Sacrificial merit: Working time, commitment and inequality in UK television production

Research on media and creative labour has long shown that television work combines creative fulfilment with insecurity, long hours and unequal access. This article argues that excessive working time matters not only because it damages wellbeing, but because it becomes an evaluative mechanism through which professional worth is judged. In doing so, it helps explain why overwork remains difficult to challenge. Drawing on 40 semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations from a UK returning drama production, alongside participants’ accounts of wider television work, the article introduces the concept of sacrificial merit to describe a labour culture in which the willingness and capacity to absorb unreasonable working demands is interpreted as evidence of professionalism, commitment and suitability. Participants described working days of up to 24 hours, unpaid preparatory labour, missed breaks and schedules that undermined care, health and career sustainability, while workers were expected to demonstrate commitment through availability and endurance. In project-based labour markets structured by freelance insecurity, informal reputation and discretionary hiring, sacrifice becomes an indicator of employability, converting organisational demands into apparently individual evidence of professional worth. The article extends debates on good work, creative labour and television production by identifying a mechanism through which workplace evaluation reproduces inequality.