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The next 5 posts will be describing how showrunners from the documentary feel about their job.

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A showrunner often feels like they have a hundred things to do at once.

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As a showrunner, you may feel like there are a billion decisions to make. But, as stated in the doc, it is important that these decisions get made.

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Showrunning is more of a collaborative artform.

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Showrunning can feel like the best and worst job.

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Showrunning has become more difficult due to television becoming more cinematic.

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What's a Showrunner?

Showrunners explained

The nature of television production requires a team effort. In order to put out a TV show every week for months at a time, a number of writers, producers, and directors are needed to pull it off. The TV Producers job description is quite a bit more involved than one might think.

If you consider the scaled of something like Game of Thrones, each season is essentially like shooting 10 movies at the same time. Perhaps that's why there are TWO Game of Thrones showrunners, not just one.

Let's define showrunner, explain their job description and look at how someone might actually become a showrunner of their own.

SHOWRUNNER DEFINITION

What is a Showrunner?

A showrunner is the individual who has primary creative control and management of a TV show. They aren't always necessarily the creator of the show, but they're almost always a writer. Showrunners are responsible for keeping the writers' room moving forward, keeping the actors happy, and sticking to the budget for each episode. Most importantly, showrunners must adhere to the central creative vision of the series.

Showrunner Examples

James L. Brooks, Matt Groening, and Sam Simon (The Simpsons Seasons 1 & 2)

Matt and Ross Duffer (Stranger Things)

Greg Berlanti (Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow)

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (Game of Thrones)

Donald Glover (Atlanta)

WHAT IS A SHOWRUNNER IN TV?

What does a showrunner do?

In a broad sense, the showrunner manages pretty much every aspect of a TV show. In many cases, showrunners develop the show, and from there, they'll have a role from pre- to post-production.

Showrunners are in charge of the writer's room. They select the writing staff and are responsible for turning in episode and season outlines to the heads of the network. Each episode may have someone different with the "Written by" credit, but showrunners still read every episode to ensure a consistent tone and voice. In typical credits order, you'll most likely find the showrunner credited as an Executive Producer.

A group of talented showrunners gathered in 2019 to discuss the craft and the challenges of such a role. Panelists include showrunners Sam Esmail (Homecoming), Marti Noxon ( Sharp Objects), Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective), Steven Canals ( Pose), John Singleton ( Snowfall), and Sera Gamble ( You). They discuss everything they face doing the job and some of the extra obstacles facing female showrunners.

Drama Showrunners Roundtable * The Hollywood Reporter

The easiest way to answer, "What is a showrunner?" is to think of the job as a mix between creative and managerial responsibilities. The person helps guide storylines, but they also need to work with the higher-ups. A showrunner may fight to get the show more money so that they can do certain storylines.

It's for this reason a TV showrunner receives much of the praise for running a successful show. And conversely, the showrunner is often first on the chopping block when a TV show doesn't do as well.

Here's another panel answering, "What is a showrunner?" As you'll see each of them has their own showrunner definition - as every production requires differing levels of involvement and oversight.

PGA Panel * What is a Showrunner?

A typical showrunner salary for first-timers tends to be about $30,000 per episode. But if you get to the level of someone like Shonda Rhimes, then showrunners can make $20,000,000 annually.

Plenty of great female showrunners have followed in Rhimes' footsteps, such as Yvette Lee Bowser on Dear White People and Liz Feldman on . Feldman is a great example of someone who worked their way up, starting as a stand-up comic before working with Ellen DeGeneres and landing her own television show.

WHAT IS A SHOWRUNNER?

Today's top showrunners

In the past few years, the recognition of the showrunner has grown exponentially. There are certain showrunners we know by name because they bring such a specific vision to their shows. Here are a few of those noteworthy showrunners and what defines their work.

Dan Harmon

One of the most infamous examples of a showrunner bumping heads with a network is Dan Harmon. Harmon served as the showrunner for for three seasons before being fired ahead of Season 4. He was promptly brought back as co-showrunner for Season 5.

He also developed the story circle to help writers create better episodes of TV shows and feature films.

Harmon's firing ultimately came down to issues between those two roles of a showrunner we talked about earlier. The showrunner needs to manage between the creative and managerial, and despite the show's success, it just wasn't working on Community.

Harmon wanted to make good TV while the studio was interested in ensuring the show was a bigger rating hit. Harmon couldn't make the show he wanted with the budget being proposed, so he was fired.

But getting rid of a show runner isn't anything new. A new American Gods showrunner had to be brought onboard after Bryan Fuller and Michael Green left over creative differences.

Vince Gilligan

Unless you were in a coma between 2008-2013, you've heard of Breaking Bad. That show was created by Vince Gilligan who also acted as showrunner for the entire run. Most showrunners are involved in many facets of the production but Gilligan went a step further and actually directed a number of episodes as well. Here's a look at Gilligan's day-to-day role on Breaking Bad.

Gilligan expands the showrunner definition

Ryan Murphy

Ryan Murphy inked a deal worth $300 million (not a typical showrunner salary, by the way) with Netflix to develop shows for the streaming service. Murphy is best known for spearheading shows like , American Horror Story, and most recently, Netflix's .

Here's another panel with Murphy and more of today's top showrunners including Jenji Kohan (Orange is the New Black), Ava DuVernay ( Queen Sugar), David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies), Noah Hawley (), and Lisa Joy ().

The True Stories Behind Hollywood * Netflix

One thing becomes apparent across his TV shows, proving him to be one of the most distinct showrunners around. Gorgeous aesthetics, confident underdogs, and excellent roles for Sarah Paulson typically show up in his works. Essentially, you always know when you're watching a Ryan Murphy TV show.

Shonda Rhimes

When Grey's Anatomy debuted in 2005, it began the rise of the medium's most successful and influential showrunners: Shonda Rhimes. On her resume, Rhimes has led some of the latest and greatest shows including Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and Empire. Recently, Rhimes signed a massive development deal with Netflix.

Here she is in conversation on the future of storytelling and her unique (some would call revolutionary) answer to "What is a showrunner?"

Shonda Rhimes * The Future of Storytelling

SHOWRUNNER MEANING

How to become a showrunner

No one becomes a showrunner overnight. While there are many ways to get ahead in the industry, here's the common step-by-step way many people have gotten the role.

1. Start Writing

First, you need to develop good writing habits and hone your craft. Start creating original pilots in addition to writing spec scripts. Original pilots allow you to develop a unique writing style. Meanwhile, spec scripts are great for learning how to get inside another writer's headspace.

During this time, you can learn what television shows you're drawn to. Do you mostly want to write comedies or dramas? It's best to focus on a single niche rather than a little bit of everything or else an agent won't know how to place you.

Here's a quick checklist for writers looking to jumpstart their career:

2. Work Your Way Up in the Writer's Room

Showrunners need to understand as many aspects as they can about creating a television show, so you should be familiar with the responsibilities of everyone you may eventually be in charge of.

You can start from the bottom as a writer's assistant to a staff television writer to a story editor to a showrunner's assistant and so forth. It's a long ladder up but worth it for the right individual.

Here are showrunners like Greg Daniels (​ U.S.) discussing how they run their writer's rooms.

Showrunners on working in the writer's room

People who are currently active WGAE or WGAW members with a "supervising producer" credit or above on a current TV series or has a pilot script currently set up at a network is also eligible to apply for the WGA showrunner program.

This program will teach you everything you need to know about running a TV show. And many prior entrants went on to great things.

While you're rising through the ranks of the writer's room, you can also get a head start on your career as a showrunner. StudioBinder's TV writing and developing masterclass will help you take your golden ticket idea from conception to a completed pilot. Here's the first episode on writing and developing an idea for television.

​ https://www.studiobinder.com/tag/game-of-thrones/​​​In this free, 7-episode course with topics like writing a pilot, creating a show bible, and secrets on how to pitch your idea, you will be extra prepared to answer the question: What is a showrunner? Me.

UP NEXT

What Does a TV Producer Do?

People who want to break into TV may ask, "What is a showrunner?" But there are other people who may ask, "What is a producer?" Both take a great deal of work, but those passionate about creating entertaining stories will find a way. Now that you have a better idea of what showrunners do, see if you have what it takes to be a producer like the Game of Thrones showrunners.

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Showrunners Explain How They Literally Run the Show

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The nature of television production requires a team effort. In order to put out a TV show every week for months at a time, a number of writers, producers, and directors are needed to pull it off. The TV Producers job description is quite a bit more involved than one might think.

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Writing is the heart of a television show.

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QUALITY SCRIPTS ON TIME!

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What are the peaks and valleys of the season as a whole? Do not just focus on individual episode.

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Starting a career with an end goal of becoming a showrunner.
1. Writer's Assistant
2. Staff Writer
3. Story Editor
4. Exec. Story Editor
5. Co-Producer
6. Exec. Producer
7. Showrunner
Every step is important because you learn something new.

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We can all agree that good storytelling is good storytelling; it doesn't matter if it comes from TV, Film, video games, comic books, or theater. There are critical aspects of storytelling that remain the same in every medium. That being said, there are important differences in writing for each an every one of them.

TV and Film are very similar, especially nowadays with shows like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Narcos turning into something like very long movies, instead of the episodic shows of old, still, there are significant differences between them.

TV shows have two or three distinct structures at play at the same time. They have the structure of the episode, which in one-hour dramas is usually a 4 act one, then they have the season structure, everything that's going on should lead to some sort of culmination at the end of the season. And then ideally, every season should serve the overarching narrative of the whole series.

A series like Avatar: The Last Airbender follows that triple structure, and does so very successfully, with all the characters arcs evolving through different seasons and culminating at the series finale.

Films generally have just one structure, unless they are part of something bigger like the MCU, so its easier for a writer to plot out a movie rather than a whole series.

In film, writers usually have a small set of character and very rarely do they get to develop different arcs for all of them. You see, films are restricted by time in a way TV isn't, so you only have about two hours to tell your tale, which means most of the writers' attention goes into the main character, and maybe one or two secondary ones.

Take Star Wars: Episode IV, for example, during the movie, most of the attention and change is focused on Luke and his hero's journey. The only character to change during the film besides him is Han Solo, who goes from "lone wolf" to a regular member of the rebellion.

In TV you have much more time, which means writers have more freedom to develop the characters and their respective arcs. And not only that, in TV writers have the luxury of a much larger cast, where many different stories and arcs can spawn off.

Take something like Game of Thrones or Orange Is the New Black, both of these series have large casts, and many of the characters in them get to evolve and develop throughout the seasons.

As we can see, writing for TV can be very challenging, one has to keep in mind different overarching structures, a large set of characters, and their respective arcs while writing. For these reasons writers rarely tackle TV shows alone, they have a "Writers' Room" where many writers, led by the showrunner, plan what's going to happen during the season and on each of episodes. TV writing is very collaborative, and even though just one writer might sign the final script of the episode, many others influenced the story and the plot points inside of it.

Movie writing is rarely that collaborative unless writers are dealing with a big franchise, then they might have some writers' room or team to tackle the story of each film. But usually, a single screenwriter takes on the script, and then he does different versions of it depending on the notes he gets from producers and studio executives.

TV writing and film writing are similar when looked from afar, but when you really get into the minutia of each medium, you'll see more and more differences between them.

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3 Differences Between Film and TV Writing

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We can all agree that good storytelling is good storytelling; it doesn't matter if it comes from TV, Film, video games, comic books, or theater. There are critical aspects of storytelling that remain the same in every medium. That being said, there are important differences in writing for each an every one of them.

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Be entertaining! It is important for a show to entertain its audience.

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"Your life informs the writing you do."

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Rob McElhenney Declares It’s Harder to Create Comedy Than Drama 

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Amy Meredith Poehler was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to high school teachers Eileen Frances (Milmore) and William Grinstead Poehler. Her brother is comedian Greg Poehler. She is of Irish (from her mother) and English, Irish, German, and Portuguese (from her father) descent. Amy was first ...

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Amy Meredith Poehler was born in Newton, Massachusetts, to high school teachers Eileen Frances (Milmore) and William Grinstead Poehler. Her brother is comedian Greg Poehler. She is of Irish (from her mother) and English, Irish, German, and Portuguese (from her father) descent. Amy was first ...

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"Is this the hill you want to die on?" be choosy or you may get the reputation of being difficult to work with.

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They conceive the characters, write or co-write the scripts, set the pace and provide the vision for the TV programs you know and love. They're called showrunners, and they are the designated auteurs of the boob-tube renaissance still in progress. Writer-producers such as Joss Whedon, Shonda Rhimes, Matthew Weiner, Vince Gilligan, and the holy trinity of Davids - Chase, Milch and Simon - have earned profile pieces and graced magazine covers, becoming celebrities in their own right. They are to modern television what film directors were to the New Hollywood of the 1970s: the rock stars of their medium.
Last-Laugh Tracks: 40 Best Cult TV Comedies Ever
While the aforementioned heavy hitters are still working in TV (or, in the case of Whedon and Chase, have turned their attention to movies), there are a number of newer artists who are taking advantage of the freedoms that networks, basic-and premium-cable channels, and new streaming-content outlets like Netflix are offering. A few, like True Detective's Nic Pizzolatto, seemed to have attained small-screen stardom overnight. Most of the interesting and innovative serial storytellers - some veterans, others relative newbies - are doing the sort of work that may not have yet garnered them name recognition (yet) but, in a perfect world, would potentially earn them an invite to join the pantheon. Here are a dozen showrunners that you should being paying attention to ASAP.

John Fawcett and Graeme Manson, 'Orphan Black'
Horror-movie fans might remember John Fawcett as the director and co-writer of the teen-girls-turn-werewolves cult flick Ginger Snaps (2000); hardcore sci-fi nerds would recognize Graeme Manson as the writer of the equally beloved existential headscratcher Cube (1997). But with this BBC America hit about a young woman who discovers she's part of a set of clones - most of whom have been marked for extermination - has instantly, and deservedly, established the Canadian duo as unsung heroes of the Comic-Con nation. They have an ace up their sleeve in star Tatiana Maslany, a remarkably versatile actress who ends up juggling an average of five different roles per episode, yet it's Fawcett and Manson's deft ability to keep the various clones' plot strands moving along in sync that make this show so compelling. This is smart sci-fi that knows when to get cerebral and when to kick ass; keep cloning that formula, gents, and we're yours.

Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, 'The Americans'
Lots of spy shows can claim to have done due diligence on the drudgery of espionage skullduggery; hardly any of them, however, can claim to have an ex-CIA officer calling the shots. As a former case officer, Joe Weisberg is able to bring a level of authenticity to his Reagan-era drama about KBG agents posing as married suburbanites in Washington D.C. None of the first-hand touches regarding the spy-vs.-spy activities, however, would matter if Weisberg and his showrunning partner Joel Fields weren't able to nail what lurks beneath all the intel and beaucoup wigs: It's really a drama about matrimony, and the lies we tell both our loved ones and ourselves. Throw in some boundary-pushing sex scenes and just the right amount of period details, and you have one of the more compelling, complex shows on contemporary basic cable. A job well done, comrades.

Bryan Fuller, 'Hannibal'
It takes a person with substantial cojones to take on Thomas Harris' iconic serial killer - Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter - and, after numerous substandard films and diminishing returns, think they can make these characters seem vital again. But it helps to remember that Bryan Fuller is not only a showrunner with several macabre, death-focused shows to his name ( Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me), he started off as a Star Trek aficionado who went on to reinvigorate the franchise's Voyager series as a writer. In other words, this is someone who knows how to handle fan-loved material with both fidelity and freshness - and anyone who's been following this NBC horror-drama's second season can attest that Fuller has delivered on the show's early-buzz promise. (That opening episode's fight scene! Bringing in the Vergers!) Fuller and his new Hannibal, the mighty Mads Mikkelsen, know how to mess with the iconography of the character just enough to make things seem different without jumping the track altogether, and should the show survive the so-so ratings and keep going, there's the sense that Fuller has a big picture in mind that would blow ours.

Aaron Guzikowski, 'The Red Road'
Having written the script for Prisoners (2013), Aaron Guzikowski demonstrated off the bat that he knew how to craft dark stories about disturbed men. This stellar crime drama that he developed and co-wrote for SundanceTV, however, proves that he's just as good with atmosphere, capturing a sense of place (in this case, the outskirts of New Jersey) and a slow-burn approach to narrative that pays off. Focusing on a cop (Martin Henderson), his mentally unstable wife (Boardwalk Empire's Julianne Nicholson) and a Native American ex-con running a pharmaceutical scam (Khal Drago himself, Jason Momoa!), Guzikowski's series crams a lot of character development and storytelling into six episodes without making things feel rushed. He's also figured out how to use the hulking Mamoa as more than just screen muscle, allowing the Hawaiian actor to lace his don't-fuck-with-me sesne of menace with a lackadaisical charm. We'd follow the showrunner down almost any road at this point.

Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, 'Trophy Wife'
From the moment this ABC sitcom about a blonde bombshell (Malin Akerman) who marries a fiftysomething man and suddenly finds herself in the middle of a multiple ex-wife maelstrom premiered last year, critics started proclaiming it one of the best of the new primetime-comedy crop. It's not just that Haskins has mined her own marital experience for laughs, though the write-what-you-know aspect undoubtedly lends a certain bite; it's the way Sarah Haskins and her showrunning partner Emily Halpern turn a typical family-shenanigans show into a riff on parenting, unlikely female bonding and how to use a comic dynamo with Nordic cheekbones to your slapstick advantage. The cast is strong ( SNL's Michael Watkins, The West Wing 's Bradley Whitford, Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden) and the clichés are MIA. If Haskins and Halpern can make something like this sing, they can do virtually anything.
TV Shows We Can't Wait to Watch in 2014
Noah Hawley, 'Fargo'
"You guys want a cop show, but this isn't a cop show," Noah Hawley told FX executives when he was pitching them on a TV revamp of the Coen brothers' beloved 1996 movie. "What you want is a miniseries, and here's how you do it." His idea - don't recycle the film's characters, tell another story in that landscape and limit it to10 episodes - has already paid off for this former Bones writer, proving to be a critical and popular hit immediately out of the gate. We can confirm it keeps getting stronger the more it goes on, building off its noirish narrative involving a killer, a schlub and two small-town police officers who've stumbled on to a real pickle of a case. The Midwestern accents and colloquialisms are still here, but Hawley wisely viewed the original material as a springboard instead an endgame. You can betcha we'll tune into whatever he does next.

Adam Reed, 'Archer'
Animation devotees and Adult Swim viewers know Adam Reed as one of the writers behind the brilliantly subversive Space Ghost Coast to Coast and the absurdist Sealab 2021 series. Just when you thought you could write him off as a guy who only riffs on kitschy Seventies cartoons, however, Reed came up with Archer, a raunchy parody of International Man of Mystery he-man heroism. Already blessed with one of the best comedic casts on TV, Reed's show kept upping the ante on the lead character's faux-chauvinism and the dadaist non sequiturs. Then, for it's fifth season, the showrunner decided to essentially restart the series from scratch, turning his secret agents into drug smugglers. Cue the Kenny Loggins duets and Miami Vice color palette; there seems to be nothing Reed isn't willing to throw in to the mix, and the result is some of the funniest, best-written animated TV since the heyday of The Simpsons.

Pendleton Ward, 'Adventure Time'
Take one hirsute, lumberjack-ish writer who'd been kicking around the periphery of the animation world for a wee bit. Give him carte blanche to make an animated kids' show involving a boy and his dog, done in style that suggests it was actually drawn by preschoolers who broke into the cough-syrup section of the medicine cabinet. Throw in things like "earclops" (think cyclops, but with a giant ear instead an eye on their head), adolescent romance and the apocalypse. Voila! You have a Cartoon Network show that New Yorker critic Emily Nussbaum compared to "World of Warcraft as recapped by Carl Jung." Equally parts druggy, philosophically dense and totally kid-friendly, Ward's show reflects its creator's sensibility, in which an overactive imagination and astute emotional sensitivity can turn silly or nightmarish in a heartbeat.

Beau Willimon, 'House of Cards'
Out of all the people named on this list, playwright-turned-showrunner Beau Willimon may currently be the closest to actually breaching the A-list creator status. Everyone initially referred to Netflix's revamp of a British TV drama-cum-suprising hit House of Cards as "the David Fincher show," thanks to the Fight Club director's involvement as an executive producer. But after two successful, binge-watched seasons, people have started to pay more attention to the Oscar-nominated 36-year-old who's responsible for every twist, turn and mustache-twirling Kevin Spacey aside in this political soap opera. His attention to language and the nuances of the Washington grind (Willimon did time on Howard Dean's 2004 campaign) is no surprise, but the sheer joie de vivre he brings to the show's cutthroat power plays still has the power to shock. The show's cunning antihero may see his built-one-backstabbing-at-a-time empire come tumbling down. Willimon, however, seems to know where every card in the deck is stacked.

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They conceive the characters, write or co-write the scripts, set the pace and provide the vision for the TV programs you know and love. They're called showrunners, and they are the designated auteurs of the boob-tube renaissance still in progress.

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Whenever a TV show gets cancelled, thousands of fans ask, "Why do TV shows get cancelled?' As someone who writes a lot of articles about both the entertainment industry, and about business, I have to state that these fans forget that the entertainment industry is a business that has to sometimes make hard decisions about money. And if you are sad that your favorite TV show got cancelled, you could destress by playing some sports betting games on

Why Do TV Shows Get Cancelled - Viewers

For the most part, most TV shows that get cancelled do so because of the fact that viewership is just not there. Some shows start off with very high viewership, and then dwindle of over time. Some dwindle within the first few episodes, while other might take a few years until the number begin to fade.

The lower the viewership of a show, the less the network can charge for the ads. Most large companies will not be interested in having their ads shown on breaks from shows that just are not getting the numbers. TV executives usually find that they can put another show in the timeslot and reap the higher reward of more sponsorship dollars.

In the case of a show like, "Firefly," viewership was so low that the show had to be cancelled half way through the season. Viewership did not break the five million mark, so it was not worth the effort for FOX to keep it around.

Why Do TV Shows Get Cancelled - Cost

On a rarer occasion, a show might have decent viewership, but still be cancelled because the production costs do not leave enough room for a decent profit for the network. In the case of, "The X-Files," viewership of the last season was still close to 10 million, but with the loss of Gillian Anderson, and the production costs to make the show, FOX did not think that it was worth keeping the show going.

Why Do TV Shows Come Back?

There has been a rare occurrence that has popped up from time to time over the last ten years in which fan pressure has caused the TV networks to bring back certain shows with high fan support. To continue picking on FOX, the show, "Family Guy," was brought back after being off of FOX for a few years because of the pressure from the fans that had discovered the show on Cartoon Network. If a network believes that it will have the fan base once a show returns, the show will be brought back up, and renewed.

In the case of, "Firefly," there was a lot of fan pressure, but not enough of an ability to make the show into a regular series. At the time, many of the main actors and actresses were already being appeased by production companies for movies, and other TV shows. If production would have gone into place for a new version of the, "Firefly," TV show, "Terminator: Chronicles," "V," and "Castle," might not have ever gotten off of the ground. Instead, a feature length movie was made, and the fans gobbled it up. On a personal note, I loved, "Firefly," but, "Castle," has become my favorite show on TV. I benefit from the decision.

TV shows get cancelled for many reasons, but the money is the least common denominator. If a network thinks that it can make enough off of a show, it keeps it around. If the network thinks that show is not drawing enough, it will be cancelled. No matter what the reason, fans are usually the ones holding the ball wondering what to do next.

Wikipedia/X-Files

Wikipedia/Firefly (TV series)

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Reasons Why TV Shows Get Cancelled | Tencent Ticker

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Whenever a TV show gets cancelled, thousands of fans ask, "Why do TV shows get cancelled?' As someone who writes a lot of articles about both the entertainment industry, and about business, I have to state that these fans forget that the entertainment industry is a business that has to sometimes make hard decisions about money.