Showrunner

What is a showrunner?

In television the showrunner is the final creative authority on a series and the person who keeps it running week to week. The word is industry slang that spread through American TV in the 1990s; you will not see "showrunner" in the credits. Showrunners are billed as executive producers, usually alongside several other people with the same credit who do very different jobs.

Most showrunners are writers. Often the showrunner is the series creator, who wrote the pilot episode, but not always: a network may pair a first-time creator with a veteran who knows how to deliver a season, and long-running shows pass from one showrunner to the next. The Simpsons has gone through a series of showrunners over its decades on air, while the Duffer Brothers have run Stranger Things since its first season.

The closest film equivalent would be a writer, director and producer rolled into one. A film producer protects the project and the money, and the director owns the set. On a series those powers sit mostly with the showrunner, because episodes are written, shot, cut and aired in overlapping waves that need one person steering all of them at once.

What does a showrunner do?

On a typical season the job covers every stage of production at the same time:

1. Story. The showrunner sets the season arc and runs the writers' room, where staff writers break stories into beats and outlines. They assign episodes, give notes on drafts and often rewrite every script before it goes to production, so the dialogue sounds like one show, formatted to the house TV script format.
2. Casting. Series regulars, recurring roles and guest parts all pass through the showrunner, with network approval on the leads.
3. Directors. Episodic directors are hired per episode, sometimes a different one each week. The showrunner picks them, preps them on tone and visual rules, and a writer-producer is often on set to protect the script.
4. Post. Each episode's editor cut goes to the director, then to the showrunner, who shapes the producer's cut the network sees. Music, visual effects and the final mix also come back for approval.
5. Budget and politics. The showrunner answers to studio and network executives, takes their notes, negotiates what the budget allows and manages a staff that can run to hundreds of people across the whole filmmaking process, with a line producer handling the day-to-day spend.

In practice that means writing episode 7 while episode 4 shoots and episode 2 is in the edit. Delegation is the core skill.

Why TV is run by writers, not directors

In feature film the film director is treated as the author. In TV the director of a single episode is usually a guest: they arrive, prep for a week or two, shoot, deliver a cut and leave. Continuity of voice across 8 to 22 episodes has to come from someone who stays, and in American television that has been the head writer.

That is why series have a recognizable authorial stamp even with rotating directors: Shonda Rhimes's shows, David Chase's The Sopranos, Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad. Prestige limited series sometimes flip the model and have one director shoot every episode, but the showrunner still owns the scripts and the edit.

Outside the US the title is used more loosely. British series are often written largely by one writer with fewer episodes per season, and the job is split differently between the lead writer and the producers.

Showrunner vs. executive producer

Every showrunner is an executive producer, but most executive producers are not the showrunner. On a series the EP credit can mean very different things:

• The showrunner, who runs the room, the set and the edit day to day.
• Co-creators and senior writers who share running duties or run the show in the showrunner's absence.
• Studio or production-company executives who developed or financed the show.
• Talent and packaging credits, such as a star, a director of the pilot, or the author of the source book.

So the credit tells you someone had real leverage; it does not tell you they ran the show. To find the showrunner, look at who is listed as the head of the writing staff, who speaks for the show in interviews, and whose name is attached from pitch to finale. In feature film the gap is even wider, since a movie EP is often a financing credit with no day-to-day role at all.

How do you become a showrunner?

The traditional route in American TV is a climb through the writing staff: staff writer, story editor, executive story editor, co-producer, producer, supervising producer, co-executive producer, then executive producer. Each step adds responsibility for running the room, producing episodes on set and working in post, so by the time a writer gets their own show they have watched several showrunners do it. The Writers Guild of America also runs a showrunner training program for writers close to that step.

The other route starts with selling a show. A writer with a strong TV pitch and pilot script may get a series order, typically with an experienced co-showrunner attached until the network trusts the newcomer to deliver on schedule.

Many strong screenwriters never want the job. It is part writing, part management and part diplomacy, with little time left to write.

Keeping a series consistent on one board

A showrunner's biggest visual problem is rotating directors: each one needs the same rules for the look, the sets and the characters before their first prep day. On FlashBoards a series can live on one board, with the pilot's lookbook frames, character references and the tone notes from the room grouped by episode, so a new director reads the show's visual language at a glance and adds their own storyboard frames beside it for approval.

Further reading

Writers Guild of America West, Showrunner Training Program materials. Neil Landau, The TV Showrunner's Roadmap (Focal Press).