A Checklist for Reviewing Your Live Production Workflow Before You Commit

Most workflow problems we meet are not equipment faults. They come from a programme whose shape was never written down in a form the whole gallery can read. Before choosing templates or tools, sit down and describe one typical transmission from the first countdown to the last sign-off, in plain sentences, as if explaining it to a new floor manager.

Note every point where one person must wait for another: the presenter for the autocue, the director for a package, the audio operator for a guest to be miked. These hand-offs are where a live programme either flows or stumbles, and they are the first things a good run sheet should make visible.

Count the elements as well: live inserts, recorded items, graphics, remote guests and ad breaks if you carry them. A programme with six moving parts needs a different level of paperwork from one with twenty, and deciding that honestly now saves you from adopting a system far heavier than the show deserves.

• Can you describe a normal show in ten plain sentences?
• Where does one person wait for another?
• How many live and recorded elements does a typical edition carry?

A run sheet is only useful if the people at the desk can read it under pressure. Take your current format and hand it to someone who was not involved in building it. If they cannot tell you what happens at the two-minute mark without asking questions, the sheet needs simplifying, however complete it looks on paper.

Check that timings are cumulative as well as per item, so the director can see at a glance whether the programme is running long. Check that cues name the source and the person responsible, not just the action. And check that the sheet has one owner, because a document edited by four people during rehearsal tends to disagree with itself by transmission.

Decide in advance what happens when the sheet changes late. A single agreed method for marking changes, whether a revised version number or a colour on the printed copy, matters far more than which software produced it.

• Can a newcomer read it without explanation?
• Are timings cumulative and cues attributed to a named person?
• Is there a single owner and a clear method for late changes?

Rehearsal time is usually the first thing squeezed, so it helps to know exactly what you need from it. A full run-through is not always the right answer. For a daily news bulletin, a short technical check of sources, talkback and graphics may do more good than reading the script aloud again.

For a multi-camera interview or entertainment show, the valuable rehearsal is the awkward one: the guest walking onto the set, the move between two cameras, the cue into the first break. Choose the three or four moments most likely to go wrong and rehearse those until nobody is surprised by them.

Decide who must attend. If operators are brought in only for transmission, you are rehearsing without the people who will actually be pressing the buttons, and the gap shows on air. Even a fifteen minute meeting with the full crew beforehand tends to pay for itself within the first few editions.

• Which three moments are most likely to go wrong?
• Does the whole crew attend, or only the director and presenter?
• Is rehearsal time protected in the schedule?

Every live programme will eventually lose something: a camera feed, a radio mic, a graphics machine, a remote link. What separates a calm gallery from a panicked one is whether the response was agreed beforehand. A fault procedure does not need to be long. It needs to say who decides, what the fallback is and who tells the presenter.

Go through each critical source and ask what you would do if it vanished ten seconds before a cue. If the honest answer is that someone would think of something, that source needs a written fallback. Often this is simply a spare mic on a stand, a locked-off wide shot or a pre-agreed holding slide.

Keep the procedures short enough to pin beside the vision mixer. A twelve page manual will not be opened during a fault, whereas a single sheet with a handful of lines, each naming a person and an action, will be glanced at when it matters.

• Who has authority to call a fallback?
• What is the fallback for each critical source?
• Is the procedure short enough to read in seconds?

A workflow has to suit the people who will run it. A design that depends on a vision mixer operator also managing graphics and talkback may work with an experienced team and fail with a rota of students or part-time staff. Look at who will really be in the chair on an ordinary Tuesday, not only on the best day.

Consider the studio too. Where the gallery sits, how far the floor manager must travel to reach the presenter, and whether talkback reaches everyone are physical facts that shape how a run sheet should be written. A procedure that assumes quick communication is no use in a building where the director cannot be heard on the floor.

If your crew changes often, favour simple, repeatable habits over clever ones. Training time is a real cost, and a workflow that a new operator can follow after one session is worth more than one that is marginally faster but takes weeks to learn.

• Who is realistically in each seat on an ordinary day?
• Does talkback reach everyone who needs it?
• Could a new operator follow the process after one session?

A workflow improves only if someone looks back at it. Before committing to a format, agree how you will review the first few transmissions. A five minute debrief while memories are fresh, with the same three questions each time, is enough to show where the process is helping and where it is not.

Useful questions are modest: did we start and finish on time, did any cue arrive late, and was there a moment when someone did not know what to do. Write the answers down in one place so patterns appear across weeks rather than being forgotten by the next morning.

Be ready to change the paperwork as well as the people. If the same cue is missed three times, the cue is probably badly written. Treating the run sheet as a living document, reviewed on a fixed rhythm, keeps it honest and stops it drifting into something nobody trusts.

• Did the programme start and finish on time?
• Did any cue arrive late, and why?
• Was there a moment when someone was unsure what to do?