Last Thursday, academics from Bournemouth University and WFTV held an event at King’s College in London to mark the report, Where Have All the PMs Gone? [https://eprints.bournemouth.ac.uk/39530/]. The title has already been controversial - when the research was started, a couple of years ago during the post-lockdown boom, PMs couldn’t be found - but now there are loads out of work. What hasn’t changed, however, are the things that make it a crazily-difficult job.
As the report shows - and as most of us know - PMs (and all people in production roles) are undervalued and underpaid. PMs often bear the brunt of additional work created by change (from Brexit to Covid) - they are given more to do with less time to do it. The industry struggles to attract new talent into the role, or retain the industry’s most experienced PMs - as Jane Atkinson said last week, where is the ambition for PMs? Why don’t more PMs end up as MDs?
Partly, it is because of the gender factor (neither the ScreenSkills report nor Pegg’s article even mention it). But to state the blindingly obvious: the vast majority of these are roles undertaken by women. Exact statistics are simply not available in this shifting, largely freelance environment, but the Creative Diversity Network reports that 84% of Heads of Production are women. The extent to which women gravitate (or are funnelled) towards less valued, less well-paid roles, and the extent to which those roles are under-valued and underpaid because they are typically done by women, is a much wider historical and sociological question. For UK TV in the 21st century the fact that most PMs are women is a major factor in the industry’s retention problem.
As well as this, television’s talent pipeline is seriously leaky. Highly skilled, experienced people are lost to the industry as they decide they are no longer prepared to sacrifice their financial stability, work-life balance and mental health on the altar of entertainment. And the numbers tell us that this ‘brain drain’ affects women to a far greater degree than it does men.
Women in their forties too often make the decision to leave the industry, or to demote themselves to less responsible or less volatile roles. The most common reason given is the incompatibility of TV with family responsibilities. That, combined with it being women who make up most of production, means that these roles that are dominated by women are especially vulnerable to the mid-career brain drain. And of course PMs have brilliant transferable skills, meaning that the world outside TV offers them many opportunities - meanwhile, the lack of respect they encounter in the industry, and the increasing degree to which production can be cut off from the ‘creative’ realm of editorial, may mean PMs feel they have less job satisfaction to lose by pursuing alternative careers.
If UK television is serious about addressing the lives of PMs, it needs to be honest about what it will take to retain the highly skilled, highly experienced women who keep it afloat. Many of their needs are the same as those of their male colleagues: rates commensurate with the demands and responsibilities of the role, recognition and respect; better integration of editorial and production; a halt to the trend towards expecting more for less. There also needs to be a realistic approach to work-life balance through family-friendly employment policies - as well as understanding that lots of people without families also want a better work life balance, because they would like a life outside TV..
So: wider cultural change is also needed. Currently the balance between work and family is regarded very much as the women’s problem to deal with. Many, it seems, still believe in a natural law of TV that dictates that women (although not men) must choose between family and career; that women (although not men) with children inherently lack the necessary ‘commitment’ for the job. These views are held by people (mostly, although not exclusively men) who purport to espouse liberal values. This failure to modernise attitudes and to take responsibility for the (entirely man-made) way the industry operates is backfiring in a spectacular manner. TV is losing good people, losing great women, and specifically losing production staff who cannot be spared.
The industry needs to accept that it is in its best interests to recognise and address the needs of working mothers if they want to retain talent. Those employers who currently fear they cannot afford to offer flexible working arrangements, job-shares or contracts with reasonable working hours need to recognise that in the long term they cannot afford not to, if they want access to a high quality workforce.
We saw this in the room last week. Talented women are angry with how they are treated, and they are angry that the current slowdown is being used as leverage to maintain poor working conditions. Stand up for PMs and you are standing up for everyone in the industry (except, perhaps, the men in charge): please read and share!
The Talent Manager
