Friday, July 10, 2009

BBC approach to talent

The Guild has responded to an email from the BBC about their 'approach to talent' with an insistence that writers should not be made to suffer for the extravagance and waste that has led the Corporation to apparent financial hardship.

You can read the full text of the email from the BBC and the Guild's response (by TV Committee Chair Gail Renard and Radio Committee Chair Katharine Way) on the WGGB website.

4 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:33 pm

    I've just read the response and thought it was word perfect in its scathing condemnation of the BBC's abuse of our licence fees and its shoddy treatment of writers.

    On behalf of writers everywhere, I'd just like to say well done.

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  2. Anonymous12:21 pm

    the MP's expenses scandal is small fish compared to the BBC's.

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  3. Anonymous12:28 pm

    This is a brilliant, impassioned response that I hope appears in the national press. It seems to express the feelings of writers everywhere, incensed by the invidious practice the BBC has developed of expecting them to do months of work on spec for no fee if they hope to compete for commissions. The ubiquitous phrase 'the Talent' - where did that come from? - is synonymous now of course with Ross & Co and the very small group of writers the BBC considers bankable and to whom, despite the much trumpeted pay cuts, they are still happy to pay a huge chunk of their budget. The fact that BBC staff for the most part seem to be on short term contracts with absolutely no security or prospects of career development, forced into forelock-tugging as those in power call the shots, creates an atmosphere of chronic uncertainty in which real talent has little chance of flourishing.

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  4. The Guild will also be looking at the amount of spec work which seems to be expected of television and radio writers in some circumstances. In line with inflation, the inch has become a mile.

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