Jobs for the taking 

29 March 2006 tbs.pm/3500

For years they’ve been there, nestling in the late night schedule. Those little programmes which advertise jobs to those who are either insomniacs or have set the video.

Where the Jobs Are

Where the Jobs Are

From 1984 comes this still from employment based programme, Where the Jobs Are – here presented by newsreader Roderick Griffith.

Joblink

From 2001, and produced in conjunction with the Job Centre, it’s Joblink.

Still of the Joblink titles.

The Joblink titles, and indeed the set and captions, are designed by the Employment Service and are designed to fit in with their corporate branding. Who came up with the incredibly cheesy title music is another question.

Kim Inglis in the Joblink set. The Joblink studio again.

Newsreader and reporter Kim Inglis is in the Joblink chair with a rather garish chroma-key background. Once the programme gets going, the presenters name is removed from the Joblink caption.

A job advert.

Enough of the wittering on about the set – here’s what people really tune in for. The jobs. No idea what a Procurement Engineer is, but there’s a bit of cash for it.

Phone number caption.

And if you want to apply for it, here’s the phone number. (It might actually have gone by now.)

A Transdiffusion Presentation

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4 responses to this article

Joanne Gray 15 May 2016 at 5:48 pm

I could be wrong but I’m certain that Where The Jobs Are used to be shown after the lunchtime regional news bulletin. I remember being ill and off school once or twice in the early 80s and watching it before switching over to the Channel 4 testcard music.

Arthur Vasey 18 January 2017 at 2:28 pm

It was originally shown during the news programme Today At Six on, I think, Friday – or shortly afterwards – but was ultimately moved to Wednesday lunchtime, in place of Lookaround – only thing is that most of the jobs were in Newcastle, Gosforth, Consett, Gateshead, Sunderland, Blaydon or Bedlington – hardly worth tuning in if you lived anywhere south of Sunderland – I believe at some point, they were able to do a split programme for the north and south of the region – but even that was restricted to Hartlepool and Darlington!

It’s interesting to note that, these days, if you go down to the job centre, “local” jobs means anywhere in the UK, not just where you live!

It was always presented by Roderick Griffith – funnily enough, I did a course in Surrey many years after Roderick Griffith retired from Tyne Tees – and, during a section on the course that involved job search, they screened a documentary – everybody seemed to think it was real – but the bloke conducting the interviews in the programme was none other than Roderick Griffith!

Tom D 14 July 2021 at 9:43 pm

Roderick Griffith was a lovely man – met him twice for tv purposes, in different circumstances. A regional tv hero.

Andrew Robson 30 November 2021 at 6:30 pm

One of the late Rod Griffith’s more obscure claims to fame is that he was the inspiration for the character Roger Mellie (The Man On The Telly) in Viz magazine.

The quote below is from the book “Rude Kids: The Inside Story of Viz”, written by the magazine’s founder Chris Donald.

“Alfie Fox took us to the canteen at Tyne-Tees Television for a chat, but I spent the entire meeting listening to someone talking on an adjoining table. A local TV newsreader and continuity announcer by the name of Rod Griffiths was holding court with a group of colleagues, and he was swearing like a trooper. It was astounding to hear such a familiar voice coming out with such unfamiliar language, and I was mesmerized. When we left the meeting we were no closer to getting Viz on TV, but the seeds for a new cartoon character had just been sown.”

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