Senior leadership one-to-one surgeries

As part of the ‘Mind Your Business’ strand, we're offering training in a range of areas related to business management & development, production finance, legal & business affairs, rights, and compliance, giving individuals the tools needed to thrive in their chosen field in unscripted TV. 

Senior roles in TV can be lonely jobs when the buck stops with you and it can be difficult to find peer support or the right level of management help when you need it. Each of these bespoke one-to-one sessions will be tailored around the individual’s specific needs, addressing all or any of the many challenges of running a successful TV business with the help of an experienced TV boss who has been there and done it.

Who it's for

Anyone in a senior unscripted TV leadership role from executive producer or production executive producer upwards to creative directors and managing directors, where these roles keep demanding a whole new range of skills, knowledge and responsibilities.

The majority of the USF online short course offering is for those at early career stage and above. As a result, we generally require applicants to have at least 3 credits (unless working in a traditionally uncredited role). If you strongly feel you would still benefit from the training, please email USF@screenskills.com so we can assess if an exception should be made.

We are committed to ensuring all our courses are accessible to everyone. This course is designed to be as interactive as possible. Please email the above address if you have any access requirements and we will be delighted to help, be that clarifying the form such interaction is likely to take or discussing reasonable adjustments.

What it covers

Each confidential 90-minute session will be tailored to the specific needs of each individual, but can cover all areas of senior leadership and running a successful TV business.

Some of the typical areas we’d expect to cover include:

• managing production teams across multiple series
• creating and sustaining your own culture
• how to manage delicate commissioner relationships from pitching to delivery
• how to manage development priorities and resources; hiring and firing
• how to create a future growth strategy including potential investment or sale
• dealing successfully with compliance, HR and PR crises when the buck stops with you
• how to manage bosses and company owners
• how to create and sustain returning series
• understanding finances

Speaker

Mark Hill has been a creative business leader for over 20 years, launching RDF West from scratch and running it successfully for 16 years through multiple changes of company ownership and before that heading BBC Factual in Bristol overseeing a £30m production slate and over 250 staff.  He has worked extensively across unscripted production from daytime to ob docs, reality and specialist factual and created and showrun multiple long running factual brands, including DIY SOS, Bargain Hunt, Wanted Down Under and Dickinson’s Real Deal. He started out as a print and radio journalist and built  his initial production career at ITV and the BBC. He now works as a consultant, giving strategic advice to independent production companies, training senior leaders and taking on ad hoc executive producer roles as well as overseeing business interests outside of TV.

How to apply

This session will take place online via Zoom. Click ‘apply for ticket’ and follow the instructions to apply for your place: you must login or register before you are able to complete your application.

Places on these free online courses are limited and applications are often highly competitive. To stand the best chance of securing a place, please be sure to consider the following:

• When asked to list your three most recent credits, please include the programme title and your job role.
• When asked what you hope to gain from the course, please be concise but ensure you cover the specific elements of the topic you would like to gain knowledge of and what gaps in your skillset you believe the course may address. A rewording of the course title or a general comment on career progression does not tell us much about how this course would benefit you.

If you are no longer able to attend, we ask you to please use the “decline ticket” function on the right hand side of the page so that we can release your place. Our sessions are often oversubscribed, so we’d like to give other freelancers the opportunity to fill available spots. Thank you for your consideration.

This session is supported by the ScreenSkills Unscripted TV Skills Fund which invests in training for the unscripted workforce thanks to contributions from broadcasters, SVoDs and production companies.

This course would normally cost participants to attend, but thanks to this support, we are able to offer it to you for free. If you fail to attend, we reserve the right to request reimbursement of costs, unless your place can be taken by someone else.