How We Run a Production Workflow Review, From First Call to Written Report

Why we are describing the review now

Over the past few months more of our enquiries have started with the same sentence: the equipment is fine, but the show still wobbles. A cue arrives late, talkback is crowded, or nobody is quite sure who calls the switch to the fallback. That is the work our Production Workflow Review exists for, and since the autumn schedules are filling up, I want to set out plainly how it runs.

This note is the third of four on the review, so it concentrates on the practical running of the engagement rather than on its purpose or its aftermath. If you are a producer or studio manager deciding whether a review would help your programme, the aim is that you finish reading knowing what we ask of you and what you get back.

The review is a written piece of work. We do not rebuild your gallery or retrain your crew as part of it; where we see a need for that, the report says so and you decide what follows.

What we read before we visit

Before anyone travels, we ask for the documents your team already uses. The most useful are recent rundowns, including at least one that went badly, any cueing sheets or script formats, the talkback channel plan, and whatever written fallback procedures exist. Many studios have the last of these only in people's heads, and that is a finding in itself rather than a failing.

I read these on my own first, marking where a rundown assumes something the gallery cannot easily deliver: a graphic called two seconds after a camera move, or a guest introduced while the director is still on a different item. These marks become the questions I bring to the studio.

We also ask who sits where during a typical broadcast and who has authority to stop or change the show. The answers are rarely identical from person to person, and the differences tell us a good deal.

• Two or three recent rundowns, one of them from a difficult show
• The talkback and intercom channel plan
• Any written fallback or failure procedure
• A seating plan of the gallery and studio floor

A day in the gallery

We attend a live or full rehearsal broadcast and stay out of the way. I sit behind the director with a copy of the rundown and note, in time order, every spoken instruction, every hesitation and every moment someone looks across the room to confirm something. Nobody is graded; we are simply recording how information actually moves.

Afterwards we speak individually with the director, the vision mixer, the floor manager, the audio operator and, where there is one, the autocue operator. Short conversations of about twenty minutes work better than a group meeting, because people describe the awkward moments more honestly when their colleagues are not listening.

Where a programme runs several formats, we try to see each of them at least once, since a stable news bulletin and a looser interview show tend to fail in different places.

Talkback and cueing: where the findings usually sit

Most of what we find sits in the spoken layer. Talkback channels grow over the years until a single line carries the director, the producer and the floor all at once, and a time-critical instruction waits behind a casual remark. We map who speaks to whom, on which channel, and how often, and then suggest a simpler split that suits the size of your crew.

Cueing is the second common area. A cue is only reliable when everyone understands the same words to mean the same action. We note where a phrase is used differently by two people and propose a short, agreed vocabulary that the whole crew can learn in a single briefing.

Neither change needs new equipment. They are habits, written down and agreed, which is why they hold up on a long broadcast when people are tired.

• Separate time-critical talkback from general chatter
• Agree a short shared vocabulary for cues
• Name one person who calls the change to a fallback

What the written report contains

The report is written for the people who will use it, not for a shelf. It opens with a plain summary of what works well, because there is always a good deal, and then sets out each finding with the moment we saw it, why it matters on air and what we suggest. Suggestions are ordered so that the quick ones come first.

Fallback procedures get their own section. For each realistic failure, such as a lost feed, a dropped guest link or a failed graphic, we set out who decides, what the first action is and how the audience hears about it. These are drafted as one-page sheets that can be pinned in the gallery.

We deliver the report as a document and talk it through with your team on a call, so that questions are answered while the details are fresh.

What we ask of you, and what to expect

The main thing we ask is access: to your documents, to a broadcast or rehearsal, and to a few members of the crew for short conversations. We do not need the whole team for a whole day, and we plan around your transmission schedule rather than the reverse.

Timing depends on how many formats you run and how much material there is to read, and we confirm it in writing once we have seen your documents. Prices for the review are on our prices page, and the process for ordering is an enquiry through the contact page, followed by a written quotation.

If your show has a particular recurring problem, tell us at the first conversation. We will look for it specifically, and the report will address it directly.