Tagged / State of Play 2021

We need policy and evidence to help change TV work culture

This week we submitted written evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee. This is the Parliamentary Select Committee that scrutinises the work of the Government Department (DCMS) that has recently launched an inquiry into ‘What the industry and Government can do to ensure British film and high-end television adapt for the future’. The area they have chosen to look at is a broad one, but the evidence we have submitted directly addresses two specific subsidiary questions: First, what should be prioritised to ensure a strong skills pipeline and retention in the film and high-end television industry? And second, what needs to change to ensure the industry is supporting inclusivity and sustainability?

These questions relate directly to the research that we do here at BU in the Faculty of Media and Communication into the nature of work in the media industries: project-based and heavily dependent on a largely freelance arms-length workforce. Its prevalent employment model, the ‘bulimic’ (feast-or-famine) flow of work and its short-term but highly intensive character present many challenges, both to the individual and the employer. Work in TV often involves poor hiring practices, it militates against inclusivity and sustainability and can involve high levels of stress that creates a culture susceptible to bullying and harassment.

Depressingly – and as if on cue – just as we were marshalling our evidence for the CMS Committee, the story broke of yet another high-profile example of the sort of bad behaviour that often goes unchecked in this kind of work environment. Our piece in The Conversation published today frames the Russell Brand case in the context of the underlying – systemic – problems that we want to help the CMS Committee to understand.

Read our article in full: Russell Brand allegations are leading to renewed scrutiny of the endemic bullying and harassment in the TV industry. The Conversation, September 21, 2023


Finding answers to the problem of workplace bullying in Film & TV

18-months ago we published a major study of the UK’s unscripted TV labour market. We found that a staggering 93% of professionals in this sector had experienced or witnessed bullying or harassment at work. An industry defined by highly sought-after creative work had a shadow side. The picture to emerge was one of a troubled workplace in pressing need of reform. Our report made six recommendations that had implications for both government policy and structural change within the industry.

As the issue of bullying in TV has become more widely acknowledged, we have welcomed a number of recent industry initiatives and interventions introduced to deter it (including a campaign to encourage the reporting of bad behaviour and a free Bullying Advice Service). Yet despite these positive developments, not enough attention has been given to the underlying factors that contribute to workplace bullying. There remains an assumption that this is simply a problem of ‘a few bad apples’, when – in reality – it is the condition in which apples are kept that largely determines the damage caused by a bad one.

In our latest publication we examine this issue in more depth. We argue that it is the nature of television work, its organisational structures and the culture of the industry that creates a set of conditions that makes bullying particularly likely. Many of the characteristics shown by our study to be commonplace in television work, are precisely those identified in the field of organisational psychology as risk factors for workplace bullying. This being the case, we call for a risk management approach to this problem; one that systematically recognises, appraises and minimises these risks.

Christa van Raalte, Richard Wallis & Dawid Pekalski (2023) More than just a few ‘bad apples’: the need for a risk management approach to the problem of workplace bullying in the UK’s television industry, Creative Industries Journal, DOI: 10.1080/17510694.2023.2182101