The new media landscape, with its myriad windows of video distribution and the changes brought about by digital conversion, appears to offer new opportunities to regional indie producers. It remains to be seen, however, if these opportunities can be translated into real improvements in labor conditions. There are already urgent questions about low pay and unstable labor conditions prevalent in the region.
Moreover, the transformation of the media landscape as a result of larger structural processes offers a complex industrial scenario in which the integration of the region into global capitalism leads to battles between national and transnational corporations. In this scenario, different entities are taking advantage of the structural conditions and flexible labor of indie producers. A visible element that underscores the differences among national television industries has been the nature and role of indie productions within these national markets. However, in spite of these differences, the indie production sphere first emerged in relation to powerful national television networks. Those relations have recently been challenged by the emergence of a new generation of “indies” wholly owned by large conglomerates or independently owned but closely related to them. The presence of transnational companies now competing with national networks or collaborating with them offers opportunities to professionals, but at the same time they are competing in an industrial space that would otherwise have been occupied by local companies. FoxTelecolombia (21st Century Fox), Teleset (Sony), RTI (NBC), Cuatro Cabezas (EyeWorks), Endemol, Zodiak (Di Agostini), and FremantleMedia are striking “volume agreements” with television networks that allow them continuity in production but also show the large professional and financial capabilities of these “indies.”
Beyond these new transnational indies, national and local entities are struggling to survive by deploying a variety of strategies. Their existence and roles go far beyond the realm of television industries, offering a diversity of services to different companies and producing a variety of programming, including films, documentaries, and corporate or educational videos. Consequently, they need to be flexible and scale their workforce to the shifting demands of their clients. As described by the executive producer from Blind Spot, producers need to have the capacity to bring the right people to a specific project, but they also need to have the economic resources to deliver. Prestige, capacity of delivery, and proven success are required elements in this equation. Success in delivery defines some level of continuity for these indies, while failure may lead to their demise.
Similarly, professionals working for indies offer their services to an array of potential clients, opening doors for possible future projects. To lessen the anxieties of job uncertainty, professionals actively work at networking and diversifying their skills. Some of the professionals revealed that they combine short-term and long-term strategies to survive. As the artistic director from Del Barrio Producciones explains, working for advertisers pays well, while producing television series is not as profitable; however, waiting for a paycheck from an advertising firm takes several months, while working for television offers a monthly paycheck.
The defining feature of independent production houses is that they are separate from the corporations that own the means of content distribution: the television networks. This definition is also at the center of their vulnerability, which has been reframed by professionals as a space of opportunity. While lacking the stability of permanent jobs, these professionals are motivated by notions of innovation and creativity as well as specific ideological convictions and aesthetic commitments. They believe that talent and skill can create success, while their emphasis upon gaining the trust of producers is a prevailing notion that fits into a market-oriented economic approach which requires the illusion of free competition. Within this ideological framework, this free-floating army of professionals seems to conceive of unionized labor and hiring quotas as constraints upon the very specific creative needs of particular projects. The lack of permanent job status is also reinterpreted as a lifestyle choice representing agency and freedom. Following Bourdieu’s explanation of the dynamics of the field of cultural production, these professionals take innovation, socially–oriented narratives, and quality production as their reasons for working for indies as an assumed restricted space within the larger field of television production.47 Paradoxically, the precarious conditions of this sector seem to be precisely the ideological engine that supports professionals’ imagined conditions of freedom, creativity, and innovation.
