I agree. Before I got to the BBC I was desperate to work there. I went to TV centre for work experience for some top programmes, and couldn't understand why all the producers were so bitter when they "should have been so pleased to be working there", I thought. This was the pinnacle of the TV industry, I thought (as this was at TV Centre, not regional). Within a couple of years of working there I was also bitter... I learned that all too often it's who you slept with (or who you were very matey with or who you were related to) that decided how your career went, not how hard you worked, or how talented you were.
Eg, One producer was related to the boss of the channel he worked for. He got promoted from a band 7 rather crap journalist through to a band 11 Ass.Editor in about two years flat - which is about five times faster than anyone else. Loads of people went to the internal interviews but it was always him who got the job. Nepotism at its finest. Once the boss of the channel moved on, the nephew was no longer protected and for the last 20 years has been shoved sideways from post to post and is currently heading up some small outlet of the World Service. He had not much talent, just a powerful aunt.
I was touched up massively by my managing editor, every time he drank (which was every Friday on his four hour lunch breaks). I was propositioned by so many men, and because I turned them down, my career stalled. Meanwhile those who slept with these men went on to become semi-famous on screen presenters. Sometimes they then fell out of favour with the manager concerned and I was sometimes gifted to hear ABC moaning about XYZ "only getting on screen time because XYZ was now shagging the boss"...that ABC had split up with. The hypocrisy!
I was once told by a powerful editor during a very alcoholic lunch not to go out with the reporter who was at the lunch and making obvious advances on me. I liked the reporter and was flattered by the attention. I asked the editor "why not?", but he would only say that I shouldn't go out with him. I was only 22 so STUPIDLY ended up going home with the reporter, pretty tipsy. I'm a drunk who remembers everything. I never have black out moments, ever. Like, not ever. When we got there, the reporter offered me a glass of wine. I remember drinking about a quarter of it and the next thing I knew, it was a couple of hours later and I regained consciousness in the reporter's bed. He was on top of me and I felt powerless to move. I then blacked out again for hours and when I came round I felt completely out of it. Many months later I found out that the reporter had a reputation for date raping women in the unit, and that's why the editor had warned me off. Because the reporter was a reporter, he was seen as "talent" whereas women who complained to the editor were managed out of the unit. I came to realise as I got older that I had probably been another victim of date rape. I was too young, naive and scared for my job to make a complaint. I would have been sacked, not the reporter. Because the reporter was "the talent." He worked there for another 12 years after that. This is what external people don't understand; the "talent" are seen as god's gift and can behave terribly over and over again. And now the BBC is in the spotlight they're finally having to show the courage of sacking the talent straight away. But the BBC will fall out of the spotlight soon and many more presenters and powerful editors will continue to behave appallingly without redress.
The whole organisation needs taking over by women in my opinion who won't act like this, nor put up with it. It is changing, but not fast enough; it's still an old boys club and it's who you know or who you shag that gets you on screen, and once you're there, you can behave how you like because you're "the talent". And the more famous they are, the worse they get.
Bitter? I am. But it's not surprising really.
Nb: there are some exceptions. I know several amazing female presenters who haven't slept their way to the top. But I know far many more who have. And many more who have been ignored in favour of those women. It makes me sick.