https://blog.mediaparents.co.uk/2011/07/5-minutes-with-series-producer-writer-gaby-koppel/ Wed, 17 Oct 2018 10:02:27 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 https://blog.mediaparents.co.uk/2011/07/5-minutes-with-series-producer-writer-gaby-koppel/#comment-199 David Poyser Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:39:55 +0000 https://blog.mediaparents.co.uk/?p=1577#comment-199 "....there seemed to be a chorus of prominent TV s’lebs, many of whom have traded on their glamour and their looks for years, now cross to find they’d been dropped. Often in favour of someone who looked a bit like they had when they were younger." is a brilliant line, Gabby. Horribly true. And they can't see it!! It was weird the world missed this when Miriam O'Reilly was news of the week. As you say, we all sign up for a myth. So newspapers (and even my Dad, thirty years after my first credit!) think that a highly prescribed, scripted programme, the fruit of many months' hard work and imagination, is the fruit of the presenters' work and imagination when in fact s/he just turned up for the afternoon. But, we bought into the myth, so we shouldn't complain. When we started we could see that if we weren't at least a Head of Programmes by 50, we would be pretty much jobless. There is a pyramid of more researchers than PDs, more producers than series prods, more series producers than Execs etc. That's a lot of wasteage. Unlike the law/medicine, even acting, television production is totally unregulated. And so, thirty years on, most of the telly boys and girls I know are now either in the mega-buck stratosphere, or have simply been chundering on for some years now, writing fairly obscure books, training as therapists, getting a tiny bit of PR or corporate video work, teaching nonsense media studies at the University of Totalcrap or whatever (by the way, if anyone wants to work with me on XTV.com - a guide to careers after TV - get in touch). And more worryingly, if you weren't at the BBC for a long period, most of us have far less pensions to look forward to than policemen. However, I am enjoying renewing the friendships with the people whose weddings I probably missed due to TV workaholic demands, and whenever these friends ask if I regret working in telly, I shoot from the hip and point out that I had more worthwhile fun in TV than they could possibly believe. “….there seemed to be a chorus of prominent TV s’lebs, many of whom have traded on their glamour and their looks for years, now cross to find they’d been dropped. Often in favour of someone who looked a bit like they had when they were younger.” is a brilliant line, Gabby. Horribly true. And they can’t see it!! It was weird the world missed this when Miriam O’Reilly was news of the week.
As you say, we all sign up for a myth. So newspapers (and even my Dad, thirty years after my first credit!) think that a highly prescribed, scripted programme, the fruit of many months’ hard work and imagination, is the fruit of the presenters’ work and imagination when in fact s/he just turned up for the afternoon.
But, we bought into the myth, so we shouldn’t complain.
When we started we could see that if we weren’t at least a Head of Programmes by 50, we would be pretty much jobless. There is a pyramid of more researchers than PDs, more producers than series prods, more series producers than Execs etc. That’s a lot of wasteage. Unlike the law/medicine, even acting, television production is totally unregulated. And so, thirty years on, most of the telly boys and girls I know are now either in the mega-buck stratosphere, or have simply been chundering on for some years now, writing fairly obscure books, training as therapists, getting a tiny bit of PR or corporate video work, teaching nonsense media studies at the University of Totalcrap or whatever (by the way, if anyone wants to work with me on XTV.com – a guide to careers after TV – get in touch). And more worryingly, if you weren’t at the BBC for a long period, most of us have far less pensions to look forward to than policemen.
However, I am enjoying renewing the friendships with the people whose weddings I probably missed due to TV workaholic demands, and whenever these friends ask if I regret working in telly, I shoot from the hip and point out that I had more worthwhile fun in TV than they could possibly believe.

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