The ageing gap: why broadcast needs to hand over the keys

Count the people under thirty the next time you are in a control room or a technical meeting. It will not take long.

The engineers who built our facilities are retiring, and too few young people are taking their place. I see it as one of the biggest risks for our industry, bigger than any technology choice we make this decade.

The issues

The knowledge is leaving. As early as 2011, 42% of US broadcast engineers were 56 or older. That generation is retiring now, and with them goes the knowledge of why our facilities were built the way they were.
The job has doubled. IP, ST 2110, cloud and software-defined production mean we need people who understand both broadcast and IT. That profile is rare, and big tech competes for it.
We are invisible. Young people know the creator on YouTube, not the engineer who makes the broadcast work.
The ways in are narrow. Too many roles still expect a specific degree and years of experience before anyone is trusted with something real.
Learning on the job is disappearing. Teams are leaner and automation removes the entry-level work where people used to learn.

Mentorship is the real transfer

Documentation and training courses help, but broadcast knowledge is mostly judgement: what to do when it fails during a live show. That only transfers person to person.

So mentorship should be a deliberate part of every project, not a favour. Put a junior next to a senior on every renewal, every tender, every go-live. Make it part of the senior’s role, and give them the time for it.

Trust them, and give them ownership

Mentorship alone is not enough. Young engineers stay when they own something.

Give them a real piece of the project, not the leftovers. A workflow, a subsystem, a vendor relationship.
Let them make decisions, and accept that some will be different from ours. Often they are better: they grew up with software, networks and cloud.
Let them be visible. Put them in front of the customer, on the panel, in the project review.
Have their back when something goes wrong. That is where trust is built.

The generation that joins now will run our facilities in ten years. They should not have to wait ten years to be trusted.

The industry is already moving

The good news is that there are initiatives worth joining:

RISE runs free mentoring programmes in several regions for women working in, or wanting to join, broadcast technology.
Rise Academy reaches young people before they choose a career. Its summer schools let 16 to 18 year olds build a live TV studio and an outside broadcast set-up, with broadcasters and vendors supplying the people and equipment.
Broadcasters, service companies and trade bodies like the IABM are adding apprenticeships, graduate programmes and training that bridges broadcast and IT.

What is missing is scale. Become a mentor for RISE, support a Rise Academy day, or offer a placement. A few hours a year per company makes a real difference.

In short

The people who built our facilities are leaving, and automation will not replace their judgement. Mentor the next generation on purpose, trust them early, and give them real ownership. If we love this industry, we have to hand over the keys, and start now.

How do you bring young talent into your teams? I’d like to hear what works for you.

Further reading