Never give up – Part 1: BBC Sport assistant producer Vicky Monk on enthusiasm and seizing opportunities

Vicky Monk is an assistant producer and director at BBC Sport in the digital live team

Vicky Monk is an assistant producer and director at BBC Sport in the digital live team, and she is proud to play her part in bringing live sport to fans across the UK. She has worked on a wealth of sports from Wimbledon to the Olympics, and is thrilled to be part of the BBC sport team. Split into two parts, part one explores Monk’s early career and motivation to keep pushing herself forwards.

What draws you to your career in live sport?

Having worked in news and sport, I can tell you now I much prefer watching sport rushes!

I’m constantly saying that none of us have proper jobs, we’re all so lucky. We get paid to watch something that we would most likely be watching anyway, we get to work with a team of incredibly talented people, we work on events that other people can only dream of being part of, and with things like the early rounds of the FA Cup we get to really make a difference to clubs that would otherwise never get any exposure on BBC platforms. It all makes me so proud that I get to play even a small part in it.

“My first major event working for BBC Sport was working in the web gallery for the Rio Olympics, where I came up with a plan of how we could stream up to 24 simultaneous web streams. I remember realising then how intense a live gallery environment can be”

Since starting the role I’ve been lucky enough to work on multi-screen Formula One coverage, eight Wimbledon’s, every Olympics, Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games since 2016, Challenge Cup, FA Cup including directing highlights matches for Match of the Day, and every sport in between. I’ll never take for granted how lucky I am to do what I do for a living.

BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk says: “I’ve always known I wanted to work in live sport”

How did you first find out about TV broadcasting as a career?

I first started out at Huddersfield University doing a BA Hons in Drama and Media Studies, but as I got part way through my first year I quickly realised that the Media and Television Production course was the one for me. I was incredibly lucky to have Andy Fox as my year tutor at the time, a former location sound man with the ability to coach people into making their own luck, and someone who believed in me more than I ever will myself from day one.

Why sports broadcasting? I grew up in Wigan where rugby league is everything.

What has been your career path within TV?

I ended up doing an extra year to top up the extra TV production modules, and for my final year project was given Huddersfield Town Football Club as a client where I was tasked with producing a series of programmes for their match day ringmain. Andy as always really pushed me as a producer, forcing me to hold my peers to account for delivering their elements of the project. I hated this it at the time, I was quite happy finishing edits while other people went home for Christmas, but to this day it was such a valuable lesson in pulling together and motivating a team. Without doubt the experience I got in my final year landed me my first TV role, and some of the lessons learned at university have helped me in so many situations over the years too.

What was your first job, how did you get it, what did it involve, and how did you feel about it?

Not long after I finished university a producer job came up at local TV station Channel m. Now I may have been green to the industry, but I wasn’t daft enough to think I was going to walk into a producer role, so instead I used the opportunity. I did my homework on their other local content programmes, put together research files and stats packs for the main sports teams they followed every week, made sure I was armed with questions for the right people, and went to an interview that I knew I wasn’t going to get. I think it might have been two weeks later that a researcher role came up, and I was offered the job without an interview as an also suitable. If you haven’t heard of Channel m it was the definition of a moment in time. There were a few token ‘adults’ working there, who mostly left a group of early 20’s graduates loose on a TV station, and it was the best time to work in Manchester city centre. Sadly the channel itself no longer exists, but we really are still ‘everywhere’ (the slogan was ‘Channel m, everywhere’) and there is still no better feeling than bumping into a former Channel m’er on a major event.

While I was at Channel m, I was asked to go down to Edgley Park with a DV Cam deck to take a match feed from BBC Sport. I remember to this day setting eyes on my first outside broadcast truck, and I had been given the contact name for the director Ken Burton. He must have seen something in my eyes just peeping through the door of the truck, and as if he didn’t have enough to do he invited me in and showed me around. I think that’s when I properly caught the bug, and the day I decided I was going to be a director for BBC Sport.

What other jobs have you had that moved you along into sports broadcasting?

I was always on a contract at Channel m not staff, and unfortunately it all went a bit wrong and they had to have a major cull in 2009 which is when I ended up leaving. I started looking at what other programmes were around similar to those I had been working on, and noted that Code XIII that we produced had a lot of similarities to The Super League Show. I trawled through the credits, and emailed the executive producer Charles Runcie to ask how you go about working on the programme, who told me that it was an independent production company who produced it for BBC Sport and that I should get in touch with them.

I applied for a job at said production company, got an assistant producer role, then got back in touch with Charles to say, ‘what next?’. I remember meeting up with him the office at BBC Leeds and he said, ‘what’s next is we need to get you over to Salford’. He introduced me to a few people, and for a good few years I did freelance work on autocue, newswire, and then picked up a regular couple of days on the deployment desk at North West Tonight.

I basically used this time to learn everything about studio production, niche BBC systems, operations, delivery methods, outside broadcasts, and importantly I used this time to apply for internal BBC roles. I also spent a lot of this time getting ‘real world experience’, working on motorsports events, filming and editing corporates etc, the usual earning your stripes freelance gigs.

One of my favourite non-sport roles was working as a production co-ordinator on BBC Breakfast, where I was lucky enough to look after the general election red sofa roadshow. I managed to get a replica sofa made up, and worked with a small team to tour the country with a different OB every Friday. It was hard work but we had a lot of fun and I made some amazing friends during this time.

My parting gift to Breakfast was getting the programme its first Albert+ certification which I believe was the first news programme to have the certification. Apologies to all the other co-ordinators across the industry who are now living with the paperwork that comes with that particular legacy, but it’s so important that we make sustainable programming.

How did you get your current job role?

At the same time as I applied for the BBC Breakfast job which was my first full time contract role, I also applied for a job as an assistant producer in BBC Sport working for the multimedia team. Honestly I knew this was a really competitive environment, but as I mentioned earlier it was always where I wanted to be so I had to give it a shot. I remember really enjoying the interview which was a first, and a couple of days later I got a phone call to say I didn’t get the role, but that they hadn’t recruited anyone with live gallery experience so would I be interested in freelance gallery shifts.

I ran this past my PM on Breakfast who was happy so long as it didn’t interfere with my main job, and after over a year of freelancing the job came up again and I was lucky enough to get the full time contract. I was really torn at the time as I loved my job on Breakfast, but by this point I was also exhausted trying to do both and had worked so hard to get in at BBC Sport that I knew what I needed to do.

Why did you go for it?

I’ve always known I wanted to work in live sport, and although this particular role was a mixture of live and short form video content, I knew the opportunities were there to work in the gallery on major events and that if I stuck with it long enough I would get chance to earn my stripes. My first major event working for BBC Sport was working in the web gallery for the Rio Olympics, where I came up with a plan of how we could stream up to 24 simultaneous web streams. I remember realising then how intense a live gallery environment can be, but to be fair 24 simultaneous streams is more than I will ever need to manage ever again so it was a great learning curve.

Around a year after I joined the multimedia team there was a restructure which meant that there was a ‘short form video’ and a ‘live’ team, obviously I stuck with the live side which is exactly where I needed to be to get into directing which thankfully has worked out.

BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk hard at work

What was hard about getting the job, learning the role, and keeping it?

The thing about the multimedia gallery is you’re not just managing a programme, you’re managing multiple streams, where it’s essential to understand the end to end processes of streaming embedders, encoders, streaming profiles, PIDs etc. Essentially you’re working in an MCR and a gallery, it’s a really, really technical role where you need to be fully across the editorial and technical at the same time, usually doing more roles than you would ever be expected to in a TV gallery. Thankfully I’ve always been a systems nerd so the environment plays to my strengths.

What’s the hardest thing about it?

Like all jobs in TV it’s really competitive and you don’t always hear about opportunities that come up. I’ve been in the team since January 2016 and it’s only the past four years really that I’ve got to a point where I have proven myself enough to be given opportunities in TV sport, having worked up the ranks directing major events for the Digital Live team. I think part of these opportunities finally coming up was down to me completing a multicamera directing course which I guess makes you officially qualified, but I am also very lucky to have some excellent mentor’s in TV sport, in particular Andrew Swift who regularly pushes me for opportunities, and importantly takes the time to watch my output and give me feedback that I can build on which is so important.

What do you enjoy about it?

Honestly we have the best team in the business. We produce programmes that stand up to the output coming from TV sport, with a fraction of the people and resources. I’m so lucky to have such an amazing work family, it can be hard especially when you’re working weeks at a time on major events being away from family for long periods of time, but we’re all really good at looking out for each other and keeping each other going, I genuinely can’t remember the last time we had a crossed word even during a major event.

Read the second part of this profile: Never give up – Part 2: Staying persistent and ignoring imposter syndrome with BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk