While most of us associate a television position as something glamorous, these individuals would tell us a different story. These are the workers who go home soaked to the bone and then end up eating chicken soup for the next week. They are the people who have bullets zipping over their heads just so they can show us what a real war is like from a first-person perspective. And they would not change jobs for the world.
While these may be the dirtiest TV jobs, they are also the most exciting and rewarding ones for the people who choose this industry. We all know about the adrenaline junkies that surf big waves or jump out of airplanes, but while these situations are definitely risky, they are performed for the most part by trained athletes who know every technique and who are prepared for just about any and all circumstances that may occur if the ideal situation is not happening. That is not quite the case with the dirty TV guy; he is more than likely an average Joe like the rest of us and is merely doing his job. After all, someone has to do it.
If you undertake a career is this field you may very well find yourself in one of these positions. How would you like to be the guy who captured the images of a winning battle or the woman who was caught in the eye of a storm? To be able to get in there and get the job done under those conditions has to be an unbelievable experience. You are experiencing something that not many people have the courage or ability to do.
Make no mistake about it, this job will require courage. It is not a normal person who offers to walk into a war zone armed with nothing more than a camera and a zoom lens. Sanity is also a question mark for those individuals who choose to stand in the middle of a storm that is smacking the coast with 150-mile-per-hour winds. But if you are that guy nobody is going to tell you anything that will make you stop.
Just like any position, this requires a skill set and an ability to perform that not many achieve. You have to be fearless, or at least be able to control your fears and have a steady hand in the most trying of situations.
There are many positions that can be categorized as the ''dirty positions in television.'' When you think of jobs for TV productions, you still have to account for technicians, reporters, electricians, etc. While you may only be thinking of the reporter in front of the camera and the person holding the camera, there are many more people staring danger in the face. But in addition to the dangerous jobs, there are many fun jobs in TV.
While you may not normally consider anyone involved in sports broadcasting to be down and dirty, think about it. The elements can be brutal sometimes and we have all watched a game that took place in a blizzard while we were gratefully bundled up in our warm homes.
Whether it is thrills you are seeking or just a flat out challenge, television offers plenty of dirty jobs for TV in every market. If you see it in broadcasting, there is someone behind the scenes going home in a worse condition then they left their house that morning. You can choose to play it safe or get in on the fun and go after one of these challenging-yet-rewarding positions. Look at is an opportunity to do everything you wanted to do as a kid or crazy teenager but were not allowed to do. Now all you have to do is convince your spouse that it is the right thing to do.
