rules and coronavirus guidance for film and TV, getting the right team was crucial. Similarly, responsibility for supplying and looking after equipment remained the same during the height of the pandemic, despite the increased financial pressures discussed above:

[We] take on a lot of risk and I think production companies should take on more of it … for the sound department because the sound mixers are actually expected to have their own van and provide all the kit, whereas some of the other departments get the kit from a hire company, and productions are basically responsible for that.

(Sound recordist, female, 30s)

There were also new forms of risk externalisation identified by participants. The most direct related to COVID-19 testing requirements as explained to us by a participant working in sports broadcasting:

I know that one of the people who will possibly be working at [Premier League football club] over the next few weeks has been asked by the company … to go to the training ground to have a test … Is that included in the day rate? Because it wouldn't be a day rate activity [because it] would be on a different day … travelling 90 miles there and back just to have a test just to confirm if he can or can't work.

(Sports media producer, male, 20s)

Participants were also concerned about health and safety being impacted with smaller crews, increased production costs and time pressures due to COVID-19 regulations. This ranged from having to undertake unfamiliar roles, carrying more equipment than usual and working longer:

You've got 10 hours to shoot something, but you have to clean out your kit every time. Every time you move location. Then you're gonna end up working longer, you're gonna get to the next hotel three hours after you're supposed to and not have your 11-hour break and all the rest of it because people just do it because they need the money because they've got mortgages to pay and rent to pay and kids to feed.

(Producer/director, female, 40s)

Certain forms of employment were also perceived as riskier during the pandemic restrictions:

Interviewer – why is there not more job sharing going on?

Participant – … there's so much pressure on any indie making the show that they just want to minimise the risk and if they've never done it … you always go and find the cameraman that you know is going to go out get you the good stuff, you don't want to risk the young kid … 

(Producer/director, female, 40s)

We could also identify the externalisation of risk in recruitment methods, and the pernicious practice of recruiting “people like us”. We saw evidence of this when we asked participants who might face the biggest difficulties during the pandemic. With the exception of the quotes above, the majority of participants could only imagine people in roles like theirs, and almost nobody identified groups of people already facing exclusions (e.g. people who don’t fit what is perceived as the industry norm). The mantra of “people like us” is a well-documented problem in reinforcing discrimination and exclusions in society at large (Rowe, 1990) and common in the creative industries (Newman & Levine, 2011). Indeed, it is cited as an efficient strategy to recruit people who will fit in. The approach, however, is a major problem faced by many who don’t fit the perceived norm (Aust, 2022; Johnson et al., 2020). The pervasiveness of this attitude was revealed in interviews when participants were asked what makes a good colleague. A common answer was someone who gets along with everyone else and is fun. These testimonies speak to the perception that freelancers with little power must maintain a reputation as a good worker for fear of not being employed again (Paterson, 2012). It also creates an environment in which microaggressions and racism are tolerated because individuals don’t want to be seen “rocking the boat”. We do not want to suggest the participants we spoke to engaged in such activities, rather their responses reflected deeply entrenched structures through which individuals in positions of relative powerlessness must conform – often unconsciously – or risk gaining a bad reputation.

Conclusions

In this article we have sought to explore how pre-pandemic structures which produce precarity were exacerbated by the impacts COVID-19 restrictions had on television freelancers in the UK. Importantly, these impacts were uneven, reinforcing power asymmetries and compounding the inequalities faced by workers. This paper has three key findings. First, the immediate lockdown of filming restricted the whole sector, but the freelancers in the most precarious position were those with less savings and those on employment/tax set-ups that left them without government support. This stage of the crisis resulted in an immediate loss of workers from the sector who sought alternative forms of employment, typically in sectors experiencing growth during COVID-19 such as supermarket deliveries. Second, the first freelancers to work when filming restarted were those with the strongest networks. They were able to hear about and secure the work before others, relying on their existing network connections and relationships. This favoured more experienced workers and those more geographically proximate to filming locations. Third, in the management of risk we witnessed highly differential experiences. Precarious freelancers felt they had to take more risks – financial, personal, health – to secure work and behave in certain ways to continue to gain work.

Our findings support research highlighting the structural inequalities in the sector and we have shown how they were exacerbated by crisis. Precarity is systemic within television and when placed under pressure, precarity increased and was unevenly distributed across the industry. It would not have been hard to predict these impacts, but existing unequal power relations upon which the sector is predicated created immediate and severe divides. While this paper focuses on the inequalities in the sector, particularly in relation to seniority and position in the industry, there are gender, class, racial and health inequalities inherent in the sector. We know COVID-19 impacted more severely on women as they tend to have greater caring responsibilities and this was reflected in the television industry (Wreyford et al., 2021). Less is known about the other dimensions of inequality but at the time of writing, there is a sense the sector has taken a step backwards in addressing inclusivity and fair work due to the impacts of COVID-19 and the ways structural precarity was deepened. The long-term impacts of the variegated impacts of the pandemic on the UK television sector is an area that requires further study, especially as the sector’s skills crisis is worsening (BFI, 2022). If the approaches to managing uncertainty outlined above become more commonplace and form part of the already exclusionary structure of television production in the long term, we will see inequalities entrenched to a level even deeper than the pre-pandemic years.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the participants for taking part in this research during what was a very hard time for them and the wider television sector. We would also like to acknowledge the support of colleagues at the University of York and University of Bristol who provided useful feedback on the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Screen Industries Growth Network based at the University of York and funded by Research England.

Notes

1 Ethics approval was granted by the Department of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media ethics committee (24/4/2020) at the University of York, and by the University of Bristol Business School ethics committee (SoM23/4/2020Johns).

2 PAYE stands for “Pay As You Go”, the UK’s revenue and customs system to collect income tax and national insurance from employment.

Appendix

Appendix 1. Participant details

Table

Role	Gender	Age	Location
Actor, director, writer	M	40–49	London
Costume designer	M	40–49	Greater Manchester
Producer	F	40–49	Yorkshire
Producer	F	50–59	Yorkshire
Assistant director	M	40–49	North West England
Focus puller	M	40–49	Greater Manchester
Editor/director	M	40–49	North East England
Sound/dubbing mixer	M	60–69	Yorkshire
Editor	M	30–39	North East England
Producer/director	M	60–69	Yorkshire
Gaffer/lighting company owner	M	40–49	Greater Manchester
Casting director/actress	F	30–39	Greater Manchester
Production coordinator	F	30–39	Greater Manchester
Producer	F	30–39	Yorkshire
Producer/director	F	40–49	North West England
Production secretary	F	30–39	Yorkshire
Edit producer	F	30–39	Yorkshire
Actress	F	30–39	London
Production manager	M	50–59	Yorkshire
Post production	M	40–49	Greater Manchester
Production manager	F	30–39	North West England
Sports media producer	M	20–29	North West England
Producer-director	M	50–59	North East England
Runner	M	20–29	Greater Manchester
Sound recordist	F	30–39	North West England
Loader	M	30–39	Greater Manchester
Freelance post editor	M	30–39	Scotland
Agent	F	30–39	London
Researcher	F	30–39	North West England
Writer/Exec Producer	M	40–49	South West England