As we all know, PR is a pretty broad industry, with scope to work in just about any field imaginable, whether it's tech, fashion or consumer. For me, it's always been entertainment, what better way to put all those hours spent watching endless amounts of TV series and reading which celeb is dating which into practice? Well, sort of. On my placement year, I managed to bag myself a job at UKTV in London where I worked with the likes of Dynamo, and it only confirmed that Television was where I wanted to be.
12 months later, I found myself back in Leeds living the student life and between the nights out and days spent in the library (not the pub) I got in contact with the lovely people at Emmerdale to arrange a placement. Starting as a straight two week placement and continuing as one day a week, I have had so much fun already. The best thing I find about PR is that every day is different to the next and working in TV makes it just that bit more fun.
So what do you do as a TV publicist? Well, the basics of the job include writing up programme information to send out to all the TV mags which means putting your feet up with a brew and reading a week’s worth of scripts, swotting up on all the juicy storylines before they're announced – and for any Emmerdale fans, it's getting good!
The press office there work so closely with the cast, practically acting as agents, meaning the cast are always popping in for a quick chat between scenes, so naturally I had to play it cool for the first week. Every day is different, one morning I've been on a photoshoot with the Sun TV Mag, doing test shots for the photographer - turns out I'm not much of a natural in front of the camera - and then the afternoon could be spent in the village watching the team film the scenes and getting episodic images for each episode to send out to all the picture desks. Taking calls from journalists and pitching interviews to TV and press are a given, so it's essential to be confident on the phone and super organised to arrange the casts schedules but seeing your work in a magazine or on a show that you've arranged makes it all worth it.
If you're still unsure as to what you're going to do after you graduate and you haven't quite found a sector that fits you, then why not try entertainment? If you're a bit of a box set nerd, love keeping up to date with all entertainment media and you're a bit of an organising freak, then you'll most probably love TV PR. It can be long hours – even after 5pm you can be getting calls about an actor’s personal life, but the people you work with, events you go to (with free booze) and the perks you get definitely make it all worth it.
Abi Johnson is a final year PR with Marketing student with plans to move to London this summer to – fingers and toes crossed – work for a TV network. She has previously worked in various sectors from fashion, lifestyle, public sector to eventually landing in entertainment at UKTV and now ITV Yorkshire.
@AbiJohnsonPR
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