The BBC made Peter Thomas an offer he couldn’t refuse in 1989. If he wanted the broadcaster to buy the loudspeaker he had developed, he would have to quit his job as an engineer there.

“The boss said I couldn’t work at the corporation and make money from it. Like a madman, I left,” said Thomas. The BBC stuck to its side of the bargain and bought eight speakers for its Maida Vale studios in west London. It was the first customer of PMC Loudspeakers, which Thomas set up in 1990 with Adrian Loader.

Customers have included the American music star Stevie Wonder, who bought equipment for his Wonderland studio in Los Angeles. And the company has expanded into the home audio market. “Sound quality is a huge deal as technology develops,” said Thomas. “People value a good set of headphones or speakers with a decent sound.”

Last year PMC reported sales of £5m — up £1m from 2011. It operates from a factory in Luton and has 35 staff.

Thomas grew up in Ramsgate, Kent, the youngest of three the siblings. His father was an insurance assessor and his mother ran a bed and breakfast at their home. After 0-levels at Chatham House grammar school, the teenager who “wasn’t brilliant at anything but loved music” enrolled on an HNC in electronics at Canterbury college.

“I became fascinated by music production at a young age, when my grandfather gave me a gramophone,” he said. It took him double the time to complete the two- year course though, because “it was an era of girlfriends and everyone was enjoying themselves”.

When Thomas finally completed his studies in 1975, he joined the BBC as a radio engineer at the age of 20. Opportunities for young people were plentiful then. “All the BBC managers were retiring because they had been recruited after the Second World War. The stuffy old blokes in suits left and us long-haired louts were in. I worked across many departments and became familiar with the equipment.”

Thomas was made responsible for sourcing speakers for the Maida vale studios, home of the BBC radiophonic workshop, which produced the Doctor who theme. “That’s when I began thinking about making my own. I was meeting big names in the industry and realised they weren’t as amazing as I had made them out to be in my head. I thought, ‘Wow, I could do this’.”

He made his first speaker in 1987 using only British-made parts, “which is how we like to keep it today”. He called Loader, a former BBC employee who was at FWO Bauch, the recording equipment maker. “We had good contacts and decided to leave our jobs and go for it,” said Thomas, who at that time was married with two children.

The pair borrowed £80,000 from the bank, “which we spent in six months. It bought test equipment and computers, and the remainder went on buying stock in parts plus buffering us financially through the early months.”

Loader flew to Hollywood to knock on doors. “He was shameless when it came to selling. It is a great trait to have in business,” said his partner. “Adrian was the one who took our speakers abroad.”

Today, PMC exports to 33 countries and 75% of sales are overseas. China is its biggest customer. “There are many worries with trading abroad; people paying you on time, finding the right business to sell your stuff, language barriers,” admitted Thomas. This should not deter entrepreneurs, though. “You can’t rely on one country or client. Spreading your wings can only mean you sell more.” PMC has a small office in Los Angeles with two staff. A larger factory in Britain is in the pipeline.

The speakers cost from £1,200 to £75,000 a pair — the latter 2.3 metres tall. The electronics sector is tough to keep up with. “Once we built our first speaker, I remember wondering how we could make it better. I thought our job was done,” said Thomas. “But there is a ‘new and improved’ everything these days.”

Loader died in 1998, nine months after the death of Thomas’s first wife, Angela. Thomas married Loader’s widow, Jo, who had three children. Two of their sons work for the business. The couple, from Potton, Bedfordshire, own 100% of PMC, which has never received outside investment and continues to grow organically, “because we want to keep control”.

Thomas’s tip for budding entrepreneurs is to invest in a good accountant. “I’ve been through four. You want someone who can give you good guidance and confidence in your business, as well as help you to save some pennies.”

Original article by Kiki Loizou, Sunday Times 24 Feb 2013, reprint under NLA licence AL 00055357

Relevant pages: 266-8  Annex H

Download the here (pdf 2.6MB)

Subject: Re: Institute of Professional Sound : Meeting 6th November 2012

Dear Louise,

It was good to meet you and Simon and discuss some of the skills shortages in this area.

I am hopeful that we may be able to find ways to address them as an industry and that the BBC Academy will be able to play its part in that. However, just to manage your expectations with regards to the long list below, we are dealing with a major reduction in our budget in 2013 and having to reduce the amount of training we can deliver next year, so taking on new commitments is a huge challenge for us.

We discussed trying to get a more equitable balance of contributions to training from all broadcasters and leading indies, while understanding that the BBC will remain the leading training investor and provider. As the chair of the Creative Skillset TV and Content Strategy Group, I will aim to get sound (and craft skills generally) higher up the industry agenda. We should work out how we can access money which may come in from a training levy on high end dramas to achieve this.

Let’s stay in touch over the coming months to pursue these ideas together.

Best Wishes
Anne

Chairman, Simon Bishop, and EC member, Louise Willcox, met with Anne Morrison, and the Managing Editor, College of Production, Angela Roberts, on Tuesday, 6th November 2012 at New Broadcasting House in London.

The meeting was very much out of Simon and Louise’s ‘comfort zone’, but afterwards they agreed that Anne and Angela had been positive as well as, perhaps, a little surprised at how well informed we were. For instance, we knew that the Academy and several further education establishments had met recently; a stalemate, where both ‘sides’ were looking to the other to provide funding for training. Also, that Sky TV were asking NFTS to create a one year training course, specifically to train in Light Entertainment, Sit Com and Drama areas – Sky could find lots of craft sound talent mix news and sport, but their Arts Channel was struggling to find people with appropriate skills.

Anne and Angela’s TV features directing and producing backgrounds meant that multi-camera music, light entertainment, factual programmes – studio or OB, live or recorded – and high end drama, were genre that were out of their comfort zones. However, the lack of training in these operational areas cannot be laid solely at their door; the bigger culprit is, perhaps, how the BBC and ITV have chosen to structure themselves since 1993.

The early part of our meeting focused on how multi-skilled ‘editorial’ staff, and audio-ignorant picture editors could be ‘up-skilled’ in sound. The obvious answer was to improve the courses that already existed. Training people that the BBC no longer employed – ie craft sound operators – in roles that the BBC didn’t see itself managing any more, was the greater challenge.

We asked whether the BBC regarded itself as having a ‘remit to train the industry’ only in categories of staff that they still employed, or whether the Academy felt it had a global remit to train all categories, whether freelance or in-house. At no time were we told that the remit was limited to BBC employee roles only, but it was clear that, in practice, this was the case. Hence the almost complete lack sound craft training.

Anne Morrison pointed out:

• That the BBC Academy had been asked to make a 35% cut in its budget for 2013-14.
• That, in the past, the ‘remit to train the industry’ had effectively been fulfilled by BBC staff leaving and taking their skills, and previous training, with them.
• That the wording of the Charter concerning the training remit, was vague.
• That despite the Charter remit, the BBC Academy were not allowed to train freelance people for ‘free’, because of fair trading rules. It was not clear whether those rules were self imposed, or required by, say, the DCMS and, unfortunately, Louise and Simon didn’t ask. It’s on their list for next time.

We pointed out:

• That the previous craft career development BBC/ITV ‘model’– an apprenticeship where craft departments trained using landmark courses and on-the-job mentoring, progressing staff up a professional ladder – no longer existed.
• That the BBC and its production departments now predominantly relied on Service Companies to employ third-party craft workers; a few on their staff, the majority freelancers (eg The Farm in Salford, and OB facility providers.) That the majority of those Service Companies were, in turn, reliant on an aging or mono-skilled, progressively lessening-in-experience workforce to fulfil their contract with the BBC. That this could not go on indefinitely.
• That there was no incentive for one freelance to train other, because the trainer would feel their future prosperity threatened by the trainee.
• We asked: who was going to train new talent to mix prestigious Event, Light Entertainment, Sit Com and multi-camera, live Features shows? Also, Fisher boom operators, Gram Ops, Dubbing Mixers, Dubbing Editors, Foley Assistants, and TV Sound assistants?
• Details of the IPS’ own training initiatives were met with interest and respect.

Anne and Angela empathised with our submissions, as we did with theirs, and sought our opinion on how training could be improved. We suggested different training scenarios and offered the Academy whatever assistance the Institute’s pool of talent could provide. Anne and Angela were more positive than the prospect of a 35% cut in funding might have predisposed them to be. We also hope we gave them some ammunition to help fight that cut.

The change in the BBC and ITV’s structure has ultimately led to the dearth of sound craft training, and whether the BBC Academy has the desire or influence to change the business model is a matter that wasn’t discussed at our meeting – but we suspect not.

After restructuring in 2010-11, the Academy appears to have become a reactive organisation, providing training only when requested by BBC departments, with no real commitment to train the wider industry – despite press releases to the contrary (see letter to Chris Patten – Quality Saga pt 2). With the vast majority of craft sound departments, squeezed by successive reorganisations since 1993, shrinking year-on-year, resolving into the foregone conclusion of their ultimate demise, there has been neither the incentive nor budget to request training from the Academy or its previous incarnation. A conversation to be had with the new DG, perhaps?

There was a cautious spirit of co-operation during the IPS, BBC Academy meeting – we suspect the Academy did not want to offer something they couldn’t afford follow through on. Anne Morrison said she wanted to engage in open minded constructive dialogue, rather than pen letters back and forth.

So, rather than pen a letter, we sent the following notes on the training ideas we explored, via e-mail:

1. Improving the audio skills of multi-skilled ‘editorial’ staff (eg self shooting directors, researchers acting as sound recordists, journalists.)
2. Improving the audio skills of picture editors.
3. Improving dissemination of information about, and access to, Skillset bursaries, to freelance audio professionals.
4. Contractually obliging Service Companies to train new-to-industry staff – perhaps through the Academy?
5. S.M.A.C.: Saturday Morning Audio Classes; 8-10 people, 3 to 4hrs duration, 40 mins tuition, remainder hands-on. 30 topics/weeks rotation.
6. BBC ‘Craft’ Trainee Scheme: same template as BBC Production and BBC Design Trainee Scheme – 1 year contracts with placements organised by the Academy, but not exclusively placed within the BBC. [Anne Morrison suggestion.]
7. OB facility providers: BBC Academy create courses to ‘up-skill’ OB audio crews to climb the audio ladder, perhaps? Assistant to gram op and/or guarantee engineer, then on to sound supervisor.
8. High-end TV Drama tax breaks: in the offing, with anticipated voluntary training levy to increase funding for training in TV – as the Film industry model. Awaiting confirmation (from DCMS?), some time before Christmas 2012.
   (8a). An error on our part: Louise said that high-end TV Drama funding would only reflect back to TV Sound Recordists training. Actually, it could also reflect back to Gram Op-ing (akin to Dubbing Editor), sound assisting (Dubbing Assistant/Foley op – at a stretch) and TV Sound Supervisor (similar skills to Dubbing Mixer).
9. English Regions Technical Operators, wishing to specialise in audio areas, where shadowing of ‘network’ audio craft areas is not possible, as those departments in are now defunct. Possible to re-instate, somehow?
10.  Skills passport perceived as a vehicle for a ‘closed-shop’ when previously mooted by BBC Academy. Discussed BBC Academy accrediting other educators’ courses – for a fee to the Academy – as part of its remit to train the industry. More kudos in broadcasting than the J.A.M.E.S. accreditation.

The IPS Executive Committee meeting, later the same day, wanted the following points adding:

• Re 1 and 2, above: IPS Master Classes are in development covering a variety of topics, some of which have been beta tested in FE establishments. Possible vehicle for ‘up-skilling’ editorial and post production staff?
• Addressing the issue of inconsistent standards and quality of mixes on air, including trying to achieve a quality standard that all post production facilities adhere too. This has to involve more than quoting a loudness value and range, and ought to incorporate some degree of training.

A response was received from Anne Morrison by email on 28 November (go to Quality Saga pt 7)

This is what IPS Chairman’s letter said:

The Director General
British Broadcasting Corporation
White City,
Wood Lane,
London.
W12 7TS
16^th October 2012

Dear Mr. Entwistle,

RE:  HALTING THE DECLINE IN BROADCAST SOUND STANDARDS

Please find enclosed copies of correspondence between Lord Patten, Mark Thompson and ourselves, the Institute of Professional Sound (IPS). Our transition from the Institute of Broadcast Sound to the IPS, our own working schedules (it’s been a busy year!) and the announcement of your appointment, have been responsible for the 12 month delay in writing this response to Mark Thompson’s letter of 3rd October 2011.

We had entered into a discussion with Mr Thompson regarding what our 500+ members feel is a decline in the standards of sound mixing heard on many programmes. May I point out that we are specifically interested in the ‘operational’ standards as opposed to technical standards – the actual moving of faders rather than the maintaining of equipment (a common misunderstanding, since there are sound ‘engineers’ who mix programmes, and sound ‘engineers’ who ensure that the mixing desks and studio equipment are serviced and working properly) – we often refer to it as ‘craft’ mixing.

We still have our concerns in this area: in fact, we perceive that the situation has worsened in the last year. I gather that only two weeks ago it was announced that, of only four remaining craft sound mixers (Sound Supervisors) at Television Centre, two are to be made redundant on account of the move away from Wood Lane, and yet most if not all of the programmes made at TVC will still have to be made somewhere (Elstree/London Studios/wherever).

Our greatest concerns, however, are with respect to training, and the legacy that we are now creating for generations of sound mixers to come. The nub of it is that there is little or no training being given by the BBC, or anyone else at the moment, and we are desperately concerned that standards of craft mixing will drastically fall in the future, when younger technicians move up, but with little or no training to fall back on.

May I pick up on a few of the points that Mark Thompson made in his letter of a year ago.

1) MT says “Turning to the specific point about Academy sound trainers not being consulted on the content of our training videos. We felt that the findings from the audibility survey; Louise’s own comprehensive study; and the use of highly experienced sound professionals (George Foulgham, dubbing mixer and Scott Talbot, sound supervisor), to appear in, script, and structure their films, provided adequate and appropriate consultation.”

We understand that the BBC Academy sound trainers, who were not consulted in any way on the making of sound training videos, will all, bar one, be made redundant in April of 2013.

2) MT says “In her letter Louise suggests that no number of videos and edicts can train a whole industry and we absolutely agree with this. The intention of the films is to highlight the importance of good sound and to re-educate the production community.”

Whilst we all pretty much agree with the above, it might be better to ask the question ‘what or who will train the next generations of the industry?’ We understand that part of the BBC’s Charter is to train the industry, but as the BBC’s metamorphosis into the Publisher Broadcaster model continues, how can you reconcile that obligation? Perhaps the BBC Academy no longer sees this as part of its remit? I watched all of the videos this afternoon – I learned that I have to ‘face the mic the right way’, and watched an interview in which a PPM meter was repeatedly referred to as a monitor (which is usually how a loudspeaker or TV is referred to). I watched two videos, Audio Levels and Producing a Radio Package, in which there are obvious, and fundamental, mixing errors which anyone can hear. I added up the running lengths of all the sound training videos, and the total running time is about 60 minutes and 50 seconds. Take off the logos and branding and there is less than 60 minutes of content to be had out of the lot.

3) MT says (or might the following have been written by the BBC Academy?) “We will, however, maintain our commitment to providing the required levels of training in sound and other craft skills…”

We’d like to suggest that, bearing in mind some of the above, this is definitely not going to be the case in the sound craft area, on present evidence.

4) MT says (possibly the Academy) “Our Centre of Technology remains our centre of engineering excellence. We have recently put in place two attachments at the Centre of Technology to help with training for BBC North and our Broadcasting House in W1…….but this will still leave a strong core team of engineering trainers to support the BBC and the wider industry.”

We wonder if the Academy, whether deliberately, or through ignorance, are being misleading? The Centre of Technology trains the engineers that install and maintain the equipment that the craft sound operators use. We believe it is the College of Production’s remit to train ‘sound operations’.

5) MT says (possibly the Academy) “The Centre of Technology provides a series of training courses for new recruits in engineering and technology areas. These courses, which form part of the BBC’s Technology Foundation Programme, culminate in the award of ‘BBC Engineer Qualified. …… This rigorous approach to engineering excellence helps to maintain the BBC’s heritage in broadcast technology…. It’s worth noting that one of the Centre’s most popular courses with external organisations is the High Definition Standards and Measurement course….”

All of the courses mentioned are to train engineers, not sound assistants, gram ops, sound editors, sound supervisors, dubbing mixers or Foley operators. Indeed, IPS members are often hired (freelance) by the BBC Academy to help with a studio ‘familiarisation’ module, which is part of most of the courses listed.

This module ensures that engineers will understand what is going on when they walk into, for example, an adrenalin-filled gallery during a live transmission. The ‘most popular’ course mentioned re HD standards and Dolby E is another red herring. Some of this course is relevant to sound supervisors and sound guarantees (5.1 metadata and understanding what happens when up and down converting sound formats) but the rest is primarily about sound encoders talking to each other.

We can pretty much categorically state that the College of Production’s Location Sound 1 and 2 courses are the only sound operations training courses undertaken by the BBC Academy. Delegates are, with rare exception, members of production teams learning to self shoot. We are told that they seldom progress to the second, more advanced, course, before their contract ends or they are promoted.

The Challenge:

There is:

• No TV sound operational hands-on training co-ordinated by the BBC Academy, or anyone else as far as we can discover, with the possible exception of the Tonmeister Music and Sound recording course run by Surrey University – but this is not broadcast specific.
• No organised mentored learning in TV studio environments. Freelancers (the vast majority of practitioners now) will pass on best practice to colleagues on the odd days they are exposed to each other, but only if it doesn’t threaten their future employment.
• A huge ignorance and often, lack of concern by the ‘employer’ (be it whole BBC/ITV organisations, or one production team) about ‘sound’ in general.
• A ‘market place’ that is flooded with inadequately trained operators (often cheaper than experienced practitioners – money the focus for all production managers, of course).
• A cornucopia of home viewing/listening devices with hugely varying audio formats and quality of speaker systems, plus the varying bit rates and types of data compression used by the digital networks hosting our broadcasts.

You can, perhaps, see why we are concerned.

A member of the BBC Academy’s Centre of Technology’s training team told us, recently, that BBC engineers are trained in the way that sound operators used to be trained, ie : a beginning-of-career foundation course, away from the workplace, followed by experience and mentored training in the workplace; then short, specialised, courses as either technology changes, or as required by the BBC to improve competence/qualify individuals for promotion. This method creates BBC broadcast engineers that are regarded as the best in the world. The Centre of Technology currently earns a lot of money for the Academy by training engineers from around that world.

This form of training has not been provided for TV sound operators for over 15 years. However, there are now very few, if any, TV ‘sound’ departments left in the BBC (see above re TVC redundancies). Most effort is hired-in.

• We feel that the BBC Academy, so far as sound operations are concerned, is a reactive, not pro-active, organisation now. It won’t provide instruction unless the customer requests it.
• That said: Production often don’t know what they don’t know, so how do they know what training to request?
• Training costs budgets money that Production teams, now, might not want to ‘waste’.

In BBC Radio it looks like Studio Managers (sound operators) are going to evolve into ‘Assistant Producers’. If so, at least they will still be employed by the BBC. Can we assume that, in the future, they will continue to be trained by the Academy (despite all, but one, of the trainers being made redundant?)

In BBC TV, the publisher broadcaster + service company model is now the case. For example, BBC Sport in Salford, where facilities and operational staff are managed by a service company – The Farm.

The Farm has a core of around five sound staff, who have been employed because they are already trained professionals (ex BBC OBs that became SISLive OBs – another example of a service company). The remaining effort is freelance.

At the moment, there is still an ageing pool of ex-BBC and ITV/IBA TV and radio staff, trained by their previous employer available to be hired-in; but who is going to train the new-to-industry freelancers required by the service companies for the future?

The degradation in broadcast sound standards is tangible proof that there is a challenge to be met. The results of the TV Audibility Survey have gone a small way to fighting the lack of respect for the sound profession in general, but memories are erased quickly when budgets tighten.

We cannot turn the clock back, but we do want to work with you to meet this challenge whilst we still have practitioners alive with the skills to help. As a past Controller of Knowledge Commissioning, and Deputy Editor of the Tomorrow’s World programme, we hope you will have an understanding of, and empathy with, the logic of our concerns.

I do hope that the above feels like light relief after some of what you have had to wade through in the last couple of weeks. Welcome to the big chair, in the big office!!

Yours sincerely,

Simon Bishop, FRGS, MIPS, AMPS
Chairman, Institute of Professional Sound

Cc:
Chair, BBC Trust
Voice of the Viewer and Listener

(go to Quality Saga pt 6) 

BAFTA Crew is designed to develop the film production skills and contacts of crew across England with the ultimate aim of supporting the production infrastructure and developing ‘below the line’ talent outside of the capital.

The initiative includes live and online masterclasses delivered by film industry professionals, drawn from BAFTA’s highly successful pool of winners, nominees and members. The programme will cover creative, technical and operational topics across departments.

BAFTA Crew members will also be part of a network of professional peers and have closer access to Creative England’s Production & Location Services team who help crew national drama and feature film productions.

BAFTA Crew is open to applicants with two or more TV broadcast or feature film credits who live outside the M25, and the final group will be selected by a panel of established professional peers at the end of February. 300 ‘below the line’ professionals from Sound, Art, Post-production, Camera, Costume and Production Management will be invited to join the group.

BAFTA Crew is now open for applications. The deadline is Monday 18 February 2013.

Apply now:

www.bafta.org/about/supporting-talent/bafta-crew,3554,BA.html

Reproduced by permission of Broadcast

In part one, Broadcast unveiled the key concerns revealed in the Freelancer Survey 2012. Here Catherine Neilan explores the causes and reveals the best – and worst – companies to work for.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the TV industry is in want of more money. Budgets are being squeezed from the top down, with commissioners granting smaller tariffs and expecting the same – or better – quality productions. The Broadcast Freelancer Survey 2012 has shown where that invariably trickles down to: the hard-working freelancer.

A huge number of respondents to our survey cited budgets going down as the single biggest threat to their future in the industry, noting that indies were taking on work for fees that were just not practical.

According to Benetta Adamson, who runs the TV Watercooler forum and has been a long-standing campaigner for freelancer rights, “everything is compromised” by lower budgets, from equipment to experience.

Fear has become the overriding factor: broadcasters are afraid of competition, execs are afraid to tell commissioners they cannot deliver under those terms, and freelancers are afraid to ask for improved conditions. “At each level, people are frightened,” she says.

EMPLOYER LEAGUE TABLE

KEY FIGURES

Best and worst indies to work for…
BEST
Kudos 2.2%
Hat Trick 1.7%
Tiger Aspect 1.7%

WORST
Endemol 4.9%
Princess 4.5%
Love 2.2%

Best and worst broadcasters to work for…

BEST
BBC 17%
ITV 6.7%
C4 3.7%

WORST
BBC 6%
Sky 5.6%
ITV 3.75%

Root causes

This, says Bectu official Tom Bell, is why some of the more pernicious practices are able to continue. “Fear of being labelled a troublemaker, fear of being crossed off the list, that is the root cause of all these problems,” he says. “That and the greed factor – companies looking to make more profit at the expense of the crew.”

While freelance salaries have gone up slightly, hours have increased at a faster pace, producing an overworked and exhausted labour force on only slightly better pay. The six-day week is a major source of concern for Bectu, despite having secured a pledge from the BBC last autumn to attempt to have a growing proportion of productions made within a five-day week.

Unfortunately, this has yet to filter through: more than two-thirds of freelancers now occasionally or frequently work six out of seven days. Bell is hopeful that this will change – most likely in film production, before coming through to TV – but the survey suggests this cultural shift could take a while.

Stephanie Asplin, managing director of agency The Crewing Company and deputy chair of the Facilities Skills Council for Creative Skillset, says other untoward practices are emerging.

Buyouts, where a fee is agreed irrespective of the time it takes to complete a job, are sometimes presented in the small print of a contract but not made explicit in the verbal agreement, she says. While an agency such as TCC is trained to spot these methods, Asplin urges lone freelancers to be vigilant. But even when rates are transparently low, freelancers end up accepting them to secure the job. “Freelancers need to stand strong with their rates or they will in turn drive them down for the whole industry,” Asplin says.

The practice of over-hiring freelancers as a matter of course, and cancelling at the last minute without paying any penalties, is also on the rise. The survey seemed to suggest this was largely confined to outside broadcasting, but Broadcast has since learned that it spans other genres such as current affairs, and can take place over several episodes of a programme before the freelancer realises what is happening.

Although there are no figures as to how frequently this happens, both Adamson and Bell spoke of it as an emerging problem, which Bectu might investigate. “If we can get evidence that companies are regularly signing people up with the intention of cancelling some of them at the last minute, we would raise that with the companies themselves, and most likely Pact as well,” Bell says.

There has been a slight tailing-off in the number of people predicting they will leave the industry within the next 10 years. But while this appears on the surface to be a positive step, Bell is pessimistic about the reasons behind it. “It could be because they realised how wonderful the industry is – or it could be because they have nowhere else to go,” he says. “The opportunities for acquiring new skills or moving into new careers are being limited by the recession. I think they are saying it with a heavy heart, rather than a sense of optimism.”

Adamson believes the brain drain has already affected the quality of programmes as a large number of freelancers with experience and skills have already left the industry for more secure or better-paid jobs, leaving a pool of newer entrants or people with narrow skills bases.

“I would be very surprised if most people who are past the rosy glow of their first 10 years don’t recognise that feeling of chasing pots of gold at the end of a rainbow – when the field is getting more potholed,” she says.

But she believes some battles are worth choosing to fight before we get to the point of no return. “There is a perception that bad things will happen if you stand up for yourself. I don’t think that is necessarily the case, but you have to be quite creative about how you approach an employer that’s behaving badly. You can’t just raise problems – you have to present solutions too.”

Lack of career progression, poor visibility for the future and a churning workforce rests on a number of factors, but respondents repeatedly put forward more training as a solution – albeit an unlikely one, given the lack of money around.

Investing in training

But Len Brown, development executive for the Indie Training Fund, thinks the wheel is beginning to turn, with indies starting to realise self-interestedly that training is essential if they want people with skills. “Maybe in the past there was too heavy a reliance on the BBC ‘nest’ training staff, who would then fly off to the indies,” he says. “The BBC still does a lot of good work but, financially, things are tightening up, which means that indies need to do even more themselves.”

Thanks to investment from some of the major players in the industry, Creative Skillset is once again able to offer bursaries for training in specific areas (see box below).

The BBC, voted the broadcaster freelancers would both most (17%) and least (6%) like to work for, says it is still committed to training – Fast Train is one of its newest and most successful initiatives but the corporation also hosts training online, and regularly holds ‘classroom’ training internally. A spokeswoman says: “The scale of this training is important in underpinning the BBC’s reputation for quality, given our reliance on the skills and knowledge of the mobile freelance workforce at the heart of our industry.”

The BBC is also launching a new invoice system (see box below).

Beyond the BBC, the same names as were in our 2011 survey cropped up in both our best and worst categories.

For indies, Endemol was again named as the company people would least like to work for, with around 5% of the vote. Princess Productions was second worst for the second year running and Love Productions was third. Princess and Love declined to comment

An Endemol spokesman says: “We have been voted both best by 11 people and worst by 23 people and it’s not even clear how many of these have actually worked with us.

“We employ over a thousand rather brilliant freelancers every year, most of whom keep coming back, and we think they are the best in the business.”

Meanwhile, Kudos was voted the indie freelancers would most like to work with, followed by Hat Trick and Endemol company Tiger Aspect.

Freelancer conditions: budget constraints filter down from commissioners to hard-working freelancers

With rising hours and fears over job security, the future is increasingly uncertain for many working in TV. Catherine Neilan reports on the results of Broadcast’s Freelancer Survey 2012.

Reproduced by permission of Broadcast

Broadcast’s Freelancer Survey 2012 paints a gloomy picture, with some parts of the freelance community’s working life showing a clear decline in quality.

The survey – this year taken by 656 people, an increase of nearly 20% on 2011 – offers a frank account of their working lives. In many cases, things appear to be getting worse or, at best, remaining the same as last year.

Working hours are up, with one in five (21%) clocking more than 60 hours a week, equivalent to five 12-hour days or six days of 10 hours. This is a significant rise on the 14% who said they worked such hours in January last year.

Nearly half of all respondents are working more than 50 hours a week – more than the government’s recommended 48 hours for those in permanent roles. More than half of respondents (56%) said they worked 10 hours or more a day.

But this is taking its toll on freelancers, with some blaming tiredness as a factor in seeking to leave the industry. “Exhaustion, burn-out, disillusionment,” responded one freelancer when asked about the biggest threats to their job. Another said he would continue working “as long as I can keep up with the hours”, adding, worryingly: “After a 12-hour day plus, who’s to say what can happen on a tired drive home?”

A third freelancer said: “Physically, I don’t think I can do this much longer. The hours are too long, too physical and we get too few breaks.”

This, coupled with job insecurity, puts age and illness high up on people’s lists of concerns. As a result, the sector is still suffering from the brain drain identified in 2011 – half the freelancers surveyed plan to leave TV within the next 10 years, and a further 3% say their working life is too uncertain to make the call.

This is broadly in line with last year’s findings, and suggests an inherent problem. As well as overwork, some cited familiar reasons – starting a family, which seems incompatible for most, particularly women, or ageism against both men and women.

Several also spoke of having to leave the industry to secure better pay or career progression.

There seems to be widespread concern about being undercut by younger people joining the industry who may not be able to offer the level of expertise required to do a job well, but can certainly do it cheaply.

“There is no value put on professionalism, experience or craft skills” said one respondent, while several others complained that companies were hiring “cheap, clueless labour to save money”. A third characterised the competition as “spotty students who think they can do everything.”

But many of the concerns boiled down to predict-ability, with freelancers unable to plan for the future in their working lives. “Vague”, “totally uncertain”, and “unknown – not feeling too positive” were some of the comments made, with 30% saying their future was random and impossible to predict or manage, and 36% saying it was hard or difficult.

The survey also found a high number of people not receiving holiday pay and going without cancellation fees, when entitled to them.

Two-thirds of respondents said they could not claim a fee if a project was cancelled at the last minute. Of the remaining 35%, less than half (45%) said they received it.

Freelancers spoke of being “pencilled in, then cancelled at the last minute”, and the fear that if they stood up for their rights on this matter, they risked being seen as a “troublemaker”.

However, a handful noted that they now get a cancellation policy written into the contract, having been burned in the past.

One claimed OB companies regularly secure more staff than needed in case someone drops out – but this is carried out “at the cost of the freelancer”.

In the past five years, 43% of people have agreed to work for free or less than the standard rate on the promise of future pay.

Among those who did not drop their fee, some claimed they had lost out, with the production company turning to those who could afford to work for what one called “a heavily reduced fee”. However, a handful said it had led to a better-paid role.

Reasons to be cheerful

Despite the gloom and doom, there are still reasons to be cheerful, and freelancers reported a rise in the respect they enjoy. The number saying they felt “essential to” or “valued by” the companies they work for has grown from 58% to 61%, although 16% said they felt insignificant.

And there has been some progress on pay – 26% of people now earn less than £20,000, a marginal improvement on last year’s 28% but a considerable climb since Skillset’s 2001 survey, which found that 42% of freelancers were earning less than £20,000.

As a result, the middle earners – those getting between £25,000 and £45,000 – accounted for more of the total, climbing from 33% to 36%. Top earners, on more than £55,000, remained steady, accounting for 17% of freelancers.

But it’s clear that, as a general rule, freelancers are still feeling as concerned about their present career as they are about their future. As one respondent said, when asked what the biggest threat to his or her job was: “A probably rather modest, but not insignificant, straw upon the camel’s back.”

In part 2, we’ll be revealing which companies freelancers regard as the best and worst to work for. We’ll also be trying to understand what, if anything, people can do to improve the quality of their working lives.

These 22 recordings were digitally transferred from single-sided, binaural test records created by Alan Blumlein and his research team at EMI. They were thoughtfully donated to the British Library in 2005 by the family of the late Angus McKenzie, a renowned English audio engineer and consultant.  They represent some of the earliest known experiments in two-channel sound recording.

Included in this collection are several recorded speech trials featuring Blumlein and members of his research team walking and talking in the auditorium of the Hayes research building in 1933, as well as several recorded fragments of a rehearsal performance of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham and performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios in 1934.

Listen to them here:
http://sounds.bl.uk/Sound-recording-history/Alan-Blumlein-recordings

The AHL have royal patronage from The Duke of Edinburgh and have around 20,000 members. They are regularly lobbying government on decisions regarding hearing matters, and have a very effective press department for media coverage of matters concerning hearing loss and how to protect our hearing.

Action on Hearing Loss is undoubtedly the best choice for sound professionals to offer support, so we are pleased that they are as excited as we are to establish a link with the IPS.

In addition to providing technical support on sound matters, we expect to raise awareness amongst IPS members about protecting their own hearing. We intend to liaise on many projects with the AHL in future – ranging from support for campaigns to maintain quality sound in broadcast radio and TV, to helping AHL members better understand various issues in sound technology.

The AHL forum is to be found here (register first using the link on the top left): http://tinyurl.com/7jzlo3q

A current project on the AHL web site very relevant to our industry is their Loud Music Campaign: http://tinyurl.com/6w2posy

Also an cleverly executed online hearing check, here: http://tinyurl.com/6flp7z2

John Grove IPS Forum co-ordinator and AHL liaison.