The classic argument goes like this: you find out what skills employers need, then you train people, and they get jobs. Lo and behold, the unemployment rate goes down.
It’s not working like that. About five years ago, the MAPPP-SETA announced that there was a scarce skill in audio editors and mixers.
So everyone trained and we had something like 100 being churned out of schools every year.
At the beginning of this year a bunch of us informally did an interesting exercise. We looked at the number of units of software sold, did some weighting, and then matched these figures against existing studios, and some other factors. Hardly scientific, but then we had no other way.
We also asked around some of the “garage studios” we knew about, and we came to the conservative conclusion that there are some 700 “garage sound studios” in Gauteng alone.
A “garage studio” comes about when son begs Daddy to send him to audio school. He graduates after a year, and can’t find a job. Daddy gets sick of son lolling about so he lets him buy a computer, some software, mikes, monitor speakers and a crate of egg-boxes (sound-proofing). He also gives son the spare garage.
Son sets up, and due to the effectiveness of the egg-boxes, doesn’t disturb anyone while he spends the next year recording his friends becoming the 21st century versions of Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. Eventually they all end up as floor assistants at discount stores.
I don’t call that “creating jobs”.
The same story has repeated itself in radio, TV and multimedia. We have instead to identify the scarce skills, and then develop the employers to create the jobs.
About 80 percent of professionals in the electronic media are freelancers, and you don’t get to be a freelancer in a garage studio. You become a freelancer after you have worked for a couple of years in the real world, developed those skills you are good at, honed them, and found a niche for yourself in the marketplace.
So, before we get freelancers, we need jobs (employed ones). Jobs are only available from existing employers: the ones who make content.
Existing employers can only employ people when their business grows.
Now, the big distributors (broadcasters and multimedia houses) only want good product, and good product usually comes from those few content providers who are reliable. That can only be 20 percent of the content providers (applying the Pareto principle, which always seems to work).
Now, and here’s Baldric’s (from Black adder) “cunning plan”.
If we develop the other 80 percent of the employers (numbering hundreds), we can upskill them to become:
We know that the 20 percent of reliable content producers tend to get tired, formulaic and churn out the risk-free mediocrity like sausage machines.
We also know that new, fresh and exciting products come from the young, envelope-pushing, iconoclastic, new boys and girls-on-the-block.
To become these, the 80 percent need skills in management, marketing, production management and media. Only then will they achieve the status where broadcasters see them as able to deliver fresh, reliable and new content, on budget and on time.
You cannot teach content production and management in a week. If you could, MBA courses would last a week.
Oh, by the way, we have at least three broadcasters starting up in 2007, and they will need staff. You can add broadcast management to the list.
Howard Thomas has been working in entertainment and media for 36 years. His experience with TV started from the beginning in South Africa, and he is now a media business consultant, trainer and specialist in audience psychology.