The showrunner’s skills and responsibilities in the creation and production process of fiction series in the contemporary North American television industry
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Universidad de Navarra
Materia
Showrunner TV series Media production studies Television industry Television authorship North America
Date
2021-10-05Referencia bibliográfica
Higueras-Ruiz, M.-J., Gómez-Pérez, F.-J. & Alberich-Pascual, J. (2021). The showrunner’s skills and responsibilities in the creation and production process of fiction series in the contemporary North American television industry. Communication & Society, 34(4), 185-200. [10.15581/003.34.4.185-200]
Sponsorship
Government of Spain FPU 15/00737; Project National Plan "Transmedializacion y crowdsourcing en las narrativas de ficcion y no ficcion audiovisuales, periodisticas, dramaticas y literarias" (2018-2020) CSO2017-85965-P; University of GranadaAbstract
Contemporary fiction TV series production in North America is
characterized by the showrunner figure’s importance. This paper
aims to study the concept of “showrunner” as executive-creative
producer, analyze the competencies and responsibilities carried
out by them during the production process of TV shows according
to personal and professional factors, and examine their position
within the current television market. For this purpose, a literature
review on fiction TV series production and television authorship
has been conducted. After this, adopting the focus of media
production studies, a qualitative methodology based on in-depth
personal interviews has been used, which was carried out with a
selection of thirty-six significant executive producers and writers
of contemporary American TV series. The findings indicate the
relevance of this profile from a historical perspective, and
particularly in recent years. Although there is a basic scheme of
tasks developed by the showrunner in each phase of the
production process, we find differences in this actuation due to
personal –sex and nationality– and professional –format/gender
and channel– characteristics in this industrial context. The
showrunner develops an executive-creative dual profile to
maintain the project’s coherence according to the established
vision. Their influence over the TV series’ creative features
contributes to reflection on television authorship and its
attribution to this figure.