LAST week, the BBC published an economic impact report for The Traitors.
Its colourful headlines proclaimed the hit show has added £21.8 million to Scotland’s economy over the last three years, with every £1 spent on making the show resulting in almost £7 of wider economic impact.
But when you look beyond the gloss, a different story emerges because this purported boon isn’t translating into a bonanza for Scotland’s screen talent.
The considerable production spend of The Traitors is undoubtedly beneficial for hotels, car hire companies and suchlike. No issues there. However, the claim that 750 jobs, 189 a year, have been “supported in Scotland” is another matter. Even taking this figure at face value, the overwhelming majority of these jobs certainly aren’t production based.
Investigating the geographical distribution of The Celebrity Traitors, episodes one to three and nine, the series finale, there is still a very low level of Scottish talent being hired. There was an average of approximately 6% over the first three series of The Traitors.
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As I revealed in The National a week past on Sunday, most of the roles filled by TV freelancers based in Scotland are at the bottom rungs of the ladder.
While Scottish hires have gone from 8% on series three of The Traitors to 14% on the celebrity version, more than half of this increase is accounted for by runners, the lowest role on the production, and a third by researchers.
Overall, 13 of the 27 Scottish hires, part of a 197-strong production team, working on The Celebrity Traitors, are in what would be considered entry-level or very junior roles.
These findings provide a telling perspective on the statement made in the new report’s foreword by Hayley Valentine, director of BBC Scotland, that “the numbers of Scotland-based crew have increased since the first series”. The slight increase is arguably cosmetic. Also, while it’s not for me to contest the work of 1973 Nobel Prize-winning economist Wassily Leontief, the input-output models based on his thinking and used to generate this report, are considered flawed by many these days.
This is because of their reliance on highly rigid and unrealistic assumptions that fail to capture the dynamic and complex nature of the real world. The BBC ought to publish all of the workings so this report can be independently reviewed.
What's also missing is any detail showing how much of The Traitors’ production budget isn’t spent in Scotland, which leaves the country in the form of production salaries and facilities as well as sundry services.
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Despite the claims in the report about the benefits for the local area where The Traitors is filmed, as little as 20% of the main technical facilities supporting the making of the show are sourced from Scotland.
From cameras to cludgies, much of the equipment and materials are shipped in from down south. Almost none of the post-production, which constitutes a massive portion of the overall spend, is done in Scotland.
And then there is the production fee itself. Is this transferred to the parent company in London? Or, does it remain in the Studio Lambert Scotland office bank account to support what the Ofcom regional production rulebook says must be “a genuine operational production office in the locality in which it is based”, with executives “responsible for making independent, executive decisions”, “managing the regional business” and “involved in seeking programme commissions”.
Are the two relatively junior staff listed on Studio Lambert’s website as being the only permanently based employees in its Glasgow office really fulfilling these requirements?
From a TV freelancer point of view, the big numbers in this new BBC report might suggest Scotland’s screen sectors have never had it so good but they don’t tally with the crisis currently facing most Scottish TV freelancers due to the chronic lack of work. We must also reflect on the fact that, with the exception of Screen Scotland, none of the contributors listed in this report speaks for or supports screen production talent based in Scotland.
Arnold Clark, Ardross Castle and the owners of Art House Apartments, 30 Degrees Laundry and The Mustard Seed restaurant, are understandably profiting from the production spend. The cast and crew obviously need places to stay, meals and transport are required. But the central quantitative argument it presents raises a fundamental question about the rationale for how the licence fee ought to be invested.
In essence, this public money is used to inform, educate and entertain us. But it should also be used equitably to support both creative businesses and individuals working in our screen sectors.
The wider economic impact ought not to be the primary consideration, as shown in this report, for justifying how the licence fee is spent.
The value of Scotland’s screen talent must be seen and supported in its own right, not because of its spin-off boost to screen tourism.
The Traitors, in all its various guises, is a BBC Network Scottish Commission, made with licence fee money earmarked to meet its 8% spending commitment in Scotland.
When it comes to this show and other BBC commissions, for Scotland’s screen talent, the opportunities they afford aren’t always fairly distributed around all of the UK. Change is taking place at a snail’s pace and, significantly, not at senior levels. What’s more, it speaks volumes that Valentine is having to defend decisions made in London. When I briefly met the now former BBC director-general Tim Davie at Holyrood earlier this year, he told me the issues being raised are questions for Scotland. If only.
I disagreed. The decisions not to employ more production talent based in Scotland on BBC network productions, and some regional ones for that matter, are primarily being made in London and are therefore a UK matter.
No-one is asking for 100% hires from Scotland on The Traitors. But because the levels of off-screen talent based here hired to work on these Scottish commissions are so low, we have every right to ask why and demand that both the BBC and the production company do far, far better.
Again, TV freelancers based in London aren’t innately more talented, they’re just awarded a lot more opportunities. Scotland’s screen talent possesses the transferable skills and experience to work in reality entertainment in abundance, yet the data shows, on the whole, it continues to be systematically sidelined.
For all the licence fee money that’s been spent on producing this report, it doesn’t change the fact that the BBC’s commissioning and production practices aren’t a fair deal for Scotland’s screen talent.
Peter Strachan is a Bafta-nominated film director and producer who sits on the board of trade body Directors UK
