27-11draft

Jobs
So you want to work in television ?
From top: ITV at
Southwark, south
London; and the STV
and BBC Scotland
buildings, Pacific Quay,
Glasgow
Photos by Mark Rowe
60
HAPPY
‘We live in a society of
100pc security and I
thought they would
never take a gamble to
play this game when I
saw the images around
the stadium. But our
fans dealt well with the
situation.’
Arsenal FC manager
Arsene Wenger after
disruptive Cologne fans
delayed a Europa
League match.
To be a television journalist is
glamorous, more glamorous than
being a security manager. Or is it?
The very familiarity we have
with pop singers or elite sports
players - we feel we know
them - can cause security problems
if fans seek to meet their heroes.
If a radio station runs an interview
with a pop band, the presenter may
make a point of saying that it’s
pre-recorded, so that fans don’t
descend on the broadcaster. Yet like
museums, TV stations also want to
show themselves, like ITV on the
South Bank (pictured above) or BBC
Scotland or STV beside the Clyde in
Glasgow city centre (pictured left).
While the newscasters may stay at
base, TV journalism needs pictures,
and news by definition may be in
lawless or wartorn places. Hence
most broadcasters will have ‘high risk
teams’ to check on TV crews.
Such a good idea?
For instance, the journalist thinking
above all of the story, may dash off
to do an interview, because he’s been
told by his driver that he, as the local
fixer, has arranged it. The journalist if
he is doing his job correctly will ring
Security, who might reply sceptically,
‘your driver?’. To Security, it might
sound more like the driver has been
paid to deliver westerners to jihadists
or plain criminals, to be kidnapped for
ransom. Just as TV journalists have
to become familiar with the policies
and physical kit of security, such
as armoured vests, so the broadcast
security specialist has to know the
language of TV journalism; which
like so much else can be easier, and
NOVEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
quicker, thanks to internet searches.
The TV security man may have to
get used to the news culture, where
swearing and shouting in the name
of getting the story - and more to the
point, getting it on screen before rivals
- is normal. “It’s nothing personal,”
one specialist told Professional
Security. So as to check security for
staff and offices, the head of security
may travel himself. That specialist
recalled monthly meetings of heads
around a table, each describing what
they had been working on, such as IT,
and legal. The chair of the meeting
then said, ‘now we come to the most
interesting job; security’, which was
gratifying to the specialist.
Outsourced
Like other corporates, much of the
non-core work may be outsourced.
The satellite broadcaster Sky at its
west London base has for several
years had an in-house head of security
but most of its security people have
been contracted out to the facilities
management firm, Mitie. Even the
arch-traditional BBC likewise has
contracted out. FM, or to be precise
FM managers, do not impress one
TV security head that Professional
Security talked to last year. In his
opinion, FM managers put their
framed diploma on the office wall
and sit at their desk all day, on
Facebook. Hard services - repair and
maintenance - staff are still doing
their job, but ‘soft services have gone
to pot’. In building services, besides
security, how else can you know
what is going on, and what your job
is, if you are not walking around to
learn it? Just as in our ‘so you want to
work in?’ feature on hotels, in April,
Security wisely befriends or at least
engages with any media camped on
the doorstep, so does TV Security if
hosting a VIP night give the ‘paps’
(paparazzi photographers) a coffee
at the start of a night, ‘and they’re
good as gold’. The paps might for
instance tap their nose to warn of
a ‘professional gate crasher’ who
says they’re Lord X; otherwise the
flustered staffer with the guest list
may let them in.
Saying no
Just as on pubs and nightclub doors,
Security is the unpopular one saying
no, or difficult things to drunks or the
disorderly, so a TV station may look
to Security to say no to the ‘talent’;
the famous presenter, actor or guest.
Just as the head of security may find
himself having to say no to a media
owner such as Rupert Murdoch (who
will by all accounts listen to reason
- but you had better be right), so if in
charge of access control on the set of
EastEnders, some actors may be of
the ‘don’t you know who I am?’ type.
As featured in our April 2016 issue,
the scandals of Sir Jimmy Savile
and the BBC Manchester convicted
sex criminal Stuart Hall showed up
shortcomings in site access control,
whereby managers didn’t know
who was in the building, or where.
TV stations have at least learned
lessons about safeguarding, although
Dame Janet Smith’s report into the
Savile case did find that programme
staff did keep a look-out for visitors
around Savile (the staff being parents
themselves, after all). But as the truth
about Savile unravelled, TV studios
were far from the only settings for his
crimes against the vulnerable. p
www.professionalsecurity.co.uk
p60 tv 27-11.indd 1 11/10/2017 15:02