To be hurt and annoyed at being dropped by the BBC?

[Ladyof2025]

BBC contacted me asking me to speak on camera about an aspect of local history I happen to know a bit about. I agreed and spent the next few days brushing up on the facts and then writing and rewriting a script and reading it out loud again and again until I knew it by heart and could speak confidently to camera as though I'd never said it before.

I do not have a pretty face, and am in my 60s and rather podgy, but I went to the trouble of going through my wardrobe for the perfect outfit that flattered my podginess, and had my hair cut specially and put on some make up, so I could be the best possible version of me that I could.

The production team visited, took me to the site and filmed me speaking. I did it smoothly and confidently and was glad that I had put in all the rehearsal so I came across as knowledgeable, professional and confident of my material. They said my performance was perfect, thanked me profusely and left.

After about a week they rang me to say that due to time and space issues the section of the programme that featured my input had been dropped. I felt absolutely gutted, not because I want to see myself on TV but because I had used up a lot of my valuable free time for several days preparing and rehearsing for it (for no fee I should add).

A few months later the programme I was dropped from came on TV and to my utter astonishment an attractive, slim young lady appeared, at the same site I was filmed at, and she spoke the exact words I had written and rehearsed! I nearly fell off my chair - the absolute bloody cheek of dropping ME but stealing the script that I had written. Thinking about it, I realised that they wanted my expert input, but not my saggy face or ample figure.

AIBU to be hurt and angry?

Because they recorder her speaking it.

It doesn't surprised me. I rarely watch the BBC these days, but switched it on a while back and partly watched a documentary presented by a blonde, Love Island person, Zara McDarmack, who had absolutely no presenting skills or presence. It was awful! Google images shows that she's quite busty and spends a great deal of her time posing in bikinis, judging by the images of her...

After the Huw Edwards scandal the BBC could benefit with being defunded of public money. It has really gone to the dogs.

Indeed!
What upsets me OP is that you describe yourself as being podgy and not having a pretty face. Please don't undervalue yourself, everyone is attractive in some way.
Give yourself a treat and celebrate you 🎁
You also need to make a formal complaint, this behaviour is devious and unethical

Unless it local/regional or News, it's very unlikely this was the BBC. Even the One Show is made by BBC Studios (which is a commercial company - separate from Public Service, though the profits do go back to PSB). Many production companies will say they are shooting something 'for the BBC' but aren't BBC themselves and are hired as part of the broadcasters' indy remit.

Honestly, without meaning to stick the boot in, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would bother re-shooting someone who was engaging, interesting and great on telly in a local history piece because of their looks. It would be more likely be because of a performance which wasn't good enough for TV.

Regardless, to treat you like this is terrible, and I would be writing to the exec producer to complain and to ask for payment for the script/text. Can you get the execs name from the credits?

I couldn't agree more. That's absolutely typical of the BBC's approach now.

Surely thats plagiarism? Take ir higher up if you have the script

Call them out on it.

I HATE how unregulated this shit is. I worked in photography which is heavily 'self' governed. 'Time for' is how a lot of it works, people get 'positive exposure' for 'given time' and it works to everyone benefit and if you pull stunts like this where you fail to provide the promised outcome for time given then word gets around so fast you will never work with anyone again. However film has nothing of the sort and people pull this all the time with zero respect for each other... it was a shock when I tried to transition from photography to cinematography.

A big company like BBC has no excuse though, they should know better and need to be put on blast.

Thank you all (well, most of you!) for responding.

I'm not able to address all the queries etc this evening, I will do so in the morning.

But I must say straight away that whilst I was bracing myself for people to say I was being unreasonable, it never once occurred to me that anyone would say it did not happen, and so I must be lying. Several others on this thread report that similar has happened to them, so that does that mean we are all lying?

I definitely didn't imagine this! I would hardly be upset about something that did not happen.

The programme was a national one and it is still on iPlayer!

Evening! Just poking our heads round the door to ask you to lay off the trollhunting, please. If you have any doubts about a poster, just hit Report on their post and we'll be happy to take a look. Trollhunting only serves to derail threads. Cheers, all.

Just seen this as I was about to leave the site. Deffo not a troll, I have posted on many other threads and have been a MN member for about two or three years.

After the Huw Edwards scandal the BBC could benefit with being defunded of public money. It has really gone to the dogs.

In 2022 the government froze the license fee, costing the BBC £2million.

The BBC started to take on part of the cost of TV licenses for people over 75 in 2018/19, and has fully covered the cost since 2020.

In 2014 the government stopped funding the World Service, causing the BBC to have to absorb the cost.

Let's be honest - the Conservative government has been defunding the BBC for over a decade.

People saying 'didn't happen'

Trust me it very unfortunately does, actresses get treat like shit and dropped for hotter versions after putting in a tonne of time often. Its massively exploitative and sexist industry (especially at independent level).

Not being paid for your time/expertise and being 'cut' last minute without credit is also rampant throughout the whole industry.

That is why actors have strict unions and management, problem is they can be expensive and hard to get into and most people like OP who aren't actors have no idea of this stuff so just think 'wow Im going to be on TV' and get used and abused.

It's only plagiarism if OP didn't sign over the copyright.

With something like BBC, they likely got her to sign a waiver to any intellectual rights to the content before it was filmed, so they basically own it.

It's still horrendous though and probably goes against some of their Equality & Diversity policies, so I would definitely recommend putting in a complaint.

Yes YABU.

For almost anything like this they interview double the number of people they can feature and shoot three times more footage than needed. It's all in the edit

Two tips:

A) you should asked for a disturbance fee that would have been payable whatever happened in the cutting room

B) if you rehearsed it that's likely the problem - however hard you try to make something scripted sound off the cuff, it rarely does. You would have been better speaking more loosely

Right, so the posters above who say it would never happen because of the expense are completely wrong?

What is the programme? They’ll be no way of identifying you as you’re not in it, but would like to watch it.

I am quite surprised at this because my brother works in the industry, and most programmes are not produced by the BBC - they are made by or commissioned from production companies, none of whom would be stating that they are the BBC. But if this is true you appear to have evidence of what you claim, so I would suggest going to the Daily Mail with it. Not that I ever read the Daily Mail, but they do like stories that slam the BBC. I'm sure that with evidence they'd love to run it.

I have been a "history expert" on a BBC1 programme. I got a briefing document detailing what they hoped to get out of the piece and the rough sort of question outline, but I was told to let the conversation flow naturally and NOT to prepare a spiel to rattle off. This was not the sort of thing they were looking for.

I am also over 50, size 14 and not young and glamourous. I was not paid although I was offered travel expenses. I had an initial interview with a producer on Zoom, if at that point she'd thought I was too weird or too old/unglam, she could have said no thanks.

@CatrionaBalfour I don't believe the whole "nicked the script I wrote" bit. The other person who made the cut probably said something extremely similar because it's an obvious point for an expert in the subject to make, and probably delivered it in a more relaxed and engaging way.

I’ve worked in telly for 30 years. Docs, factual, magazine shows. I’ve booked and produced 100’s of experts. Never heard of anything like this before, plus the BBC (when either commissioning or producing in house) have extremely strict Producers Guidelines that tie in to OFCOM. This would fall very much foul of those.

Nah.

I can well believe the stolen script, in conjunction with a production team who has had their arm twisted to feature so and so's daughter, here's a nice perk if you can just... that concides with some spare time to refilm it.

It happens, I have known similar things happen, and some very nefarious and nepotistic hiring practices, sometimes in the most mundane of places/subjects.

@Ladyof2025 If you can prove its your copy, word for word, then absolutely write to them and invoice them for it (id push the boat out a bit more and invoice for my time too personally).

If they nicked it and as I say, it doesn't surprise me, they assume that Joe Public will never realise its even a theft, theres a bloody good chance they will pay up so you can't take legal action.

very true words