The Bafta TV Awards are one of the biggest dates in the UK TV industry.
This year’s ceremony took place in May at the sun-soaked Royal Festival Hall in London and some of the biggest names from TV were pictured on the red carpet.
One of those rubbing shoulders with the celebrities was Emma Morris, executive editor at BBC Studios who oversees BBC One’s The One Show and Morning Live.
One of her shows – Morning Live – was shortlisted in the Daytime category, losing out to Clive Myrie’s Caribbean Adventure.
I sat down to interview Morris at Manchester’s ABC Building, next door to Morning Live’s studio. There’s no mistaking where we are because I’ve just said hello to the show’s presenter Gethin Jones.
Morris proudly lives in Burnley and her career has seen her work with some of the biggest names in TV, forging a reputation as one of the industry’s nicest and most approachable figures.
Born in London, Morris began her childhood on a council estate in Eltham.
She was eight when the family moved back to Burnley and she’s the fourth generation of her family to live in her current house.
Morris recalled: “Burnley is a very different place now to what it was in 1990 when I first moved here. I came to this place where I didn’t feel like I massively fitted in.
“I had to very quickly understand the rules and learn how to fit in. There was a lot of divisiveness.
“I think my brother and I really were quite shocked. We’d gone from this community in London and then suddenly moved up North, and it was very apparent that we were different.
“I spent a lot of my summers getting into a little bit of trouble.”
She said Burnley has gone full circle since then and describes it as the perfect place to raise her children.
“It’s my community, and I was really welcomed back when I moved back a couple of years ago,” she said. “I think it is so important when you do a job like this that you connect with audiences and understand who they are.
“When I was in London I lived in a bit of a cosmopolitan bubble.”
As a child growing up in Burnley, Morris decided she wanted to work in TV.
“I don’t think I knew what working in telly meant,” she said. “I just didn’t have anyone around me who’d done that.
“It took me a long time to figure out what the different roles were, how the system works.
“I can imagine for that careers advisor, I may as well have said I want to go to the moon as their job is to make sure that you’ve got a realistic prospect of employment.”
Her big break came while she was studying for a degree in psychology and media at Leeds Trinity University and secured a work placement at the BBC in Manchester.
“I loved it but my Mum and Dad were so worried about the idea of telly and the instability,” she said. “They told me to get the degree and then you’ve got that as backup so I turned an extension offer down.
“Every Easter and summer holidays, whenever I could, I was always offering up time for free, going out doing vox pops.
Emma Morris, executive editor at BBC Studios who oversees BBC One’s The One Show and Morning Live with Chris Maguire, executive editor of BusinessCloud
“I had the best work placement at More Magazine in London, where my job was to just go and ask people really fun questions in Covent Garden. They paid me in shampoo and conditioner!”
Morris landed her first paid role as a junior researcher of The Jerry Springer Show after applying for every job going.
“It was hours upon hours of phone bashing, having to learn as I went along,” she said. “It stood me in good stead later on.
“I worked my way up to producer. By now it was The Jeremy Kyle Show and I realised this wasn’t the kind of telly that I want to make.”
Morris’ career saw her work at a number of radio stations, including Smooth and Century, and TV shows Sky News, Daybreak and Loose Women.
“It wasn’t massively unusual to be female, but it was unusual to be like me, because I didn’t know all the clever things to say, and I didn’t understand the rules,” she said.
“I couldn’t quite work out telly, so I was very much masking and trying to fit in. That’s sort of been the story of my life up until the point of joining BBC Studios – surviving, fitting in and then figuring out, ‘okay, well, I fit in, but do I want to fit in? Is this what I want? Is this who I want to be?’.”
The mother-of-two worked at ITV from between 2011-2019, leaving for a content editor role at The One Show.
She was living in London as a single Mum when her boss took her to one side and announced the launch of a new pilot for a live daily morning show – which later became Morning Live.
Two years in and the broadcaster moved the show to Manchester as part of their promise to create more programmes outside London.
Morris relocated from London to Burnley in 2021 and Morning Live quickly became a viewer’s favourite for its mix of fun and topical conversation.
Earlier this year presenters Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones made headlines after completing a 24-hour roller disco endurance challenge in aid of Red Nose Day.
Morris said one of her proudest achievements at Morning Live has been the way they’ve used technology to achieve a better work life balance.
“One example of this is that I’m in contact with my team at 6am daily to talk about any topical changes to that day’s show, but I’m then able to watch the start of rehearsals from home via my phone, allowing me to see my kids before they go to school each day,” she said.
“I also have tech installed which means I can work from home and still have a presence in the gallery and the ability to talk to our presenters in their ears during a live show, all from my living room in Burnley!
“We’ve evolved and adapted lots of what would be considered standard practice in the industry to make sure that it’s a truly inclusive environment, not just for me as a working Mum, but for whoever needs adjustments to help them to balance some of the things so many of us face.
“Winning Best Inclusive Practice at the RTS North West Awards was a very proud moment for us all. It was recognition for all the times that, as team, instead of saying ‘that can’t happen’ or ‘that’s not how it’s done’, we’ve instead asked, ‘well how would that look?’ or ‘what could we do to make it work?’,”
The other thing to say about Morris is she clearly loves the North.
“Everybody will have a different version of the North,” said Morris. “I’m surrounded by people who are really resilient, who just crack on without any kind of nonsense.
“They’re able to find joy and laugh at things that sometimes might not necessarily be a thing that you would think you would find joyous and funny.
“When I think about the North, I think about my Mum as no-nonsense, really approachable, really honest and quite humble nature.
“My partner is also Northern and very much embodies all of those things and has a cracking sense of humour.
“If I think I could crash and burn spectacularly he’ll say ‘worse things happen at sea. Do you want a brew?’ I think that’s Northern. That’s the North.”
When discussing future content ideas for the show Morris asks herself what people in the checkout queue at Asda, in Burnley, are talking about.
I’ve canvassed the views of a lot of people about Morris and nobody had a bad word to say about her.
“As a leader, you’ve got to respect that you’re managing multiple things at any one time,” she explained.
“We’ve got to deliver a product, and we owe it to our audience to deliver a product to the best of our ability and as a manager I want to encourage growth and development for the team while also making sure that people aren’t overwhelmed and that they’re not pushed too far out of their comfort zone.
“It’s about setting context as well, and about understanding what matters and what doesn’t matter.
“I talk to my team really openly about this. Leadership is a lot of contradictions. We want the team to care about their work, but not care too much. It’s all a fine balance and I’m very aware of pressure to perform but also that pressure can affect mental health.”