Ode to the TV Freelancer

There’s no sugarcoating it—reality television is not what it once was. The industry has shrunk, and with the rise of streaming, shifting audience habits, and corporate belt-tightening, it may never fully recover. Many of us who have built careers as freelance reality TV writers and story producers now find ourselves wondering if we’ll find more work, considering pivots into other industries, and questioning why we chose this unpredictable path in the first place. 

But at least we know the answer to that last one.  Because we love it. 

This is an ode to freelancing.  A tribute to the thrill of crafting unscripted stories, to the adventure of constantly changing projects, and to the unique profession that has shaped who we are.  And hopefully, it’s not a eulogy.

First of all, most of us didn’t go into this blindly. We were aware of the risks: freelancing in reality TV offers none of the stability of a traditional job. No benefits. No retirement plans. No guaranteed next paycheck. We should have unionized years ago, and maybe we still should. But that’s another conversation. The fact remains that working gig to gig is a precarious existence, one that would make most 9-to-5 workers break out in hives.

And yet, by slowly building our skills, we gained experience, credits and connections, ensuring that we could work steadily for years or even decades. Once that happened, the financial reality became better than many assume. When you factor in the rates we earned over a year, even accounting for the going dark on holidays and occasional gaps between gigs, many of us made more than we would in a traditional full-time job with benefits included. 

Many of us once pursued loftier ambitions—writing screenplays, pitching pilots, chasing big-budget productions. But along the way, we found a thriving niche and embraced it. Reality TV may be the entertainment industry’s bastard stepchild, dismissed by our scripted-world peers, no matter how popular our shows. Whether we produced niche cable series or hit network competitions, respect was hard to come by.

The truth is, scripted opportunities have always been scarce. Rather than remain starving artists with unfulfilled dreams of becoming the next Vince Gilligan or Shonda Rhimes, we carved out a path that let us be creative, collaborative, and consistently get content on the air—all while earning a steady paycheck.

But money alone isn’t why we do this.

There is something intoxicating about being a part of the storytelling machine that keeps audiences glued to their screens. We thrive in the trenches, crafting narratives out of hundreds of hours of raw footage, finding the heart, the drama, the humor. We know the adrenaline rush of reshuffling storylines and repurposing the footage to build the perfect episode where everything clicks, the satisfaction of turning an okay scene into an unforgettable moment, and the thrill of watching something we shaped air for everyone to see. Not to mention seeing our names in the credits, even if it was for only half a second.

And let’s talk about the lifestyle—because, for all its drawbacks, freelancing in reality TV has its perks. The flexibility to take breaks between jobs. The freedom to turn down projects that don’t excite us (when we’re lucky enough to have that option). The camaraderie of a community of fellow freelancers who understand the grind and have each other’s backs. Post production people in particular are a specific breed of artists – cranky crafters who can sit in a dark room tinkering alone for hours, yet sociable enough to collaborate, either in an office, edit bay, or zoom meeting, to build the best work possible.

Most importantly, the variety of shows always kept the work fresh and exciting. Every project offered something new. We may go from working on a car racing series, to a house renovation show, to a documentary about exotic animals, to a survival competition, and then to a silly docusoap. Not only does each production have different subject matter—forcing us to become minor experts in entirely new topics each time—but they also require different storytelling skills and technology. One show may rely on expert interviews to tell its tale, while another demands finding just the right visuals to get the message across. Some productions lean heavily on graphics to enhance the storytelling, while others require sophisticated sound design to build tension and excitement.

With each new challenge we adapted, learned, and evolved. Sure, we’d grumble about insane deadlines, frustrations with missing footage, notes that contradicted each other, and that one executive who never seemed to know what they wanted.  But we reveled in the creativity, the puzzle-solving, the magic of making something from nothing. When the field work was less than stellar, it was often a welcome challenge to “fix it in post”. 

Something our colleagues in the scripted world may not have understood. They may have looked down on us slumming it in reality tv, but we think they’re the lightweights of storytelling. Anyone can build an episode from footage produced on a big-budget set, featuring trained actors actually following an actual script. Try taking hours of poorly shot, incoherent ramblings of often-unhinged reality stars, and MacGyver it into a coherent, engaging narrative.  

Freelancing in reality television is not for the faint of heart. It’s a rollercoaster ride with no seatbelt, and we are all adrenaline junkies in one way or another. And while the industry’s future is uncertain, one thing is clear: we did this for a reason. We stayed because we love it. And no matter where our careers take us next, that passion for storytelling—that instinct to find the drama, the heart, the hook—will always be a part of who we are.