Showrunner
Showrunner (also Show Runner ) is a term originally used in the American and British television industry to describe a person who is responsible for and directs the day-to-day running of a television series . The showrunner is only responsible to the television broadcaster and, if applicable, the production studio. Usually a showrunner is an experienced screenwriter, often the one who came up with the concept of the series, if the producing studio considers him suitable for the job. Usually the showrunner holds the position of executive producer .
A showrunner directs a television series on both a business and creative level and is responsible for uninterrupted production that keeps the episodes shot on budget and on schedule. The showrunner heads the Writers' Room, in which he plans the individual episodes together with several permanent scriptwriters and determines their relationship to the series, especially in the case of serially narrated television series with successive episodes. He has the power to decide in which direction the series will develop. In addition to planning and sometimes writing scripts, he has an insight into every aspect of series production. The showrunner is above director and crew and has the right to the final cut . The showrunner makes personnel decisions, takes care of the financial calculation of the series and plans the production process.
Although there is no separate training program for showrunners, the Writers Guild of America offers a Showrunner Training Program .
The principle of the show runner was enforced by HBO . In the 1990s, the cable broadcaster increasingly focused on in-house productions. Since HBO was not yet versed in this area, the show runners were given a free hand.
Web links
- Writers Guild of America : Writing Episodic TV, Chapter Four Executive Producers. (PDF; 37kb)
- innovateus.net: What does a Show Runner mean? ( Memento from June 25, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Get In Media: Showrunner
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alex Epstein: TENTATIVE GLOSSARY. In: complicationsensue.blogspot.de. Complications Ensue: The Crafty TV and Screenwriting Blog, August 24, 2005, accessed June 10, 2013 .
- ↑ Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn: TV's showrunners outrank directors. In: variety.com. Variety , August 16, 2008, accessed April 18, 2018 .
- ↑ Anonymous: Why 'Community's' Dan Harmon Was Fired: A Showrunner Explains All. In: hollywoodreporter.com. The Hollywood Reporter , May 23, 2012, accessed June 11, 2013 .
- ↑ David Kukoff: Vault Guide to Television Writing Careers . Vault, Inc., 2006, ISBN 1-58131-371-3 , pp. 71 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Showrunner Training Program. In: wga.org. Writers Guild of America , accessed June 11, 2013 .
- ↑ Heiko Behr: "Netflix changes everything". In: Zeit Online . The time , accessed March 22, 2014 .