BRIGHTON — The olive oil subscription went first. A small thing, but telling. Nicky Taylor, 60, once a freelance executive producer commanding high daily rates across BBC, ITV, and Channel 5, now cancels small luxuries.
They stack shelves at Waitrose four days a week. Checkout.
Deliveroo orders. Restocking. The phone that once rang with production offers now stays quiet.
This is not a story about one person’s bad luck. It is a story about what has happened to an entire sector of British television.
The middle ground of factual programming — food shows, travelogues, lifestyle series — has been hollowed out. Streaming platforms and social media ate the audience first. Then they ate the budgets.
Then they ate the jobs. Taylor worked 35 years in that middle ground. They produced programs with Delia Smith, Loyd Grossman, the Hairy Bikers.
National treasures, all of them. The kind of television that once drew millions on a Tuesday night.
That world is gone. Fewer commissions now. Longer gaps between projects.
The phone rings less often. Taylor saw the writing on the wall.
They just could not stop it from arriving. Now the math is brutal. Taylor earns in a week what they used to earn in a single day.
A 35-year career compressed into a part-time retail wage. No gardening to speak of. No cruises.
The “third quarter” of life, as Taylor calls it, is not about winding down. It is about survival.
Reinvention by necessity. The forces here are not subtle. Streaming services flooded the market with content, but they did not flood it with commissions for British factual producers.
Social media gave everyone a camera and an audience, which meant traditional broadcasters no longer needed to pay for travel, crews, and experienced producers to make a food show. The middle ground collapsed.
Taylor is not the only one standing in the rubble. What comes next is uncertain. The television industry has not solved this problem.
It has outsourced it. Former executives stack shelves. Former producers drive taxis.
The safety net of a long career in broadcasting — the assumption that experience and reputation guarantee steady work — has been pulled away. Taylor works harder now than they did as an executive producer.
The pay is worse. The security is nonexistent. Waitrose in Brighton now has a shelf-stacker who once traveled the world making television.
That is the new reality. The olive oil subscription is cancelled.
The phone does not ring. The shift is clear.
