A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Talent development
and training
In a digital age, knowledge and
skills are at an ever greater
premium. They are what the
UK depends upon for its overall
competitiveness. They also provide
the underpinning of a strong and
vibrant creative sector – including
the audiovisual industries – that, as
we saw in Chapter 1, is worth nearly
£80 billion a year, accounting for
over 5% of the UK economy. 483
There is a fundamental necessity to create
structures that equip everyone with the
knowledge and skills they need to enter into
and progress within the industry and to help
the UK remain competitive. If the UK screen
sectors fail to invest sufficiently in a skills
base that has the ability to exploit all kinds
of developments in digital technology right
across the value chain, then the UK’s fabled
reputation for creativity and imagination may
quickly prove worthless.
The screen sector in the UK has grown rapidly
in the last decade 484 , enhanced by the rise of
gaming, software and a range of other digital
content. Yet, as the industry body Creative
Skillset has noted, there are challenges
associated with this development.
Digital technology has transformed the
landscape and the content production
process in many parts of the creative
industries. These transformations require
companies to diversify and innovate new
business models. But the sector is dominated
by very small companies (84% of media firms
employ under 10 people) who are not always
connected to the sources of innovation and
investment or to research and technology
expertise. There are also sub-sectors with
high-levels of freelancers who are also
finding it difficult to update their skills (cost/
time constraints and availability of niche
training). 484
The industry is characterized by growing
insecurity: there is less and less regulation
of employment and fewer opportunities for
in-house training given that freelancers now
make up, for example, some 67% of camera
staff, 60% of post-production staff and 40%
of the television workforce as a whole. 486 This
figure is likely to increase in the light of the
success of the government’s tax relief for
high-end television production where levels
of freelancing are higher than average 487
together with the rise of ‘portfolio careers’.
There is also an acute problem with routes
into the industry for a new generation of
talent. Many thousands of young people work
in free or underpaid internships that often do
not constitute effective professional training
but are merely used as forms of cheap
labour. According to Creative Skillset, 46%
of the television workforce has undertaken
work experience, 82% of which was unpaid,
a situation that systematically discriminates
against those people who are not able to
483
Department for Culture, Media & Sport, Creative Industries Economic Estimates, January 2015, p.17.
484
Creative Skillset have identified a 28% increase in the numbers working in broadcasting, film, animation and games between 2009 and 2015 in the
UK. See Creative Media Workforce Survey 2015, 2016.
485
Creative Skillset, written evidence to BIS select committee, November 2, 2015.
486
Creative Skillset, submission to the Inquiry.
487
See Olsberg SPI, Economic Contribution of the UK’s Film, High-End TV, Video Game, and Animation Programming sectors, February 2015.
145