Why I always thank the production crew before and after a show

Walking through the wings of a studio an hour before transmission, you will rarely hear an audience member's voice. What you do hear is the quiet, choreographed hum of a production crew: a floor manager counting down seconds in her headset, a camera operator checking a lens cap, a sound engineer wrapping a length of cable around his wrist like a sailor with rope. The room is its own small city, and most of its citizens never appear on camera. That is precisely why I make a point of saying thank you to them before the cameras roll and again once the lights go down.

Gratitude, I have learned, is a discipline rather than a feeling. You can feel grateful in the moment and forget to express it thirty seconds later. Or you can build gratitude into the rhythm of your day until it becomes part of how you work. For me, that rhythm is built around two small acts: a brief huddle with the team before the show, and a slower, more personal round of thanks after the audience has left the building. Neither takes more than a few minutes. Both have shaped my career in ways I could not have predicted.

This piece is a reflection on something that sounds almost too simple to discuss. Crew members do the work that makes the rest of us look good, and we rarely acknowledge them on the record. I want to change that, and I want to share what the habit has taught me about leadership, kindness and the strange alchemy of live television. If you have ever wondered why some shows feel warmer than others, the answer often lives behind the camera, not in front of it.

The backstage world most people never see

When viewers settle into their lounges for an evening programme, they see a polished image. A host smiles, the lighting flatters, the autocue reads like a conversation rather than a script. None of that happens by accident, and almost none of it is created by the people the audience will remember afterwards. A typical hour of live television involves dozens of roles: vision mixers, autocue operators, riggers, makeup artists, wardrobe assistants, runners, security, hospitality, producers at every level, and the person whose sole job is to make sure the lead presenter's microphone battery is fresh.

Each of those roles carries a quiet weight. A missed cue by a runner can cost a presenter thirty seconds of dead air. A wardrobe mix-up can derail a segment about confidence and body image. A poorly placed microphone can turn a sincere interview into something that feels distant. The crew absorbs these risks so that the final product looks effortless. Most viewers will never know their names, which makes the work both noble and slightly heartbreaking.

This invisibility is not unique to British television. The same pattern repeats in every broadcasting culture I have worked in. Australian studios in Sydney and Melbourne run on the same intricate choreography, with crews who take enormous pride in shows that travel across state lines and time zones. When I have hosted events in Australia, the production teams in places like Pyrmont and South Melbourne have reminded me that television is fundamentally a team sport, and the team is much bigger than the credits roll suggests.

A simple habit with outsized impact

Saying thank you sounds like a small thing. In the pressure cooker of a live broadcast, small things often get squeezed out by bigger anxieties: the running order, the guest who has not arrived, the satellite link that keeps dropping. Choosing to pause and acknowledge the crew anyway sends a clear signal. It tells the team that they are not interchangeable parts in a machine. It tells the producers that leadership includes looking after the people who look after the programme. And it tells the runners, who are usually the youngest in the room, that someone senior has noticed their effort.

Over the years, I have watched this small habit reshape room dynamics. A crew that feels recognised is more likely to flag a problem early, to solve it collaboratively, and to stay calm when something goes wrong on air. A crew that feels invisible does the opposite. They do the minimum, they protect themselves, and they leave at the first opportunity. Broadcasting has a famously high turnover, and a culture of gratitude is one of the few reliable ways to slow it down.

I also think it matters who delivers the thanks. A producer mouthing gratitude through a headset is different from a presenter walking onto the studio floor, making eye contact, and saying each person's name out loud. The first is procedural. The second is human. Audiences may not see the moment, but they feel the difference in the texture of the show, and so do the guests sitting in the green room.

Before the curtain: setting the tone together

The five minutes before transmission are sacred. I treat them as the most important part of my day, not the least. Before I sit down in makeup, I walk the floor. I find the floor manager, the autocue operator, the sound engineer, the vision mixer, and the gallery producer. I look each of them in the eye and thank them for the work they are about to do. If we are on location, I thank the site manager, the security lead, the driver who got the guest to the venue on time.

This ritual does something subtle. It breaks the hierarchy of the studio. For a brief moment, we are not presenter and crew. We are a group of professionals preparing to do a difficult thing together. That shared sense of purpose carries into the show itself. When something goes sideways, as it always does in live television, the recovery is faster because we have already remembered that we are on the same side.

Australian crews I have worked with often add their own rituals to this pre-show window. On one production in Sydney, the floor manager would ring a small brass bell at the thirty-second mark, a tradition borrowed from theatre that has stuck with me ever since. Small symbols like that remind a room what they are about to do together, and they make the gratitude that follows feel earned rather than performative.

After the curtain: closing the loop with gratitude

The post-show thank you is harder, and therefore more important. Once the cameras are off, the adrenaline drops, and the temptation is to disappear into a dressing room, peel off the stage makeup, and breathe. I resist that temptation. I walk back through the studio, find the same people I thanked earlier, and thank them again. This time the thanks is for something concrete: a smooth interview, a saved cue, a difficult guest handled with grace, a set strike that came in ahead of schedule.

Closing the loop matters because humans are wired to remember how things end. A brilliant show followed by a cold exit leaves a faintly bitter aftertaste. A slightly bumpy show followed by a warm, specific round of thanks leaves people feeling proud. I would rather have the second experience every time, even if it costs me a few minutes I would otherwise spend unwinding.

There is a secondary benefit, too. When senior talent models this behaviour, junior crew learn what professional generosity looks like. The runners who feel thanked today become the producers who thank their own crews tomorrow. That is how cultures shift, slowly and from the inside. The same is true in Australian productions I have been part of, where the industry is small enough that reputation travels quickly between Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

What Australian broadcasting taught me

Australian television has its own distinct rhythm, and it has sharpened my thinking about crew gratitude in ways that British studio culture never quite did. Working with crews in Sydney, particularly on cross-state productions that move between Sydney Harbour locations and studios in Ultimo, I noticed how much the industry relies on people who fly in from regional hubs like Wollongong or the Central Coast for a single shoot day. Those crews travel hours, work long shifts, and go home to families they barely see during production weeks. Acknowledging that sacrifice out loud, by name, carries real weight.

I have also learned something from the Australian approach to crew welfare. Local unions and production companies tend to take meal breaks, travel allowances and fatigue management seriously, partly because the distances involved demand it. A presenter who thanks a driver for getting them safely from Bondi to a dawn call time is not performing politeness. They are recognising a logistical reality that the audience will never see. That kind of contextual gratitude feels more honest than the generic version, and it tends to land harder.

When I host corporate events in Australia, often in venues around Melbourne's Southbank or Brisbane's riverside precincts, I apply the same principle. I thank the AV technicians, the stage managers and the catering teams before guests arrive and again before I leave. A good event looks seamless on stage. A great event is the product of dozens of people who chose to make it look that way, and they deserve to be told so.

The ripple effect beyond the studio

The habit of thanking the production crew has leaked into every other part of my work. Writing a book, for instance, looks like a solitary pursuit from the outside. In reality, an author depends on an editor, a proofreader, a publicist, a designer, a publicist's assistant, and a publisher's sales team. I now treat the launch of each book the way I treat the end of a show: I name the people who made it possible and I thank them in front of an audience. The same approach shaped my own writing practice, and you can read more about my writing habits if you would like a closer look at the routines behind the finished product.

Leadership, similarly, is built on small repeated acts rather than grand gestures. The crew members who feel thanked become advocates for the next project, the next show, the next difficult shoot in a remote location. They tell their friends that the culture on this set is worth showing up for. That reputation is gold in a freelance industry, and it is built one name, one handshake, one genuine thank you at a time.

If you want to understand more about where this philosophy comes from, you can read about my journey and background and how the values I live by on set shaped the rest of my career. Gratitude is the thread that runs through both, and it is the habit I would urge any leader, presenter or producer to adopt this week.