Interns Get Foot in TV’s Door by Networking

I didn’t expect to see so much unemployment in television. People have to constantly network. You never know that the person across the hall that you say “Hi” to each morning might hire you in the future or help you get a job. Everyone is sending out resumes all the time, meeting people, constantly networking. It’s always who you know. . . . --Rutgers senior Moonlake Love Lee

Moonlake Love Lee learns fast.

She and others of her twentysomething generation--interns this summer in the TV factories of L.A.--were born when networks and peacocks walked the Earth, a few years before cable, home satellite dishes, MTV, instant replays, VCRs, fiber optics, digital systems, zappers.

They became a totally TV’d generation.

They grew up as television grew explosively out.

Now they want in. And with the summer behind them and the new season about to break out all over, these young people wonder: Is there an in in?

It’s a question that many in television have been asking since the first set was turned on--where is new, creative (read young) talent? Where is the entry point?

The toe-in-the-door question.

Some argue the contrary, that the door is jammed with toes. Who needs more when a lot of experienced people in all phases of television still find doors closed and the dual plagues of recession and ageism scour the workscape. Employment in broadcasting stations--where most TV graduates will first work--nationally has been slipping, from 68,604 five years ago to 65,598 last year.

But the thinkers and planners out in North Hollywood’s post-modern Academy of Television Arts & Sciences are thinking primarily young, thinking opportunities. In 1966, the academy started a local summer intern program that went national in 1978 and has expanded each year since.

While there are no age restrictions in this internship program, applicants have to be in college or have been graduated within a year. “It would be tougher for an older person,” explained Price Hicks, who oversees the academy’s paid intern summer program. “I can only recall one person over 30 ever applying and I’ve been with the program since 1985. Many of our applicants have already had experiences in television. What they don’t have are contacts in Los Angeles and it’s in Los Angeles where most of television production operates.”

So the program stresses contacts and networking, knowing your fellow workers, the bosses, the underlings and, with luck, future colleagues.

This year, more than 850 persons applied for the academy’s internships. Twenty-seven made it, only six from California. They found work with host companies--14 hours a day during preseason production, one claimed. The interns work in the 24 peer group or employment areas that form the academy.

Most are back in college, their planner books crammed with names and contacts. Reportedly two found jobs and settled in. That happens. The list of intern alumni making it in Hollywood grows longer by the season, despite the odds and the economy.

Before the fall and before the last intern left town, we held an afternoon talk show of sorts at the TV academy: five interns and one alien from another medium. The idea was to get their ideas after a long, hot television summer in L.A. and, most importantly, how they would change the medium when their time came.

Francisco Leon, a UCLA graduate student in film and TV who now wants to go into management after a summer with Fox Broadcasting executives, hopes that television could be more diverse, reflecting more accurately the mirror image of minorities. “As more minorities go into television programming that will change, the new people will have an effect on programming. But I don’t know when that will happen. Hopefully, in my lifetime. I tell my mother I want to go into television and be a producer. It’s difficult for her to know what that means, difficult to explain to her what I do and what I want to do. When she came to some of our meetings she saw how we work and how I work. She began to realize that this participation is something that hasn’t been encouraged in our culture.”

Malaysian-born Moonlake Love Lee believes television has the potential to “shape how people feel with a potential to do good. I got a different impression of America by watching TV, that American kids are flaky, for example. I could only get that impression from the shows we watched. What you see on TV is what you know about the world. If you see something inaccurate you will get a totally wrong concept. Maybe we can make a difference, find the open doors, work our way up and get shows on with more realistic portrayals of all people.”

Lee recalls watching American television in Malaysia, particularly seeing “WKRP in Cincinnati.” Her internship, ironically, was with the new, syndicated “WKRP” which, she says, is making changes this season, “trying to go for a younger audience, trying to get back to the original off-the-wall series.”

Delaina Dixon, a senior at Boston University who worked in daytime programming at Buena Vista Television and an outspoken, admitted television fan, especially of soaps, thinks certain daytime and prime-time soaps face up to social issues better than most of “prime-time fluff.” “In some cases soaps can teach, be entertaining and educational. They bring up subjects that are not always discussed in families. ‘Beverly Hills, 90210’ may be campy and most people don’t drive Mercedeses, but the show does talk about sex among teens, condoms, drugs. These things happen. If we see it on television maybe we can talk more about it.”

She argues for diversity and daring, more narrowcasting toward specific groups such as networks for college students and ethnic peoples. “So now some cable systems have 150 channels. All that that means is we have more time to see nothing. Cable, especially, should give us more than old movies and reruns.”

At the same time, Rachel Davies a graduate of Baltimore’s Goucher college and an intern at the Mike Fenton casting agency, praises cable. “It takes risks, going more into depth on certain subjects. It has made the networks compete, to try new things. Cable will expand, at the same time offering programming for targeted, specific groups. The networks are mass culture. Cable will be more specific.”

Brook Durham, a junior at Florida State who took meetings this summer at the First Artists Agency, finds little about TV to criticize. “People say it’s corrupting but I don’t see anything wrong with it. The production values could be improved. Fox seems to be pushing the edge with some material. What television could use is some more family values. My family, for example, gets most of its information about the world from watching television.”

And what were the tough realities of working in television?

Davies: I knew coming here it would be difficult. But it has been a little more overwhelming than I expected. One minute every thing is OK and we can relax. Then the telephone goes off.

Lee: You learn how to get along with people. That’s something you aren’t always taught in school.

Durham: Here I was pitching an actual project to a production company. If they knew I was a 20-year-old intern they would probably have laughed.

Dixon: Everything was a new experience. I also learned to use a computer. If you can’t do that you can’t get in the door.

Leon: First week was intimidating during the peak of production. Everyone was running around and raving. For me, it was sink or swim. I O.D.’d on just watching.

And what lessons are they taking with them?

Davies: The number of unemployed hasn’t intimidated me. Now I know I have to fight that much harder.

Lee: I talked to everyone to see how they got in.

Durham: In agencies you always make work for yourself.

Leon: Management is year-around work. Weekends, too. It’s a little more permanent.

Dixon: You learn as far as jobs are concerned that nothing is permanent.

Clearly for some, summer’s lessons had sunk in.