2016 CA Summit - New Skills at Work: Preparing a 21st Century Entertainment Workforce

Sector Overview and Workforce Demographics

• The Milken Institute and JPMorgan Chase's "New Skills at Work" initiative is conducting research on the 21st-century entertainment and creative industry, focusing on skill gaps and the shift toward digital platforms.
• While the creative sector in Southern California has shown strong job growth despite recession dips, the primary challenge is identified as an "access gap" rather than a technical skills gap.
• Current demographic data for the Southern California entertainment workforce remains skewed at approximately 75% white and 65% male, prompting concerns about diversity and pipeline cultivation.
• The study aims to profile the "creative core" of jobs, aligning education and training with occupations that will exist tomorrow, specifically focusing on data literacy and cross-platform distribution skills.

Technical Training and Emerging Roles

• Jillian Arnold (IATSE Local 695/600) notes that the industry requires a "threefold" training model: academic partnerships with universities, in-field mentorship via seasoned union members, and new specialized ventures like her startup, Mission Critical Media.
• Mission Critical Media was founded to teach video engineers how to handle data in high-pressure live TV environments, focusing on codecs, hardware, and transmission workflows that change with every production.
• Panelists agree that the speed of technological change makes it difficult to articulate specific curriculum needs, as software, platforms, and workflows evolve faster than traditional academic syllabi can adapt.
• Data literacy is identified as a critical gap; the ability to interpret audience data, adjust creative cycles based on metrics, and manage digital workflows is becoming as essential as technical production skills.

Employer Perspectives on Hiring and Pipeline

• BuzzFeed Entertainment Group (President Zay Frank) prioritizes hiring "multi-hyphenates" with broad curiosity over specialized credentials, valuing the ability to abstract basic media principles across rapidly emerging platforms like TikTok or Instagram Stories.
• BuzzFeed has shifted its hiring signals, placing greater value on prior company experience and brand reputation on resumes rather than specific academic certifications or licensure.
• Big Frame (COO Chris Irwin) observes that the "personality-driven" nature of digital content has collapsed traditional development cycles from years to hours, requiring talent to function as the entire production, marketing, and distribution engine.
• Big Frame and its parent company Awesomeness TV have hired approximately 800 full-time "flex contractors," indicating a growing demand for hybrid roles that blend creative, technical, and business skills.
• Employers like Big Frame have utilized non-traditional pipelines, such as training film professionals through 3-month intensive programs (e.g., General Assembly) to become web/mobile engineers, citing this as a "win" for both the company and the upskilled workers.

Educational Initiatives and Strategic Partnerships

• Santa Monica College is launching a new $100 million interdisciplinary facility co-housing KCRW, film, digital media, and journalism, and has recently received approval to offer the state's first bachelor's degree in Interaction Design.
• The college developed a "Promo Pathway" certificate in partnership with the television promotions industry, resulting in a program where primarily Latino and African American students secure immediate employment producing on-air promos.
• The "LA High Tech Initiative" involves a $2 billion state investment and a consortium including 8 community colleges, 40 high schools, and major employers (including JPMorgan and AWS) to align K-12 curriculum with higher education and workforce needs.
• Santa Monica College Dean Patricia Ramos highlights that the biggest barrier to aligning curriculum is the lack of consistent engagement from employers who find it difficult to define fluid, interdisciplinary job roles in one-page documents.
• The industry is urged to move beyond "onesie-twosie" internship programs and establish deeper, long-term relationships with community colleges to sustain pipelines, particularly for a workforce that is 70% Latino in the K-12 demographic but underrepresented in high-skill jobs.

Diversity, Equity, and Future Trends

• Panelists emphasize that "media literacy" now includes digital communication platforms; diversity initiatives must start at the middle school level to capture the creative potential of a majority-minority region.
• The democratization of content creation (e.g., smartphones, social media) is expected to diversify the talent pool, with platforms like YouTube hosting 500+ million creators globally, representing a new "melting pot" of talent.
• Union representatives note a rising number of women in executive and technical leadership roles (e.g., sound mixing, camera operations), though specific fields like video engineering remain male-dominated.
• A significant hurdle to entry is identified as the cost of living in Los Angeles; panelists stress that paid apprenticeships and internships are vital to ensure that diverse talent can afford to live and work in the region without financial precarity.
• Experts warn against assuming a "long-tail" revolution where all individual creators succeed; instead, the future points toward a model combining relative autonomy with centralized resources, data reinforcement, and team-based production optimization.
• The convergence of tech and entertainment ("Silicon Beach") suggests that traditional verticalization is dissolving, requiring a workforce capable of operating across boundaries between technology companies and media studios.