Adding your show
Setup, not a rebuild
Your show is a set of settings somebody fills in once. Nobody writes new software for you, and nothing gets forked off into a private version that stops getting updates.
Your stages, and when each starts
taped 57 · timelined 44 · rough 38 · fine 22 · lock 9 · deliver 3
A daily strip and a weekly primetime show have nothing in common here, so the schedule is yours rather than ours.
Target runtime and frame rate
30:12 at 59.94
Frame rate is not cosmetic. Credit durations are counted in frames, so the wrong one quietly mistimes the crawl that goes to air.
Who holds which role
post supervisor · lead AE · editors · online
Work is assigned by role, never by name — so when somebody leaves mid-season, the handoff chain does not break.
Your asset libraries
prizing · music cues · graphics · tape
Different kinds of element are numbered differently. Prize footage and music cues do not share a scheme.
Your delivery destinations
network · standards · captioning · international
Each one differs in kind, spec, owner and timing — and some are gated behind a QC pass on another.
Your handoff order
editor → post sup → online → QC
Who does what, in what order, and who they hand to. This is the chain that replaces the email thread.
Why it is checked first
A bad schedule is caught at setup, not in week three
The whole setup is checked as one thing before the board will load. A schedule with Fine Cut starting before Rough Cut is refused outright.
That sounds pedantic until it happens. A cadence that goes backwards produces a board that silently skips a stage, and nobody notices until an episode arrives somewhere it should not be — usually close enough to air that the fix is a weekend.
A second show
The next one costs setup time, not a rollout
Because a show is settings, a second show with a different cadence, runtime and delivery list is another set of settings. Not another system to buy, learn and keep in step.
That includes a variant of a show you already have — an ALT, an INTL, a network-specific cut. It inherits from the parent and leaves behind anything not cleared for it, and it tells you what it left behind.
Bring your schedule to a call
Twenty minutes with your actual stages and delivery list on the board, rather than a demo script.
Walkthroughs are with Kevin Kelsey — 15 years an assistant editor, Children's & Family Emmy-nominated, and the person who built this. More about him.