Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Elaine Bedell distinctly remembers an early-career break at the BBC, as a junior researcher on Radio 4\u2019s flagship consumer affairs programme, You and Yours. She was in her early twenties and, on the day of the live broadcast, both the producer and assistant producer called in sick. Bedell was \u201cthrown in at the deep end\u201d and asked to take charge.She pays tribute to the \u201cincredibly supportive technical team\u201d who helped her that day, but also recalls: \u201cThe thrill of coming off air and knowing that I had pulled it off was like a high that I had never had before. And I just realised that I wanted more and more of that adrenaline\u201d. Live broadcast and live entertainment would supply that rush, she realised.Since then, Bedell, now 63, has set up, run and sold her own production company and held senior roles at both the BBC and ITV, working on the commissioning and production of some of their best known shows, from Britain\u2019s Got Talent to Strictly Come Dancing.Now, as chief executive of London\u2019s Southbank Centre, she still likes to sit \u201cin Row T of the Royal Festival Hall hearing Beethoven\u2019s Ninth\u201d or to relish a live performance of something new to her in one of the three venues in the cele\u00adbrated arts complex by the Thames.In media and the arts, a hard line is often drawn between \u201ccreatives\u201d and \u201cexecutives\u201d. Bedell says: \u201cI am absolutely both.\u201dLive radio and television are \u201call about teamwork\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009and I thrived in that environment. But equally, increasingly, I was leader of those teams, and that requires fast decision-making, a sort of resilience and robustness, which I think has also stood me in good stead for this [role].\u201dAs an undergraduate studying English at Leeds university, she won a BBC prize for best student-produced documentary, which included a crash course in production. \u201cThat just opened my eyes,\u201d she says. \u201cI met so many extraordinary people, and lots of them [were] women who were already at the BBC.\u201dA campaign of approaching people in broadcasting and making applications eventually won her a full-time role at the BBC, where, again, she was inspired by \u201cextraordinary women, doing extra\u00adordinary things\u201d in the documentary features department, which included Woman\u2019s Hour.Career plan or go with the flow?Is she a career opportunist or a planner? Definitely the former, Bedell says.In fact, she is \u201cslightly suspicious\u201d of young people who have rigid career goals. \u201cIt\u2019s really quite important that you\u2019re flexible in your outlook when you\u2019re starting out,\u201d she believes.There was, however, one other clear aim: \u201cI knew I wanted to be a mum, and I had my children quite young, so I also needed to juggle and I needed to work out how I was going to juggle.\u201dThat meant ruling out jobs that involved a lot of travel, for instance, and looking for ways to be home for bath time some evenings every week.After founding production company Watchmaker, she sometimes brought her second child into the office and put her in a Moses basket under the desk.However, as a mentor now of younger female colleagues, she accepts that there are dangers in inadvertently setting examples. Colleagues should set \u201ctheir own ground rules\u201d, she says. \u201cMany young women look at the choices that I make and think the choices are mad.\u201d As a leader, she says it is important \u201cto help them figure out their own way of making it work\u201d.One strong piece of advice to all women is \u201cnot to be too hard on yourself and not to overthink things.\u201dPrepared to pivot, and pivot againSometimes, she points out, you may have to pivot. In 2002, having sold Watchmaker to Chrysalis Group, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, as managing director of the theatre company\u2019s new commercial arm, with a goal of generating revenue from publishing and retail, to invest in its productions. She quickly realised that she missed broadcast media and returned to the BBC, eventually becoming commissioning editor for factual entertainment, such as The One Show, and overall controller of entertainment.Bedell\u2019s second big career pivot was in 2017, when she was lured to the Southbank Centre after seven years at ITV as head of entertainment and comedy. The role involved leading the arts centre through the challenges of Covid and cuts in government funding.In broadcasting, she was used to working with relatively lavish budgets for the most watched live shows on television. The Southbank Centre is in a different corner of the creative sector. After examining its relatively limited finances, she concluded \u201cthere must be the most extraordinarily talen\u00adted staff base here to be producing what they produce on this\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009quite constrained budget. I just thought it must be the most dynamic and creative place\u201d.The constraints mean she has also had to turn her commercial and persuasive talents to negotiating with public funders, such as Arts Council England, and to raising money from private philanthropists. She is confident, though, that \u201cwhatever new [UK] government we get, [it will] recognise the absolute value and importance of funding an organisation like Southbank Centre\u201d.As an \u201calways on\u201d executive, Bedell felt ready to lead an always-on arts centre when the opportunity came along in 2017, but did she have to emphasise or play down parts of her media career to secure the job? True to her own advice, she did not overthink it. \u201cIn all honesty,\u201d she replies, \u201cI was pretty confident that I was the right candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Elaine Bedell distinctly remembers an early-career break at the BBC, as a junior researcher on Radio 4\u2019s flagship consumer affairs programme, You and Yours. She was in her early twenties and, on the day of the live broadcast, both the producer and assistant producer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-116224","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116225,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116224\/revisions\/116225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}