Your Industry Is Mutating. You Don't Know what to do. Here’s Your Move.

This is what I would do if I were stuck in TV right now as a freelancer and didn’t quite know what to do.

I would identify five senior people in industries that genuinely interest me. Adjacent sectors. Completely different sectors. Fitness brands. Cultural institutions. Startups. Heritage organisations.

And I would email them. Not asking for a job. Offering value.

I would be honest. I’ve spent fifteen years as a director, or producer, or editor. I’m a strong storyteller. I understand audiences. I’m organised. I can film. I can shape narrative. I can solve problems.

Then I would offer five hours of my time, free, to work on something real for them.

A deck. A content problem. A broadcast strategy. A narrative rethink. Whatever they want. They get 5 hours of me! It’s try before you buy . . . it’s getting an interview for a job they don’t know they want yet! Who is not going to take that up? There’s literally no downside for the senior individual – and it immediately demonstrates that I am entrepreneurial, engaged and dynamic. And what it could do for me is massive!

TV people are very good at seeing what needs to be done once they’re inside a system. We cut through noise. We build structure. If someone said, use your five hours to figure out how to make the story telling around our brand more effective, I would have some ideas. If they said create a social media campaign I would have a go – provide them with what their competitors are doing and design my own.

Whatever happens you will leave with a new relationship, feedback and information, insight and maybe just maybe someone who will give you a job . . .

If you are stuck action is the answer.

If you are anxious, information reduces fear.

This article was written following a long chat with Dr Andy Sockanathan, a Coach who used to work in TV and now specialises in helping TV freelancers to change direction. I wanted to get his input into how freelancers can successfully change direction, the main challenges and what he found that was working. These were the main takeaways:

If you’ve worked in television for most of your adult life, the idea of stepping outside it can feel so uncomfortable. The job title IS who you are. Director. Producer. Commissioner. It’s more than employment. It’s identity.

So when the industry feels uncertain, the anxiety is not just financial. It’s existential. You start asking yourself what else you could possibly do, because you’ve only ever done this.

But that framing misses something fundamental. You don’t just “work in TV”. You’ve been trained in a highly transferable skill set that most industries desperately need. You just need to find it and see it in a new context: you KNOW how to find clarity in chaos. You know how to shape messy material into a coherent story. You know how to persuade people to back ideas. You know how to manage strong personalities and fragile egos. You know how to deliver under pressure, to tight deadlines, with limited resources. You know how to hold attention.

Those are not television-specific abilities. They are human and strategic abilities. And they are AI proof! There’s a lot of fear about AI and automation. Some of it is justified - certain technical tasks will become faster and cheaper. Research, transcription, drafting, even rough structural edits can be assisted or automated.

But the core of what good freelancers do is emotional intelligence. Something AI can only dream of! The ability to rally a team, win trust, build belief in an idea. In fact, in a world increasingly supported by machines, the human layer becomes more valuable. The ability to tell a compelling story about a product, a mission, a brand or a person is becoming central to success in almost every sector.

Freelancers should also never underestimate how entrepreneurial they already are. You are used to uncertainty. You are used to stitching together income from multiple streams. You are used to pitching, being rejected, recalibrating and trying again. You are used to walking into unfamiliar environments and quickly figuring out how they work.

That is adaptability – the life blood of a business or enterprise.

The hardest part of any pivot is letting go of the idea that you are your job title. But you are not your industry. You are the combination of skills and qualities that made you good within it. Once you separate those two things, the question changes.

Instead of asking, what else can I possibly do, you start asking, WHERE else would these qualities be valuable?

The practical step at the beginning of this piece is a way of answering that question in the real world rather than in your head. It forces you to test your value outside the television ecosystem. It forces you to see your skill set through someone else’s eyes.

If you feel stuck, don’t sit in abstraction. Take action. Get information. Put yourself in rooms where your abilities can be evaluated in a different context. Getting a coach can also be a great way to get this perspective, so do look up Andy online if you think it might be of interest to you.

You may find that what you thought was a shrinking identity is actually a portable one with many, many exciting places that it can travel to!

Good luck, I am rooting for you!