The TV working time directive

I the undersigned freelancer am prepared to bend of backwards (or should that be forwards) and allow myself to be shafted royally by the people in charge of this mismanaged, poorly strategised, cesspit of slavery we laughingly call an industry.

OK I exagerrate (nothing new there) BUT one of the things that really annoys me is that in this crazy world of TV is that the long hours accepted to be a necessity, when they are not. The BBC even tries to get most of its freelancers to sign six day contracts these days FFS!

Way back in the dim and distant past I made a progamme for a company called SPE. It was a rather bizarre company on many levels, not least, however that their working hours were 9-5 and the office was locked at 6pm. We made a series for the BBC. It was on time and on budget. I saw the 5:45 news when I got home at night (weird). I was not permanently knackered and stressed.

Apart from occasional extenuating circumstances, TV doesn't NEED to have a long hours culture. We are only manufacturing a product. There are many, many millions of products manufactured in the world - some of them every bit as complex as a TV programme with just as tight budgets and schedules, which do not rely on staff working 12 hour days (or more).

I just wish a few more people in charge would run it normally. So often its more about inherited assumptions that it *needs* to be the way it is. Like Chicken Licken, series-producers run around convinced that the sky will fall in should they or their team dare to leave the office before 7 or 8pm.

But does the fault lie with the broadcasters, who squeeze the production companies? Or the production companies who squeeze the freelancers? Or with the freelancers who work for nothing because they are desperate? Well nobody is blameless, but if you do work for nothing, you're a moron. Because the buck does stop with you. Literally. If you don't value yourself, nobody else will. Richard Branson didn't make a fortune giving away car aeriels out of the boot of his car now, so come on media graduates, don't be shy, and don;t undersell yourself, because it benefits none of us.

If it can't be done in normal hours at a decent pay then the budget is too poor, or the schedule is too tight. As that stupid smoking jacketed meerkat would say: simples.