The television industry’s pivot to streaming is contributing to a new talent-management headache for senior media company executives.

In addition to having to wrangle the legendary egos of actors and the high-profile producers and directors who make the hits that make the cash register ring, technology talent are the industry’s new stars, according to a report from PwC.

Traditional media companies have been downsizing and consolidating at breakneck speed as cord-cutting and COVID cut into traditional revenue streams. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said the media industry shed 30,711 jobs in 2020, up from 10,201 jobs the year before.

At the same time, there is still strong demand for certain skilled positions — some of them new to the telecom, media and technology (TMT) sector — and retaining those people is a top concern, according to PwC.

“Competition for TMT talent is as fierce as ever, with more than 90% of TMT leaders reporting higher-than-usual turnover,” the PwC report said. 

Boom for Tech Workers

“More than other sectors, however, TMT workers are benefiting from the pandemic-related tech boom,” the report continued. “They’re switching jobs for higher salaries (48% of TMT executives versus 41% in all industries), top-notch benefits (30% versus 23%), upgraded career advancement opportunities (42% versus 33%) and improved relationships with managers (35% versus 20%). To compete for talent, TMT leaders are shoring up career-development opportunities (47% versus 34% overall) and offering flexible schedules (49% versus 43%).”

Mark Borao, Technology, Media and Telecommunications partner at PwC U.S., told B+C/Multichannel News that the media companies accelerated the hiring of technologists in order to launch streaming platforms. But they continue to seek tech expertise in order to increase the efficiency of both their new and legacy businesses.

Borao, who had helped media companies launch streaming businesses, noted that many legacy media companies “hollowed out” their traditional broadcast and cable businesses, putting their assets into their streaming business. 

“There’s a narrative of media companies grabbing tech folks to launch these platforms, or to enhance an existing platform that needed work,” Borao said. “That was definitely a 2019, 2020 narrative. 

“Now, what you’re seeing is now that they’ve launched these platforms, they’re looking at other processes they can put in the cloud and do more efficiently,” Boroa said.

After years of mergers, some media companies have hundreds of analog systems handling content. That industry consolidation will continue, he said. 

Seeking Heads in the Cloud

The people media companies are looking for now are digital natives who think cloud-first, he said, calling them business technologists.

“They’re people who understand this digital thinking and can lay out the processes, lay out the organization and a model that is exponentially more efficient than the analog modes,” he said. “The cloud has changed the game for them.” 

Media companies used to have to poach that talent from technology firms. Now, they are hiring away from other media companies, offering higher pay and better titles.  

“I have a handful of clients that I personally work with who all in the past 90 days have moved from one media company to another because their skill set is in high demand,” the PwC exec said. “All of them got either title increases or significant pay increases. They’re effectively cashing in on those skill sets and those accomplishments.”

Borao said these weren’t top-level executives. “I’m talking about director-
level people, senior managers. It’s one thing to have a vision. It’s quite another to be able to execute on that. What I’m seeing is a good thing. We’re seeing high demand for those operators.”

The ability to use technology to legacy processes and the ability to be forward-looking about new business models will continue to be valuable, he said. 

Charter Communications said it has hired more than 3,000 new employees across the country since March --  mostly in front line positions including customer support reps and field tech positions -- adding that it is "actively seeking to fill thousands of additional jobs" across its 41-state operating territory.

The jobs are not necessarily new headcount -- Charter had expressed a need for additional employees, particularly in call centers, weeks ago. But with shelter-in-place orders in virtually every state as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company said its switch to a “virtual hiring” platform in mid-March has helped it maintain the pace of new staffing. 

Charter said it has been using virtual hiring practices for several years, including web-screening applications and video interviews, in addition to traditional face-to-face interviewing. Through February, the company was hiring 25% of new workers virtually, but that number spiked to nearly 100% after the coronavirus pandemic took hold in March.

“Charter has been at the forefront of using virtual hiring technology to recruit and screen candidates, so we were able to transition quickly and seamlessly to virtual hiring when this crisis started," said Charter group VP, talent, Seth Feit in a press release. “Charter provides vital broadband internet, video and phone services, and our employees are critical to keeping our residential and business customers connected. Through the effective use of virtual hiring practices, we have maintained a steady rate of hiring and as the country begins to resume office work, we are well-positioned to hire even more people in the many markets in which we operate.”

Charter said it is recruiting for about 200 positions at its newly renovated Spectrum Mobile call center in Rotterdam, N.Y.; 185 positions at its mobile call center in Kansas City, Mo.; 100 new customer billing agents in Portland, Maine; and 350 new jobs at its Spectrum sales operation center in El Paso, Texas. The company also has more than 60 recruiters participating in the National Youth Hiring Day virtual job fair on May 7, which engages entry-level job seekers and unemployed young people.

Charter, which faced some criticism in the early days of the pandemic, has stepped up in recent weeks, committing to no layoffs or furloughs for at least 60 days, and increasing its minimum wage to $20 per hour. Charter also has increased the number of its employees working remotely, providing equipment and training to enable workers to perform their jobs at home.

According to Charter, the virtual hiring process begins on its website, where applicants can fill out an online assessment and answer a series of questions. Applicants who move forward in the process may be asked to take part in a phone interview and/or schedule a video interview, which can be conducted live or recorded by the candidate to submit at a later date.

All pre-employment screening is conducted remotely, and once a new employee electronically signs their acceptance letter, their employee badge is mailed to them.

During the current crisis, Charter said it has taken steps to maximize social distancing if a new employee must report to a workplace, including smaller class sizes for training courses and additional distance between workstations. Some new employees, depending on their role, may go to the office only to pick up their equipment to allow them to work remotely. More information about Charter’s career opportunities can be found at Jobs.Spectrum.com.

In this period of extraordinary low unemployment, the supposedly ascendant "gig economy" is not all it seems to be.

In fact, "contingent and alternative employment arrangements" have remained amazingly level during the two decades since the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began compiling statistics on temporary and contract workers, according to a new analysis of that data.

Altogether, about 22 million people work on a "gig" basis, the BLS said. The new report, issued earlier this month, found that the total number of gig workers has changed very slightly in the past 20 years. They constituted 9.9% of total U.S. employment in 1995; 10.7% in 2005 and 10.1% in 2017 (see chart). Independent contractors represented the largest group within the gig labor force: 6.7% in 1995; 7.4% in 2005 and 6.9% last year.

Although "gig" jobs are often generalized as freelance projects, or new-economy opportunities such as driving for Uber or Lyft, the BLS categories also include on-call workers or people brought in from temporary-help agencies to supplement permanent staffs or for seasonal staffing. But the BLS report conceded that the definition of gig jobs is vague, and hence its data may not accurately reflect the full labor situation.

"The concept and measurement of contingent work hinges both on the temporary nature of a job and on workers' perception of their job security," according to the BLS summary. "Some workers have been in jobs for a short time and do not expect these jobs to last. Others have been in jobs for many years yet still sense that their continued employment is tenuous."

Frustratingly, the current BLS gig jobs report does not break out industries or categories for such work; neither does it delve into whether gigs are a second source of income for people employed full-time elsewhere. The BLS said it expects to gather and reveal more data later this year about the gig job marketplace.

The BLS study has been challenged by outside analysts and other recent reports. For example, renowned analyst Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, in her 2018 "Internet Trends" report last month, predicted that the gig workforce would climb 26% this year over 2017, adding 7 million people to the gig pool.

An Edelman Intelligence analysis late last year, commissioned by Upwork and the Freelancers Union, concluded that 57.3 million Americans -- 36% of the U.S. workforce -- are freelancing.

Separately, a Treasury Department study last year, using administrative tax records, estimated that gig work represented less than 1% of the economy, but a Federal Reserve Board report put gig employment at about 30%, according to published summaries.

Predictably, millennials represent the largest pool of gig workers. Still other data showed that minority workers are a large share of the ill-defined gig workforce.

What It Means to Media/Technology Providers

Beyond the confusion about what these conflicting analyses mean, employers should be interpreting the role of gigs in both their job planning and (for media companies) their market outlook. Gig workers may be less dependable as potential customers if their chosen lifestyle keeps them on the move -- less likely to put down roots and subscribe to wired services.

Separately, as potential employees, they pose challenges for training and other requirements of "regular" workers. The category of "contractors" itself poses secondary employment factors since, for example, operators of wired and wireless systems have long relied on third parties to build and maintain infrastructure. Now those companies may also be relying on gig workers to handle or at least supplement their workforces.

The chattering class (many of us relegated to the gig world ourselves) quickly pounced on the BLS study as an indicator of either (a) the over-hype about gig jobs or (b) the looming changes in the American job scene. These observations add to the confusion about how important gig jobs will be.

Ultimately, the BLS report and its eventual update represent snapshots worth watching to identify where employees are coming from, and how to leverage the (slightly) shifting options in labor trends to match the (often) shifting needs to keep operations running.

Cable1Source, a software company that automates employment, personnel and job recruitment information to comply with FCC record-keeping requirements, will launch its service to cable operators in May. 

The new company is a companion to Broadcast1Source, which offers similar job-related services to TV and radio stations and groups. Both services are owned by McLeansville, N.C.-based Litéra Corp., a document management firm that creates software for corporate use, including  government filings.

"The new cable service will let companies manage all their EEO [Equal Employment Opportunity] compliance material and maintain all employment job listings and multiple recruiting lists," explained Lisa Fields, VP/GM of Cable1Source in an exclusive interview with Multichannel News. She said she knows of no comparable, comprehensive employment-reporting service that is currently available to cable operators.

In a preliminary trial, the Cable1Source software was tested at a mid-sized cable system (not identified) where human resources people had compiled and prepared the FCC reports manually. Field said the software generated a report in less than a minute, drawing on material that had been entered into the system at the time of each employment activity.  In comparison, the cable system's traditional manual method of gathering and preparing the report took about 160 hours (two people working for two weeks) for a comparable task, she said.

Field held discussions with some operators during the recent American Cable Association conference in Washington; it is believed that Cable1Source is exploring a relationship that would give ACA members discounts on access to the service. The company will also seek to develop alliances with state cable associations, similar to relationships that Broadcast1Source has with state broadcasting associations.

Like its 14-year-old Broadcast1Source predecessor, the new cable software package will provide a single-source solution to consistent record-keeping, self-monitoring and FCC audit preparedness, including automated creation of material for the FCC's mandated Public Inspection Files (ePIF) that are available on the FCC.gov site.

"Cable hires exponentially more people than radio or TV," Field said, explaining the value of her company's software to MSOs and individual cable systems. She cited FCC requirements such as the "Prong 1, 2 and 3" employment methods that encompass hiring efforts through traditional job application procedures, through relationships with recruiting agencies and through "supplemental outreach" programs such as job fairs or campus presentations.  All of these employment processes must be documented under the FCC rules, Field said.

"We'll let Cable1Source sync to FCC.gov so that it posts the required documents," Field added, noting that a new set of forms will be issued later this year, after approval by the Office of Management and Budget.  She said that the new software will be able to handle such paperwork via automated systems.

Although details about the Cable1Source software and pricing are not yet available, Field said that its core functions will resemble those available in the broadcast product.

"It can track and review all interviews, and it will alert you if you miss a step in the FCC process so that you can take actions from the [system's] dashboard," Field explained. The software can track and record interviews and store resumes and other elements of the hiring and employment process, she said.

Cable1Source also has the ability to track internships, mentoring and other work-related functions that the FCC seeks to document. The dashboard also allows cable operators to check their own self-auditing process for employment-related activities, in compliance with other FCC requirements, the company said.

Cable1Source, which is currently hosted at Litéra-contracted sites, is expected to move to a cloud-based secure service later this year.