Saint Crispin's day of the Entertainment World

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.”

Shakespeare's Henry V came alive this past week and rocked my world as well as businesses around the country. All I could think of were the words written by Shakespeare for Henry V to raise morale. I cannot say that morale is high this holiday season but I will say that being in the belly of the beast within the entertainment world was truly unreal. Think of a battlefield where the ammunition is not bullets, but termination notices shot at you by "friendly fire" and the business/entertainment tabloids and blogs shooting everyone down with "enemy" fire. I saw notices on Perez Hilton's blog and sites like Gawker and Jossip about the massive layoffs and a company e-mail that went out early Thursday morning before it had even reached my own work mailbox. Bombs were going off left and right as various phones rang with that terrifying message: “You need to meet with HR.” My friends and co-workers, we fellow soldiers, were called one by one in front of firing squads and then left wounded and bloody on the battlefield. Lower-level positions as well as high-level executives were feeling the cut and we, as a department and even the company as a whole, truly did feel the pain for everyone involved.

As some of you may have read, MTV Networks laid off 7% of their work force this past Thursday but it is only a fraction of the jobs lost in the past two months. The odd thing about production companies is that there is only a small fraction of actual employees that work for any given studio or television network. A lot of shows and films have 2nd and 3rd party companies and production crews brought in to shoot a series or special that leave as soon as the shoot is completed. It is misleading when readers see that 850 jobs were cut at Viacom/MTV, and bloggers go on and on about how it is a show like The Hills or actors from those shows that should be fired first. The true story from the inside is that the jobs that were cut yesterday spanned across all of the Viacom companies and it was networks like MTV, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Comedy Central, Spike, Vh1, BET, and CMT that were also heavily impacted by the cuts. It was our sister company Paramount Studios that was also effected. All the way across the board each and every network within the Viacom Company was hit.

I have never experienced anything like the happenings that are currently effecting the economy and the job status of so many hard working Americans, and although I still do not know what my own personal outcome will be after this week there are a few things I have learned from those in the television industry that I would like to share. This past Thursday was blogged as a sort of D-Day for the Viacom networks and I am sad to say that I know too many people who have been cut from their current positions due to the massive layoffs. It felt like we were on a battlefield and with each phone call the number of people still standing decreased. I look around at a place where a good friend was sitting all of 10 minutes ago and now I only see an empty desk. I waited, hoping not to get a call myself. I stood next to fallen friends and amazed co-workers of one specific department that was heavily effected. We stood banded together and gave support as the events of the day progressed.

I am no soldier, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I have never marched off to battle, I have no idea what war is like from personal experience, but I have experienced war on the front lines that takes place in the entertainment world. In the past six months I have worked six huge shows and some that truly felt like battlefields with technical difficulties and other mishaps. I have worked with crews to quickly correct mistakes before going live-to-air, assisted technical management teams to re-wire cable lines for camera feeds with only seconds to spare, and I have worked with casting crews to wrangle 1000 plus audience members from one area to another in minutes for segment tapings that have been scheduled in areas no where near each other. The teams I have worked with feels like a troop, a platoon of entertainment soldiers ready to run off to correct and assist with any needs of our production management teams to make a show a success. That is our battlefield. Shooting locations, in a studio and on-location, are our war zones and if we did not act like a comrade of soldiers reacting and responding quickly the things you sit at home or in a theater and watch would not appear the way they do. But on December 4, 2008 I witnessed a completely different battle zone in an office environment that shook us all to the core. Through the darkness of the cuts one VP who was just laid off stood and spoke a few words that could rival the speech Shakespeare wrote for Henry V, and these are the words and the lesson that I would like to share.

The former VP of MTV News Production Management stood tall in the middle of the news team with a beer in hand to salute the team that has been through it all and then began her speech something like this:

We are all shocked by this, but I am sorry I was not able
to give those of you fair warning. Too many of you were
cut before your time. But this is the way television works,
but this is not the end of us. We are a family, and we
will get through this. It has happened for a reason and there
will be something better that we will find. Do not give up
because we will all bounce back. Just don’t forget to stay in
touch because we might be able to help each other out down
the road. And if you’re not on facebook you better get on it!

Times will get better and we should never forget those who have helped us in the past. Stay in touch with co-workers because you never know who might be able to lend a helping hand down the line, or be able to return the favor to you if you are the one able to help out this time. And since times are changing, we as a country must remember to stand strong together and help those that have been less fortunate. Just be sure to keep your head up because things always turn around and sometimes it is at unexpected moments when the most amazing surprises come.