Consumer champion Martin Lewis has railed against “piss poor” pay and working conditions in the TV industry, which is paired with a “hangover attitude” that sees people told “it’s glamorous but you’re treated like s**t.”
Lewis, who has a money show on ITV, was picking up the outstanding achievement award at the Edinburgh TV Festival following a lengthy career in which he has vehemently defended consumer rights and sought to help those struggling with money. His activity during the pandemic and help for freelancers saw him lauded by multiple industries, including TV.
Today, he railed against “piss poor” pay for freelancers, which “automatically puts people off.”
Connecting his comments with MacTaggart lecturer James Graham’s call for greater working class representation in the TV industry, he said low pay “automatically has a class barrier that helps people from more affluent backgrounds come into it,” along with the trend for unpaid internships in order for people to get their feet in the door.
“The terms and conditions are horrendous,” he said.
The issue in part stems from a “hangover attitude” that sees behind the camera workers told “it’s glamorous but you’re treated like s**t,” Lewis added, before saying: “That [attitude] has to go.”
Lewis used several examples, pointing out that some production companies making shows over Christmas will fire their freelancers and then rehire them in January to avoid paying them at the end of December.
He also cited people at the BBC who are working “two grades above their pay grade” without a payrise because the pubcaster doesn’t have the money to promote them.
He said TV execs are more comfortable talking about “clitoral stimulation” than wages. With his production company, he said he tries to do things differently by keeping freelancers on the books for as long as possible and trying to find them work elsewhere once their jobs are coming to an end.
The “underclass”
Lewis concurred with Graham on the lack of working class representation in TV but posited there is an “underclass who are by far the hardest to reach.”
“The area of people we really struggle to meet isn’t the working class,” he said. “So yes we can look at class and say how do we bring working class people into the industry but there is whole other level of society that TV treats voyeuristically, and that is the underclass.”
Lewis returned to remarks made several months ago slamming the BBC for parring down consumer finance show Watchdog, which he called “poor,” while he criticized public broadcasters for failing to inform viewers properly about the cost-of-living crisis.
“They will tell you the news but then not tell you what it is really about, and then go and do a vox pop asking people about inflation figures,” he said. “One of the joys of my ITV show is they allow me to give the answers.”
Lewis cited what he believes are several mistakes made by public broadcasting journalists, flagging the likes of the two-child benefit cap, tuition fees and energy price cap that misinformed the public.
“We allow political journalists who focus on the Westminster minutiae to be the lead correspondents on every issue,” he added. “What they do is they explain things through the vision of political parties battling against each other, but what they don’t do is explain what these things mean to the public.”
But he swung in behind the “under threat” pubcasters, worrying “what happens to democracy and society when we have fewer authoritative voices – and we are moving into that.”
“Social media isn’t as reliable and messages are diffuse,” he added. “TV and especially primetime TV is absolutely the most powerful thing out there – more powerful than the front page of the Daily Mail – but that hegemony is diminishing.”
Lewis was speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival before alternative MacTaggart lecturer Carol Vorderman.