When you perform close up for lay people, the spectators sometimes get the chance to chat with you or ask questions. If they’ve really enjoyed the magic, one of the comments they often make is something along the lines of, “Oh, that was brilliant, you should be on television.” Or they ask, “Wow, amazing! Have you ever been on television?”
The assumption behind these comments or questions is that they believe that anyone who is any good at magic would automatically aspire to appear on TV, that the small screen (there’s a misnomer these days with the huge size of most people’s sets!) only features the best people and that therefore you must want to be on there.
Even amongst magicians, the kudos that is afforded to anyone who gets to perform on TV is almost universal, and some performers will ’big up’ even the briefest of appearances in their publicity when touting for lectures or convention appearances.
But is being on TV really still the big thing that it was in earlier times? After all, top magicians use their online media presence to put themselves repeatedly in front of thousands of viewers, and can manipulate their personal image and present themselves exactly how they want to. It provides a perfect showcase for magicians to demonstrate their skills, and the footage can be watched again and again by those who are interested.
Compare this to TV where the performer is usually totally in the hands of the directors of the programmes. They decide which shots or angles to use, when they want cut aways, how much they are actually going to broadcast and where the edits will come. They look at it all from a purely TV perspective, not normally with a view to making the magician look good.
The results of this we have seen all too often. Some acts have their material virtually butchered and the performer sometimes comes out of it badly. There are very few entertainers who have the clout to dictate how their magic will look, and so appearances on TV can be as much of a hinderance to a career as a bonus.
In financial terms, it’s also hard to make money out of appearing on TV. One off opportunities are often virtually unpaid, particularly on local stations, so unless you get the chance to have several appearances either on your own show or as a regular guest on someone else’s programme, the chances of receiving a decent income are small.
Then if you start to appear on TV and your profile is raised, the fees for your live appearances suddenly need to change. Derren Brown has told the story of how his agent shot his live appearance fee up following his TV work, but at that stage Derren was not famous enough to be accepted at these inflated rates, and so work dried up for a while.
So in my view TV is rather a mixed blessing. Yes, success on BGT might catapult a new name into the limelight and kick start a successful career, but it’s not a given. I would suggest that building a following on social media might be a more controlled way of creating a reputation, if it’s done right, than TV can ever offer. So the answer to “have you ever been on TV?” should perhaps be, “why?”