There is a horrible little world of companies in the Valley that specialize in non-fiction TV. They mostly produce those low budget shows that air on venues like the Travel Channel, HGTV, the Discovery Channel, etc.

They are housed for the most part in broken down and shabby offices in unfashionable sections of North Hollywood or near the freeway in Sherman Oaks, in smoggy Glendale next to the bike repair shop or behind an auto repair shop in Studio City. Dusty black mini blinds, acres of VHS tapes, push pins and peeled off tape line the walls under the harsh glare of the flourescent. Sodas, red licorace vines and chocolate kisses provide nourishment for the overworked.

Young and already disillusioned production people are lured into these shops where they toil away at absolute drudgery logging tapes or making runs. A succession of past prime, middle aged producers who long ago exhausted any sense of fulfillment, carry their briefcases through the halls, begging for a two month gig writing lines for shows about Jesus and the psychics or murder victims and their families. A bitter staff of accountants and receptionists make certain bills go unpaid and calls go to voice mail.

The owners of these companies (some of whom now live in Hawaii, Toronto or E. Hampton, NY) used to pay for health insurance, but they long since gave up any semblance of concern for the workers. Most of the toilers are non-union, will never know what a pension or benefit looks like, never will earn residuals for the hundreds of thousands of hours spent in these utterly thankless jobs. They stay until late at night and you can see some of them smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk, dressed in t-shirts and goatees. If epitaphs could be written for 25 year olds in the prime of life…..

Executives at the “network” as they are called, must also worry about their jobs, as they critique and create silly notes about scripts, advising on how to “tweak” acts, cut dialogue, or tell an editor to re-edit something that should never have been shot on film in the first place. They fear for their jobs as well, and are forced to produce busy work just to justify to their bosses their own employment.

Free lance video shooters, art directors, costumers, craft services persons, all are paid abysmally for their one or two day contributions. They have no union, only pride in the job they do. They are independent and like to stay that way and enter enslavement at these awful little production companies only because they wish to avoid bankruptcy.

The product created at these shops is laughably crude, cliche ridden, artless and forgettable: Haunted hotels, on a-dime decorator makeovers, fastest road hogs, amazing guitars of the stars—junk TV to fill the stomach of the beast called the entertainment world.

You read a lot about the celebrities and the stars, the newly successful producers of such shows as “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” but one never will hear of the hundreds of lost and desperate non-fiction slaves who staff these rotten little places which pockmark the San Fernando Valley.

There is no future at any of these companies. They are hanging by a string, and may close shop at any minute. Yet like drug addicts looking for their next fix, entertainment resume senders still aim their pleas at the doors of these pathetically indifferent places.