We started out very small with vans carrying our TV equipment to race meetings and other events. Now we run some of the biggest high-tech outside broadcast (OB) trucks in Europe. Of course, that has taken time, and there have been many twists and turns along the way.

I was born in the 1960s into an economy that was improving. I had a lovely, carefree upbringing where key things were important: honesty, hard work, play or recreation, and religion. And they all took priorities at different times during the week.

We were on a farm, so we all just got stuck in. On the weekend or on holidays, you were expected to pull your weight. There were three generations living together in our house, and our social life was very much as a family unit within the community. We saw our parents involved in various committees and organizations, and as soon as we were old enough, we followed suit. We repeated what we saw from our parents. Crucially, at that time in Ireland, Sunday was a no-work day, with mass in the morning and family time after that. And very rarely did my parents work after 6 in the evening. Mind you, they were often up before 6 in the morning.

Our company is now based very close to where I grew up. We are very proud of our little village, Bartlemy in County Cork. We have a population of about 900. I met my husband, Bart, when we were both involved in amateur drama in our communities. And together, after we got married, we set about building our independent television outside broadcast business. Prior to that, only our state broadcasters had OB trucks. So, we were the pioneers of the independent industry in Ireland. I suppose nowadays you’d say we were the disruptors. We questioned how things were done. We were trying to find a different way of doing things, testing our philosophy against the market norms.

We had very similar backgrounds. Community, family and environment were very important to both of us, but, of course, we had very different characters and skills. But crucially, neither of us had any experience in TV. So, as we set sail in our married life, we set about growing our small communications business. Bart brought the technical expertise, and I looked after the boring things like finance and logistics. We ran the business from home and reared our two daughters, who, in time, joined us. We’ve developed from that small beginning a high-tech world-renowned TV broadcasting business. We are very proud of our roots. And despite so many people telling us when we were starting out, “You’re never going to make it unless you go to the big city,” we stayed put.

And 40 years later, we are still running our business from Bartlemy. When you live on a farm, you just experience self-sufficiency the whole time without even realizing it. We were growing our own food. If something broke down, we figured out how to fix it. And we brought that very same thinking to our business. Bart and I designed our OB trucks. We knew how every piece of equipment in them worked. And we sought out like-minded people to help form a team of can-do people who were as committed as we were. Many of those people have stayed with us over the years, and they’ve played a hugely important role in the growth of our business.

We have a team of like-minded, highly skilled, trustworthy people to continue to grow TVM and to allow for succession. We have about 70 full-time staff, access to a pool of around 200 freelancers, and, over the course of a year, we cover 400 race meetings and 300 other events. Each event has to be crewed with maybe eight or 10 people for smaller events and up to 100 for bigger events, depending on the size of the event we’re covering and the requirements of production. People are the key to the success of any business. And we have a saying: “It’s the people who matter. Anyone can buy the equipment.”

When we say our people are important, we mean it. It is not lip service. As we expanded our team, we always maintained the family values that were core to our beliefs. We focus on bringing people on the journey with us and learning from them, recognizing their skills, their talents and their challenges, and supporting them. The lifestyle on the road of TV outside broadcasting is pretty antisocial. The events we cover, by definition, are the big occasions, the sporting event or the music event that’s on the weekend or on over the holidays. We try to bring as much camaraderie and support to each other as we can when we are on these journeys, not just working together but socializing and dining together in the evenings. I suppose you could say we are like a big circus, moving from A to B with several teams on the road at the same time.

Our day-to-day bread and butter, for the most part, is on the island of Ireland, covering various sports and music and so on, and some of the companies that we’ve worked with have been with us for over 30 years. There are plenty of other suppliers on the island, so we had to have something special to ensure that our customers kept repeating their business to us. It’s taken for granted that everybody has the latest technology, so what do we do to stand out from the crowd? Primarily, it’s our customer service coupled with our financial offering. You cannot underestimate the value of a client being able to pick up the phone 24/7 when they want to discuss a possible project, an approach they might make to a broadcaster or some issue that they are experiencing.

Over the years Bart and I have worked hard at building and keeping those relationships strong, and our strategy is to support our clients in delivering their program, to be flexible in our approach and to offer the very best value for the money that we can. The Irish language station, TG4, was launched in 1986, and one of the aims of TG4 was to provide employment for people in the Irish-speaking parts of the country and to make programs for them and by them that were relevant to their lives. So, naturally, that meant that young people from all these areas had to learn about TV production.

So, we provided our OB units and team leaders to work alongside some trainers in the art of live TV broadcasting. For several weeks over the previous winter, we were resident at a studio in Galway from Monday to Friday, and on the weekend, we headed off, covering our sports events. Some of the more interested trainees came along with us on the weekends to help broaden their knowledge, but it was a real two-way learning for us. We only had school Irish, so while they were learning TV, we were learning the Irish language, and it was a cooperative, convivial environment. Spending week after week working closely like that builds relationships with people as well as formal training.

Many of the people who took part in those programs still work with us, and several have progressed through the ranks and are now producer-directors and are our clients.

Search

Search

From tiny town to global impact