Never give up – Part 2: Staying persistent and ignoring imposter syndrome with BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk
Vicky Monk, BBC Sport assistant producer and director within the digital live team
BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk, who is an assistant producer and director within the digital live team, has always had a ‘what next?’ attitude to her career, and it has served her well. She believes women in live sport broadcast should avoid ‘wing clipper’s’ as well as imposter syndrome, as hard as that might be at the time, and push forward with kindness and enthusiasm. Split into two parts, part two looks at Monk’s advice to other women looking to get into sports broadcasting, and the challenges and technologies that make it interesting.
What advice would you give to other women looking to move into a role in sports broadcasting like your own?
Don’t give up! I’ve been pretty persistent in knowing what job I wanted, and yes I’ve had people looking out for me, backing me, pushing and supporting me, but I’ve always had a ‘what next?’ approach from my early days of working in the industry. It’s because of that attitude that I’ve been lucky enough to get the support from other people which has lead to the opportunities.
It’s also really important to be kind, stay humble, and always make an effort to earn people’s respect, don’t ever try to command it. If you can build a team who want to do a good job for you then you’ll always be able to deliver a better production than if the whole of the VT team are terrified of you, and if everyone around you enjoys working in the team then you’re all going to have much more fun at work. And it is fun work!
“I think the nature of live sport means it’s always going to be very competitive, and it can be very easy to get drawn into the need for everything to be perfect all the time which as you know, live TV just isn’t”
Oh and number one rule in my gallery, always be kind to the runners! You might be the first person they have ever met who works in TV and they’re probably terrified to even be in the environment, so make time to show them the ropes, and make sure they get as much experience of different roles as they can, you never know they might even be your programme editor one day!
What’s the coolest thing you’ve worked on in the course of your career?
The Olympics, Wimbledon, it’s all pretty cool isn’t it?!
The standout for me has to be the last Olympics in Paris last summer, where I directed two weeks of Olympics Extra, the iPlayer channel that ran parallel to BBC ‘s network coverage.
We had some amazing moments over the two weeks with an absolute stand out team of incredibly talented individuals, but I was particularly proud of how we covered the Olympic skateboarding and the post race live we did with Andy Macdonald, our 52 year old Olympic Skateboarding Brit.
Working with the guys on site we were able to co-ordinate getting the co-commentator to join Tim for some post race analysis to give us time to grab Andy for a chat, and we nailed it. The interview was lovely, his excitement of being on the BBC just radiated through the screen, and it just captured everything that the Olympics is about it was a proper moment.
BBC Sport’s Vicky Monk says: “I often find it hard to move on from small mistakes that I’ve made that the viewer would never even notice, and I’m talking clipping a slight shot change on an opener or coming up sequence which is silly but I’m a bit of a perfectionist”
What challenges have you faced over the course of your career, and how did you get you get past those challenges?
Imposter syndrome, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about…
I’ve never been confident, in fact far from it if I’m honest, and when you’re still working your way up it can be quite easy to get into your own head if you’re not careful. The hardest thing of all is when you finally build your confidence after doubting yourself and then you come across a wing clipper, and you have to start all over again just hoping that person, who probably has no idea what they have done, will be kinder next time.
One example that I’ll never forget being sat in the commentators’ green room at Wimbledon with the other directors and talent, it was my first time as one of the world feed match directors and I was sat wondering what on earth I was doing there. The honest answer is I was there because people believed in me knew that I could do it, but I’m not sure I did!
I had done a couple of days of the tournament, started to feel like I was doing a good job, then encountered one camera operator who in fairness knew their position that they do day in, day out on tennis, but they didn’t cut me any slack at all when I was asking for something slightly different from them. In my defence I asked a few directors afterwards and they all told me that I just shouldn’t have put up with it, but that’s just not a very me approach I like to be collaborative wherever I can.
They probably didn’t mean to, but they completely threw my confidence. I remember being sat quiet in the commentary room again wondering if I could actually get through the next week and a half, and thankfully I knew Carol Kirkwood from my time on breakfast who must have noticed I was uncharacteristically quiet. She came over and started chatting to me, then made a point of introducing me to everyone else who walked in through the door like the wonderful human being she is which really helped to build me back up. It just goes to show how important it is to be kind and make friends in this industry.
What’s the most challenging thing about working in live sport today, or generally, and why?
I think the nature of live sport means it’s always going to be very competitive, and it can be very easy to get drawn into the need for everything to be perfect all the time which as you know, live TV just isn’t. I often find it hard to move on from small mistakes that I’ve made that the viewer would never even notice, and I’m talking clipping a slight shot change on an opener or coming up sequence which is silly but I’m a bit of a perfectionist which isn’t always a bad thing. Anyway I’m sure it can get very annoying for my co-workers when I’m constantly dissecting what’s already been broadcast, sorry team!
The technologies used in sports broadcasting have evolved rapidly over recent years. What for you in your day to day job is the most exciting, and also what is the biggest gamechanger for this industry overall?
The technology has evolved rapidly over the past five years, and working in the team that I do I’m very fortunate that we often get a first glimpse of what new technology is out there to give us an idea of how we can incorporate it into productions.
I’ll be honest I don’t love the jeopardy that often comes with bonded internet delivery, but it has gone a long way to reduce the delivery costs for sports and governing bodies that wouldn’t necessarily be able to afford to have satellite delivery, which in turn has made a lot of sport more accessible to the wider audience which has to be a good thing.
I think as an industry we need to be careful not to compromise quality as there does seem to be a bit of an acceptance that internet delivery equals lower quality production, but I think this approach has slowly started to pivot with more MCR’s requesting SRT delivery for higher profile events, and a lot of providers favouring properly bonded delivery methods over relying solely on cellular data.
What do you think has been a particularly exciting or cutting edge thing in sports broadcasting?
One that has to go down as ‘best use of technology’ is when we adapted a remote production model so that we could fully produce early round FA Cup programmes remotely, using multiple instances of Vmix built on AWS servers, with everyone working remotely including sound, technical, graphics and commentary.
I’d already been working with Ryan McKenna who at the time was a product manager in Scotland, he had been working on something called RowZed, a HTML based graphics software that was designed to be user friendly enough for editorial staff to operate, and also offer a cost effective solution for live graphics.
When lockdown happened, there was no live sport, and even as restrictions started to lift you couldn’t go into work unless something was rights dependant which our early rounds FA Cup coverage was not.
Ryan called me to ask what he could do to help with remote production, so between a small group of us we set about coming up with a plan of how we could use Vmix call and AWS to do live commentary over single camera football, with everyone working remotely. We pulled it off, to the point that on one programme we had a commentator in Northern Ireland, a graphics operator in Scotland, a co-commentator in Wales and the rest of us scattered across England.
I feel like this was a great achievement and a huge team effort given it was such short notice. It was so important that we got to bring back live football for people who were still isolating at home before any of us were allowed to go back into the office, and by delivering the early rounds of the FA Cup it meant that money was still going into lower league football at a time when the clubs needed it the most.