New Year at Sky News was the longest day of my life. I started one shift at 1330 to Vision Mix the show till 1900. I then grabbed an hour or so of sleep before starting another shift at 2300 to Direct overnight, which then finished at 0600 on New Years Day. Not to be defeated I stayed to Vision Mix the Sunrise shift 0600 to 1000. Three shifts in 24hrs. It was a killer. And I must add that all of those shifts went without horrific mistakes or on-air problems. Yes, I was a bit delirious when I got to bed but I slept like a baby!
As crazy as double and treble shifts might sound, for someone who only a few months ago went freelance it was an opportunity not to be missed; several shifts at DOUBLE freelance pay. The back-breaker was the fact that three of these shifts were all within 24hrs.
Some may see this as greed, and I can relate to that if I was going out and just blowing the cash on junk. But I wasn’t. Being new to freelancing it was an opportunity to earn an amount of cash to set aside for when the freelance work doesn’t become available. This period of crazy work allowed me to build that protection into the ‘company’ and stop me from having money problems.
Mercian Media 