Hi all, I have been following this thread very closely and totally agree with most of whats been said but talking from experience of having presented a TV
programme you are totally controlled by the producers, directors and right at the end the editor, for example (mine was a small angling programme) I was
always told that as only a very small minority of viewers were fishermen, I could not bore the general viewer with technical fishing information, which was very frustrating when anglers that I met would ask why I did not talk about a particular aspect in detail of course I had but it had been left on the
cutting room floor so to speak. On average it takes the BBC about 6-8hrs of
footage to produce 1/2 hr of edited programme, thats an awful lot of information that is not used. The worst problem is that often the person with the most control is the one with the least knowledge of the subject. I was lucky in that I insisted in writing my own scripts and voice overs but you
learn to become very crafty ie. if I wanted to say something that I did not want cut, then I would say it as I was landing a fish knowing that they could not cut it. When the then current local gardening man (D.C.) was put away ?
I had several meetings with a view to taking over but the producer was insisting that, I work to a script (its very hard to be enthusiastic about somebodys elses words), and my ideas about what a gardening programme should be about did not match hers (pricking out lettuce seedlings and taking fuchsia cuttings etc) so I declined. Finally the MOST important thing if you are not happy is to write in, this is something few people do and it has the biggest impact to programme planning.
Lannerman.