Episode 48 - All3Media's Sara Geater, Icon Films' Laura Marshall, Curve Media's Camilla Lewis &...

Welcome to Telecast, the TV industry news review. I'm Justin Crosman. On this week's show we're marking International Women's Day with Sara Geater, Chief Operating Officer at All3Media; Camilla Lewis, CEO of Curved Media; Laura Marshall, CEO of Icon Films; and Liz Tucker, Chair of Women in Film & TV.

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My first guest on this week's show is Sara Geater, Chief Operating Officer at All3Media, one of the world's largest TV production and distribution groups. They produce over three and a half thousand hours of content for broadcasters and streamers around the world. Hi Sara, welcome to the show.

Great to have you on. And how are things at All3Media? We're starting to emerge gradually from lockdown from a production perspective, but obviously All3Media has got over 40 production companies in your stable. How's it been over the last year?

Presumably the fact that you have both factual and scripted businesses has kind of helped you ride this out?

And presumably having a strong library has also helped, because that's been a trend — the demand from broadcasters for recognizable TV brands where you can acquire hundreds of hours that are familiar.

This week we're marking International Women's Day. To my knowledge you're one of the few female leaders in a major TV production business. Could you briefly sketch out what the difference of a COO is to a CEO?

And as I say, you're one of the few female CEOs. Is it just the way the industry is structured, or are there perhaps some barriers to women being able to get to a CEO level that are still prevalent?

Speaking personally, have you experienced or do you still experience any barriers in the industry as a woman? And if you don't, do you see those barriers for others?

This is something known as imposter syndrome. I'm sure many men experience it too, but do you think it's more prevalent — that women experience imposter syndrome more than men?

It's about getting that level playing field for everyone in the industry when it comes to diversity. Perhaps that's one of the beneficial outcomes of this dreadful COVID crisis — everybody has perhaps looked at the issues and maybe will come out of it in a more equitable way.

Do you think the TV industry should be investing a little more in training? Coming back to this point about imposter syndrome — we've all been paying the apprenticeships levy, I think, for a start. How do we use apprenticeship learning to actually get apprentices into our industry?

There are still areas of the industry where women are relatively underrepresented — indie leadership, directors, post-production, I'm sure a few other areas. How do we overcome that? Training, as you've already said, is an important aspect.

Coming back to your career, Sara — you've had a very successful career and you hold one of the most senior roles in the UK production industry. Do you think your career would have been any different if you were a man? Opportunities that might have been open to you or not?

If you were to look back at the 20-year-old you now, starting out in the industry, what sort of advice would you give yourself?

It's embracing failure, isn't it? Not being afraid to fail. We hear this from leaders across many industries — don't be afraid to fail, because that's actually where you learn the most. You fall flat on your face, pick yourself up, and you've got a great piece of knowledge to take forward for how you do things differently in the future.

Sara, thank you so much for joining us this week. It's been fascinating to speak to you. Wish you all the very best throughout this year. Let's keep our fingers crossed that we're on top of the pandemic and we can all see each other in Cannes or other industry events.

Thank you, Sara. All the best. So my next guests this week are leading UK indie bosses — Camilla Lewis of Curved Media, Laura Marshall from Icon Films, and Women in Film & TV Chair Liz Tucker. Welcome to the show, guys.

Hello.

Hello.

Great to have you with us in this special International Women's Day episode. Camilla, let's start with you. Looking at some of your recent announcements, it looks like lockdown hasn't slowed up production too much at Curved.

Well, I think everyone's production has been slowed down, and I'd be lying to say that we haven't been impacted by lockdown. We all have. But we've been pretty lucky — a lot of the broadcasters came to us, mostly the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, and Discovery, and asked what we could do to help them in the very difficult early stages. The relationship between producer and broadcaster really changed very quickly — from feeling a bit like we were at war with them, to being much more collaborative and brilliantly balanced. Some of that has sustained. So without being too Pollyannaish, there's been a really lovely shift. They knew we could deliver programs, and we filmed the whole way through — there hasn't been a day we haven't had cameras running on at least a few productions. We've got 16 shows in production right now across terrestrial and SVODs. It's impacted us, it's been a bloody nightmare, but we haven't lost as much money as perhaps we could have done. I think that's partly down to having a good reputation for delivery and very good relationships with the broadcasters — they've been great almost across the board.

Almost. Yeah.

That's interesting to hear that the relationship has changed slightly. In the UK it's slightly different to America where it's work-for-hire, and I guess that changes the relationship again. Has the balance of power shifted? Are production businesses seen in a more powerful role overall?

That's a really good question. I'd like to say yes, but I think for me the power has always been with the producer — in my deluded mind I was thinking I'm all powerful and some sort of god-like figure. No, but I think what's shifted is that companies that deliver — like Icon, like Curved — who are well known for delivery, they could be relied on. At a time when everything felt very frightening, things weren't very reliable, we didn't know where we stood, and what did health and safety mean when it really counted — suddenly it meant the world. The broadcasters fell back on trusted producers. I'm sure it's not a universal story — some small lenders, some startups who haven't got a huge reputation might have had a very difficult time. It hasn't been a party for anybody, it's just that that relationship and collaboration has had to grow because we've had to learn together how to make programs in a really complex time.

Perhaps the only beneficiaries, and we've touched on this a few times on Telecast, are the SVODs and AVODs. But maybe we'll come on to that. You're an established production business, Camilla — presumably library content has played a big role as well in weathering the storm.

Like many established UK indies, it must have been key to have that library. Yes, some things were reversioned quickly — how many more episodes of this can we get, can we re-cut this that way. That did happen. And at first, I'm sure this is true across the industry, we all thought, oh my God, it's all going to be about archive — what can we find, what can we do, what can we buy? And only one show of ours, a Channel 5 show which hasn't been announced, was commissioned which was purely archive-based. That was the only one in the end. Ironically, we found we could shoot. One of the great things about being a factual indie as opposed to a drama indie — who were faced with huge problems right up front — was that we could go out on the road with very small crews, much more controllable in terms of health and safety. We could be outside, we could keep social distancing, and we filmed with the BBC and Channel 4 immediately. The day of the lockdown announcement we were given commissions to make shows reflecting that time. That forced us into a position of being able to cope with filming under COVID and those regulations. Our amazing production management team, run by Paul Day, has really meant we've got strong protocols in place.

Laura, coming to you. First of all, full disclosure — I represent Icon Films for PR. But I know you've been busy with some really ambitious productions in far-flung places over the last year. Could you share some of Icon's recent and current productions?

You know, this time last year we had crews in Brazil, in Paraguay, in a lot of places where we needed to get them back very quickly from. Our production management teams, as Camilla has said, are totally brilliant — the UK is completely world-class in factual production as well as drama production. They got them back safe and sound. Then there was this moment where, probably 90% of what we do is shot overseas, so we had to really sit back and work out what we could do safely. Echoing Camilla, our commissioners really knew they could trust us, so we were always part of the conversation about how to get back in the field. There was an exchange of information between production companies and commissioners — how are you doing this, what are the risks you think we should take. I use the word 'pause' a lot because sometimes we don't have that moment to think. Well, we had a moment of pause and we thought a lot about how to get back into the field. We started building on extreme health and safety that we've always done for hostile environments — it was just a slightly different hostile environment. Having paused and gone into deep conversations with our broadcasters — National Geographic, Blue Ant, with Discovery — we worked out our own health and safety protocols. We use the broadcasters' protocols as a starting point, but we need to believe in our own risk assessments and accept our own risks. It can never be less than what is imposed upon us, and we're probably even more stringent because I'm sending those crews out and I want to count them all out and count them all back again. So there was a lot of health and safety, then identification of countries where we could travel to — we got to Iceland very early, we got to Kenya, and now we've got crews in Malawi, South America, the South Pacific, all working under extreme, very diligent health and safety.

Congratulations on that. You also mentioned some relatively new broadcasters to Icon — Vice and Blue Ant. Is that essentially a general increase in demand for natural history content? We're seeing lots of new players, new streamers, different broadcasters.

Interestingly, you'd think that in a pandemic people might want to play safe, but the metrics have shown that when we're all shut in rooms, people want to see the great world outside. Because Icon had been doing it a very long time and we're very trusted, some new customers came to us and said, can you take us to places our viewers want to go to? And we knew that we could. So it was fantastic to pick up about 18 hours of new commissions in lockdown to go to far-off locations and do what we do best. There's a lot of conversation about a natural history boom and whether it's going to bust, but the natural world has always been with us. People have always wanted to understand the world in which they live better than they do. And now is this extraordinary moment where the technology is at a point where we can actually deliver on the promises we've been making for a very long time. There isn't a day that you don't open your web page and see some extraordinary natural history program telling you they're going to show you something in high definition, UHD, in super technical color and binaural sound, under a microscope. It's very, very exciting and I think the viewers want that.

Coming back to what you were saying about production in the field, and this is also a question for Camilla — lots of new protocols that everyone's had to bring in clearly come with a cost. We've heard figures of up to 20% on top of regular production budgets. Have broadcasters generally accepted that without much argument? Sara, coming to you first.

Can I just go back to one point which I'm sure Laura would agree with? One of the great things about the last year is that it's been a great equalizer for people. For us in America, we've been long wanting to conquer America, and this year we've got a big series underway that we've been making there. That's happened because we can be on Zoom at any time of day, and that would never have happened so easily before. It was much more complicated to coordinate. And now there's three small indies I've spoken to who feel they've got more face time with Channel 4 or whoever, because the commissioners are just easier to meet. It's become much more of an equal playing field in that way, and I think that's been a great thing.

Hopefully that's something that's going to continue. Laura, have you found broadcasters have accepted increased costs due to new protocols? Have they been generally pretty understanding?

The phrase we're all using at the moment is 'it's a conversation.' There is absolutely an acceptance that the costs envisaged going up front, particularly if you were commissioned before COVID, are going to change — either because there's been a hiatus or increased COVID security, quarantining, whatever cost there is. There's an expectation that both producers and commissioners will step up. If you approach those conversations acknowledging that it's not the same cost, that there are some savings we might be able to make but there are some that represent a net increase, how are we going to deal with this? Particularly in the world of AVOD where it's commissioner takes all and there are no back-end deals where you can mop up your losses, that conversation is actually happening. It's really good and it means there's more conversation between commissioners and producers. Because they're working with trusted producers, commissioners feel they can really open up and share their own issues — the channels have had their cash issues as well. We're working together, I'm not saying it's entirely satisfactory, but we haven't got to the end yet so we're all working hard, mindful of doing the best we can with the money available but not cutting any safety corners because it's far too dangerous for us and for the people we meet with. Particularly when we're going far from home, we want to make sure we're not taking anything nasty with us.

This remote working has allowed us to work with different people we might not have worked with before. I'm a Bristol production company — we've got a lot of team working remotely in London. I've always had Bristol faith because we're a Bristol company, but it's a different world. We're also hiring a lot of crew internationally at the moment — producers, camera PAs, PMs. That's been really exciting, expanding our workforce globally to make sure we keep on delivering. There's a lot of people wanting to break into the UK market and the US market, and going through a UK production company is allowing them to do that and get credits on their CVs. So there's some interesting things happening at the moment.

Interesting. Liz, welcome to the show. International Women's Day is presumably a big date in your calendar. What has Women in Film & TV got planned for this year?

Absolutely kind of a huge day, I hope, in all our calendars. We've got a major event called The House, where we're bringing a wide range of experts — whether they be commissioners, actors, writers, activists — and we try to create, I suppose, a sort of

Virtual coffee house so our members can come along and join in for a chat, as you might do if you're at a festival or in a bar, talk to other writers. So we've got a huge range of people. We've got Miriam who's going to introduce it, Lesley Sharp who's going to close proceedings for us. Because I think what I'm very conscious of, this Women's Day more than any really, is that what Camilla and Laura had to say is terrific and has largely been very positive. Without being too much of a downer, obviously as an organization that supports women, we've also had a lot of our members who've lost an awful lot of work. And so I think that sense of virtual community has been more important than it's ever been before. And I think it particularly depends, as I think both of them also touched on, the types of programs that get made in terms of how effective people are. Some documentary programs for example are much easier to make in a kind of COVID-secure way than others. People who are working in large OBs and things for example have largely gone. So we are also dealing with trying to keep everybody on board and positive, but also recognizing that a very large proportion of people working in this industry have not had any income for months and months.

Yeah, absolutely. And presumably freelancers has been the sector that's been the most critically hit.

Well, I think our industry is so based on freelance, self-employed workers. And I think even where we have got commissions, the other half of the debate about budgets and how people manage that is, in a number of cases broadcasters have cut the budgets, which means people are also coping not only with additional COVID costs but also with reduced budgets. The concern obviously is with the budget coming up on the third, that there's some talk that there'll be an increase in tax rates for freelancers, which if people already have not earned any money this year will be somewhat of a double whammy.

Yeah. One of Women in Film and TV's main missions is to achieve parity in the TV and film industry when it comes to representation right across the industry. Whilst we do have many women in leadership roles in the TV business in particular, I gather there's still quite a lot of work to do in other areas in the industry.

Yeah. I mean, it's interesting actually having Laura and Camilla on today because I would say if you look across broadcasters you often find a greater level of women than you do in the indie sector. When you look at the number of women running indies, it's still relatively kind of small. And so I don't know, Laura and Camilla may have a view on why that is. So I think that's part of an issue. But I think for WFTV it's not about moaning, it's about trying to get things changed really. So there are some things which I think are obvious, like the lack of female directors, and I think that needs broadcasters to be aware of it and to be working towards a more equitable playing field. And that means, I think, being more open to new ideas. Because I know a lot of indies will say that when they go into talk to broadcasters, the broadcasters often have very clear ideas about names that they'd like to direct a particular show, which again doesn't necessarily help drive diversity. And then on the sort of post-production side where it's still largely very male, I think one of the things that's interesting is when you see post-production houses such as Envy and The Farm which have traditionally had strong female leadership, you see far more women in those companies. So I think it's a mixture of approaches really that we need to look at.

So how can the industry change then to become more representative of women in, for example, post-production?

Well, it's interesting actually. I think having more women in leadership roles in post-production really helps drive that. But I think it's also about educating young women because I think if you went into a classroom, people might have an idea about being a producer or director, but I think they would have no idea about working in a post house. They might imagine you've got to have a really technical background. Well, you don't. Those are all heavily creative roles. And one of the post houses was complaining to me that when they're looking for eighteen-year-old trainees, they just don't get the women even applying. So I think that's something that we're looking at at the moment, whether we can develop some sort of scheme that could not only help a number of women get their first job in post-production houses, but also alert other women that this is a career worth considering, because I think it's something that a lot of women don't even think about.

There's a question for Laura and Camilla. Coming to you Camilla first of all, have you found any barriers to success in your career?

Well, I mean, obviously yes. When you say barriers to success, that's not how I'd frame it. I think dealing with everyday sexism, dealing with one's own internalized sexism, dealing with how to cope with... I mean, there's not a day that passes when I don't face either external or internal issues with being a woman in the industry. And I think that it's really interesting to hear what you were saying, Liz, about why women are drawn to certain bits of the industry. It's very precarious running a production company, and I'm sure Laura would agree, it's scary. It is a really tough thing. And traditionally men have been cast in that role by women too and by men. And I think it's been very hard to prove yourself in that world without being seen as... I mean, you know more than I do, I'm obsessed about the way women are perceived in the industry. And I don't want to be anti-men and I'm certainly not, but I am very, very pro-women in the way I'm trying to hold on to those female directors who fall off, who disappear in their thirties and onwards. And it's very hard to keep women and retain great talent with women as they get older, because often it's just an industry that doesn't appeal for lots of reasons, because it's set up in such a patriarchal way. But that everyday thing and having to deal with it is just ongoing. But you don't want to be bitter and twisted, it's not about whinging. It's about dealing with it and then trying to make transparent some of those things, and recognizing that there are women you should be supporting each other and bringing each other on. We need women in more roles and we need more women running indies. And I hope that by seeing people like me and Laura, more women will feel that they are capable of doing that as well as potentially having families and successful lives outside of the industry.

Yeah, I was talking to a Channel Four commissioner actually, and she was saying she'd worked at the BBC and she was really shocked when she became a commissioner at Channel Four that she just had endless meetings with men coming in to pitch things to her. The first time she really realized how dependent the indie sector is on companies which are led by men.

Yeah, absolutely. The whole structure is set up like quite a male-oriented structure. It's about winning and fighting and competitive. And by no means am I saying that women can't own those attributes or work with those attributes, but fundamentally women... as I go back to that internalized thing, I think it's very hard when there's a whole language that's attributed to powerful women like myself where I've been deemed to be mad and kind of ambitious rather than driven and maverick. And I think that we need to think really carefully about how we ourselves frame women and women are perceived within the industry. I get it, as I said, daily. There's not a day that passes when I don't get irritated by it. But I think managing it is a whole other thing, because we're very British and it's quite difficult to kind of say, 'You know what, I think that's really outrageous, the set system.' Or maybe we should say it more often. But it's a long, slow battle as well as an acute battle. And what's with female directors is a slightly different issue that I've seen again and again. You have the classic pattern: the female producer who will be the safe pair of hands, will do all the logistics and an awful lot of the legwork, and then you'll get in the male director who will be perceived as sprinkling the stardust. And I've just seen that pattern over and over again.

Yeah, I totally agree, and that's absolutely dreadful. And that is really, really repeated. That is one of the major issues. The man's allowed to be... and in fact really recently, I'm doing a feature doc at the moment, I can't discuss which broadcaster, a very big feature doc with very big name talent executing it. And actually we've wanted to use a female director, but it's very hard to persuade people that the woman is as good as the man because her manner and coming across is quite female, which is a good thing obviously, but it's different from how men come across. And traditionally we're all internalized into thinking that's the way you need to be, forthright to the point of maybe more dogmatic.

Laura, have you found any challenges in your career in terms of barriers to success or examples of areas that being a woman has perhaps impeded you? You've been able to be successful even on a particular project?

It's such a difficult question to answer truthfully, because Camilla referred to the internal dialogue: are you good enough, are you getting it right, can you do this. The imposter syndrome that I think so many women suffer from is probably the biggest barrier to success that I face myself. And it's the one that I'm most conscious about when I'm working with women, particularly younger women in my company, is saying: you are good, you are great, you can do this. When I was appointing runners, when I used to do all the runner recruitment, I would be looking for young women and indeed men who could grow through the company and replace me when the time came. I think it's really important that when you're working with women, you absolutely support their self-confidence and their ability that they can go all the way. Right from the start, you want to fast-track everybody to success, and particularly young women. I've had three daughters, so I'm particularly aware of that. The unconfident woman or young woman is a very fragile creature and they need all the support they can get. And I'm not saying that young men don't need support as well. I was very lucky, I worked with my husband and he's been incredibly supportive. But it's interesting, isn't it, that the senior management team at Icon Films, Harry is the chair, I'm the chief executive. It's a very strong female-led production company with a female head of development, a female commercial director, with a female director of production. So I do recognize the barriers as a success, but I also can see that if you put strong role models, you will... and we've got a brilliant post-production team. We do a lot of production in-house with young women coming through their finishing world, through the editing world, through the production technical coordinator role. I do see equality growing and growing, but I do think it needs nurturing with the apprenticeships and with the Kickstart scheme. We have to start at the beginning of their career, we have to start at the beginning that they can go all the way.

I think it's not just also the beginning, Laura. I think also there's quite often a drop-off from sort of early thirties onwards, when women quite often are juggling other things, whether that be family, whether that be caring responsibilities. One of the things that WFTV does is we actually have a mid-career mentoring scheme, because actually that felt like a real gap. And that's just in time for International Women's Day in fact. On this Friday we're launching two new schemes and two schemes that we ran last year. We used to have one scheme just for England, but now we will have four schemes, which is Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. And that is all aimed at mid-career women who often, for various reasons, get stuck. And so having a higher-level mentor who can support them, who's out of their immediate work environment and they can talk to them very openly, I think you can really see when you go sort of two years on how those women's careers have developed from our previous mentees.

COVID has given us an opportunity to pause, and we have an opportunity to reflect about how we manage our companies and our industry. And you're right, mid-career development is absolutely essential to pushing people through. But how women who have children are managing that and managing their careers through juggling everything... they are indeed gods and goddesses. The men and women dragging homeschooling and running their careers during this period have done phenomenally. But it's an opportunity for us to rethink how we run our offices, how we run our companies, what it looks like. But it's also allowed women who want to maybe work from home and work different hours to work different hours if they can manage their time. And I think you're right, as companies we need to make sure we're at the forefront of being as flexible as is production-sensible and financially sensible to be so. But I also think it's interesting because in the year that Black Lives Matter has brought brilliantly to our attention, more so than ever before, the issues of diversity and getting more BAME representation off camera, I think that goes hand in hand. We have to have a very holistic and very intersectional approach as to how we approach the whole issue of women. It's women and it's making sure the BAME women as well, because they have different and unique and similar issues to all women. But I think there are issues that are unique in class terms as well. All of this has to be considered. And so in looking at women, it's looking at everything and having an approach that allows you to think about why we're at a point in the industry and we still are at a point where there is endless representation from white middle-aged men. And actually they are still the predominant thought, shockingly so. They still are, even though I started my career and they were all white middle-aged men.

And I think women are much more affected by ageism in the industry. That was the other thing I was going to say about mid-career women. Some very well-known men in the industry have objected to employing high-level women because they were of a certain age. And I think given that we all live longer, given that people have portfolio careers and perhaps may come to television as a second or even third career, we've got to be far more open to that. There's definitely thinking that post thirty-five, 'Oh, we shouldn't employ that director.' There's terrible ageism against women in the industry. I've watched some... my great mentors, Glen, Benson, Lorraine, Heggessey, Jana Bennett, I mean they're no longer in the industry for one reason or another. But every woman I've admired who is older than me seems to have gone. You're slightly older than me, Laura. But I think it's really terrifying because I think that sexism and the idea of being an old woman within society, we've got to be really transparent about what that means to us and what it means to men and how the industry reacts when a young thrusting man comes in compared to older women, as opposed to us inheriting and owning culturally all those kind of tags and tropes of being wise old women, because that's a brilliant thing, because you get better at your job.

Of course, of course. Much better. I'm much better now than I was twenty years ago. I'm much cleverer. I'm much, much better. I'm good now. I can say it. I am actually delighted on International Women's Day I will be sixty, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be alive.

Congratulations, congratulations.

But yeah, I'm also putting up for a new role at Icon Films, and it's an EDI talent manager. Equality, diversity and inclusion. I think in 2021 people are going to understand what that means in a way they didn't in 2020. In 2020 if somebody said, 'What do you mean, a talent manager, EDI? I don't get it,' I would have said, 'Yeah, not sure myself.' In 2021 I really get it, and I'm going to make sure that we all get it, because that is how we are going to change the look and success of our industry. I want to be an old lady working in this industry. I want to be working with young women. I want to be part of the change. I'm going to be the change. I want to be part of it.

Laura, it was very interesting what you said before about having three daughters, because I've got two daughters and two sons, and that sense of entitlement that comes with having men as opposed to women as children is quite shocking, the difference. Even though they've been brought up in a very right-on environment. And that is what we've got to be aware of. I think what you're saying about how this year is a year going forward where we have to be open to diversity and aware of all the issues and bringing people in for the sake of our industry, it's essential. And now it's transparent, let's keep it transparent. Let's not forget. It's Black Lives Matter, it's fame, it's about class, it's about women. We've got to really keep our eyes open to staying relevant.

Yeah. And let's use what the government is going to be giving us in terms of the Kickstart and the apprenticeship scheme, to make sure that... we all need a helping hand. And bring more people into our industry who are going to make it more interesting. We can't keep making the same programmes ever.

Yeah, clearly all forms of diversity incredibly important, including disability, which we haven't yet discussed.

Yes, what I've seen in some quarters is almost, 'Oh, the box is ticked for women.' I'm having lively conversations with the broadcasters about this, because clearly stuff like Black Lives Matter is incredibly important, but it wasn't just Black Lives Matter that were in a tiny, tiny group. That also applied to female-led, it applied to small indies. And I think we need to shout loudly so that we don't get forgotten.

I couldn't agree with you more, Liz. And I think it is about, as I said, keeping it... We're really lucky, we've all been forced to face and look at ourselves inside. We haven't been able to go outside. So most people have spent the year in one way or another, and often it's evidently been major mental health issues, but going inside, thinking: what is going on in my head, where am I at, what am I thinking. I think as an industry we've done the same thing. We've gone interior. And because of that interior thought process and thinking through what actually matters and how we want to be as an industry, I completely agree with you, we must not lose sight of the battles that have gone before and the battles to go forward. And unfortunately they are battles. I'd love to say it's not, but I think there are battles to make sure that diversity is not seen as a tick-box exercise, but actually, as Laura brilliantly and rightly said, if we're going to be relevant and we're going to be watched, and that's all we all want, let's be honest, then ultimately we need to be reflective.

So now it's time in the show where my guests get to choose the TV industry's story of the week over the past seven days. Camilla, what's your story of the week?

Just more SVODs, more AVODs, more... I mean, it feels like almost every week another one's launched or at least stating its claim. And I think the story that interests me the most is Paramount Plus saying that it aims for, is it seventy-five million more subscriptions or some such thing. And obviously it's really exciting and great being a producer in a market where there's an ever-expanding international potential market to play in, in some places we're already playing. But I can't help but think as a consumer, as a viewer at the moment, I subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime and Sky, and Sky is slightly different of course because it allows you to broadcast stuff too. It's very cleverly kind of has a huge range of output that you can watch through it. But I just don't know where I'm going, because I want to sign up now, because of personal reasons and professional reasons, to Star and therefore Disney Plus. But then I think, God, how many of these things am I going to do? And I'm quite a good earner compared to most people potentially listening to this, maybe not. I can't afford to carry on having subscription after subscription. When's consolidation going to happen? What's it going to look like, the future? And I suspect what really interests me is the rise of the AVOD, because I think American cable, if we look at what happened with America and how that moved into cable being the long tail of broadcasting, I just wonder if the same thing will happen in an international global sense, whereby SVODs, how many bigger, bolder or better stuff can we have? How many talent-led programmes? Will they just end up having a few key things and then will there be more AVODs for us to consume? I'm really intrigued as to what the future holds.

We had Ollie Davis from Samsung on last week and he was telling us about Samsung TV Plus, and that's basically an AVOD system that is baked into the hardware. If you've got 120 hours of catalog, you can actually have your own channel branded. Like, so there's Midsummer Murders channel, there's lots of different channels. If you've got that much content for your back catalog, you can get that content to work for you. I mean, what's not to like on that when you sat back and earning money.

Presumably, rather like Camilla said, I think there is a plethora of choices. And then are we just going to go back where we're always going to have to lean forward and make a choice about whether we're going to do on-demand, or are we ever going to watch scheduled television ever again? Of course we are, because we all love that being led by the nose to something exciting, whether it's Jed Mercurio or the BBC News. But I think what it tells me is it has never been a better time to be a producer, because there is all this choice and there are so many places that you can go with your stories. If you're a good, confident producer, or if you're starting out and you've got a great idea, there are people who are willing to listen, because I think some of the SVODs are much more open to a gamble. Because of course every creative choice is a gamble. And I think it is a really brilliant time if you are a producer to go out there and create ideas and then pitch them to the person that you want to create them. I'm going to make sure that the brilliant creative people in our company are able to say, 'I want to go and pitch to these people.'

It's exciting. I mean, it's so exciting, and it's a great time to be a factual producer in particular, because everybody's still been able to work over the last few months. Clearly there's a huge range of stuff and it's revolutionized how I watch TV. I hardly ever watch casual TV now, so if I'm watching terrestrial I've just got so used to recording everything that I watch. But I would say actually on the specialist factual side, in terms of serious science and things, I think there's less of that now. The BBC is not doing it, who would traditionally have done it. Channel Four science output is not as it once was. And I don't see that content being delivered by Netflix, Sky. So I think there are certain gaps, there are certain areas which we are if anything over-supplied with, but other parts of the market where I think we're not so well supplied.

Laura, what's your story of the week?

Well, my story of the week is really about apprenticeships. And I think that for a very long time there has been a sort of difficulty about embedding apprenticeships into the creative industries. Actually, in the regions we have found embedding apprentices into companies has been a very, very good thing, because there is a smaller talent pool in regional areas and so you have to kind of breed your own. And then you take them into apprenticeships and you skill them up and you bring them into the company and they remain there, being sort of the absolute spine of what you're able to do. For us it's worked in terms of post-production, in terms of IT, in terms of development, finance, across the board. I think that if we are brave enough and willing to invest in this generation of young people who have been left with this huge debt that they are going to have to mop up, and we can bring them into the creative industries, which is one of the great success stories of the United Kingdom, then we are going to look after the future creativity of the industry. So that to me is one of the big news stories: the renewed investment into the apprenticeships and how the creative industries can take advantage of it.

That's right, and that is the Chancellor Rishi Sunak's plan that has been reported today. By the time the show goes out the budget will have already happened, but that's the plan to inject 126 million pounds into trainee programmes in the UK to boost that apprenticeship support. So that can only be a really good thing. Liz, what's your story of the week?

Well, my story of the week is something WFTV have been involved with really for most of the year, and I touched on at the start: the campaign Excluded UK. The chance of this week, and WFTV along with a number of other industry groups are signatories to the letter which is asking for changes to be made to the current government financial support schemes, which currently have left around three million freelancers and self-employed workers with no financial help. We're now getting on for a year where some people have had no financial support at all. And yet we think that if the will was there, these problems could easily be solved. We've supplied a seven-point plan to the Chancellor, as have other organizations, which we think could easily help plug those gaps. And just to give you two quick examples: for example, at the moment if you're newly self-employed you can't claim, if you earn less than fifty percent from your freelance earnings you can't claim, and it's simply unfair. That's definitely something that we hope is going to get a good hearing.

And now it's that time in the show where my guests get to nominate their hero of the week and who or what they're telling to get in the bin. Liz, who's your hero of the week?

Well, my hero of the week is Craig Foster and the team behind the remarkable documentary My Octopus Teacher, which I watched at the weekend. If you haven't seen the film, I really recommend it. It's not just a beautifully told story about conserving the remarkable underwater kelp forests, it's also about a conservation project that Craig and his team have set up called the Sea Change Project to raise awareness of the South African kelp forests. It's interesting actually, because when I read about the film I thought, 'Oh, I'm not sure it's the sort of film that appeals,' but I was watching actually because I'm a BAFTA voter, and I was blown away by the film. So I really recommend it.

And that's been Oscar-nominated I believe?

Yeah, it's on the BAFTA long list. Don't know if it's going to be on the BAFTA shortlist yet.

Right, okay. And who or what are you telling to get in the bin?

It has to be Roy Greenslade. He defended his support of IRA terrorism in both the British Journalism Review and the Sunday Times. And I think he honestly doesn't appreciate that it's possible to support Irish republicanism as a public part, as political parties like the SDLP did, without resorting to violence. And I think he's also got somewhat romanticized view of the IRA. He claims that the IRA only killed civilians by accident. Of course that wouldn't even be a defence, but there are many incidences when the IRA actively targeted civilians, such as for example those in Catholic-Protestant marriages.

Yeah, absolutely. I was shocked. I think lots of people were shocked when they actually saw that piece running this week. Very glad he's resigned from City. Laura, how about you? Who's your hero of the week?

Well, my hero of the week is a slightly naughty one because I've just finished watching Call My Agent, and I don't know if anybody else has watched it on Netflix. But it's a playbook for our industry. It's a wonderfully wicked French drama set in a talent agency in Paris. And my favourite character right here is Andrea Martel, who is this very strong, feisty chief agent who's gay, accidentally gets pregnant, is a phenomenal negotiator, loves her talent, makes terrible mistakes, it blows up fantastically, owns her mistakes, gets up, keeps on fighting again, looks after her baby. I mean, she's just wonderful. And I just think she's such a hero. She's just a woman who gets on and does it, makes mistakes, has all the feelings that we go through. But you know, I think she's a bit of a hero. So that's my hero of the week.

And who or what's going in your bin?

So what's going in my bin are those people who decided that they didn't like BBC's Sonia McLaughlin's interview with Owen Farrell after England failed to beat the Welsh, and decided that she was a person they could troll, and her abuse set online to the extent that she felt absolutely devastated and was brave enough to tell the world that she was sitting there in tears having been absolutely ripped to shreds online. Some people may feel that if you're in the public eye you should take what's coming to you. But I think there are people who choose to fight and say horrible things, vile, abusive things, should go in the bin.

Yeah, absolutely. We've seen that growing unfortunately, particularly in sports. I think not only having football players and other players being attacked and targeted via Twitter and other social media platforms, but we've seen as you say commentators and panelists also attacked. Maybe that's just an unfortunate side effect of us being locked in our houses, but there's absolutely no excuse for that. So absolutely, you know, they'll probably never do that face to face. Keyboard warriors, we can all throw them in the bin. Camilla, who's your hero of the week?

My hero of the week, and in fact one of my heroes of not only the decade but probably of my career, has been a great inspiration for me and I think he's an absolute star, as everyone does, is Russell T Davies. I think that what he's done with his entire body of work, but specifically with the incredible It's a Sin, is to combat homophobia in a way that I can't believe. It's unprecedented. I have seen people who I've always thought were potentially a bit dodgy suddenly crying their eyes out watching It's a Sin and reframing how they perceived what being gay meant then and what being gay means now. And I think he's a bloody hero. He's brilliant. He writes humans in a way that I hope I can show humans in a factual sense. The way he does it in a drama sense, I would dream of being at that level. I think he's an absolute superhero and he should be recognized as such across the whole industry. He deserves to win every award there is for that programme.

Yeah, absolutely. And he's been rightly lauded across the industry. And who or what are you chucking in the bin, Camilla?

Well, the person I want to chuck in the bin has actually been dead for, I think, nearly thirty years, and that's Robert Maxwell. Because I've been listening to the Today in Focus podcast about the book being launched. And actually, it blows me away. When I first started in telly, I was just post-Maxwell and the pension scandal stuff. And I worked with a brilliant journalist called Ian Ramsey, who was a Fleet Street granddaddy. He was sixty-four years old and a researcher. There's no ageism there. On the programme I first worked, and I was a researcher too, I was a baby. And actually having heard firsthand what Maxwell did to him and his colleagues, and then just listening back to the whole story. I mean, that was a dreadful period of time. Although, you know, an intriguing and complicated nuanced man, but still did the most terribly evil things with the pension, the people who lost their pensions that time. I just don't think we should forget, it was awful.

Yeah, that's media mogul Robert Maxwell also going in the bin. Camilla, Laura, and Liz, thank you so much for coming on Telecast this week. It's been fascinating to speak to you and to listen to you discuss all of these different issues that I wasn't aware of particularly as well. So hopefully something that, as we say, we're going to be leveling up when we come out of lockdown.

Thank you so much, Justin. Really appreciate it. Thanks, bye. Lovely to be with you all.

So that brings us to the end of another week's show. As always, thanks for listening. Don't forget to rate and subscribe to Telecast and share it with friends and colleagues on social media. And don't forget to sign up for our newsletter called Telecast Plus. It's packed with interesting TV industry stories of the week you might have missed, exclusive insight and opinion, including The Secret Producer, our intrepid anonymous exec reporting from the front line of TV production. It's all completely free. Just visit our website to sign up at telecast-podcast.com and you can also follow us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter. Telecast was edited by Ian Chambers and recorded in lockdown three in London. Until next Thursday, as always, stay safe.

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