Ten producers on a TV show?

Cafe Society
1

Watched the Sopranos the other day and the credits list 10 producers with various titles.

What are all these people doing for the show? They are not the writers or director and I am pretty sure they don’t do hair, costume, makeup ,sound, camera, sets, and so on.

2

They work for the production company which responsible for hiring everybody else, working with HBO, and providing the money. This covers a wide range of responsibilities and probably changes over time, but everybody gets their names in the credits. Think of them as all the managers, from the President and VP down to the day-by-day supervisors.

In the dark ages, one person did most of this work and kept all the credit. That’s almost impossible today. Multiplying producers is a fact of modern life in the movies and Broadway as well.

3

There are many different producers for a TV show:

  1. Executive Producer – manages the entire series, hiring, budgeting, etc. Basically, the person in charge.
  2. Producer – handles the business end of an individual episode.
  3. Line producer – handles the logistics, making sure that the various parts of the episode are in place. One might arrange for locations and make sure all support people are there. If someone is late, a line producer will chew them out.

In addition, there are other producer credits for people who act as “silent partners” in the production, most often an established star whose name is recognizable and who helped get the show off the ground, but have little to do with the actual production.

4

Yep. Watch First Wave with Sebastian Spence. Francis Ford Coppola is listed as a producer on every episode and I would not be surprised if he has barely heard of the show. I think he looked at some auditions and recommended Sebastian Spence. And then did nothing.

5

Also on TV shows when a Writer gets promoted they often get a Producer credit but really are just still a Writer.

6

related note - did someone invent the term “showrunner” this year? I only heard it recently

7

Actors, especially in starring roles, often have a clause in their contracts saying after X number of seasons they get a producer credit. 30 Rock did with Jenna Maroney, she got a vanity producer credit one episode, then proved to be a more competent producer than Pete.

8

It’s several years old. What with all the producers, it became difficult to know who was in charge of the pre, post, and general production of a series. The “showrunner” is the person in charge.

9

More like a few decades ago.

10

As a comparison point, the latest episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. lists eighteen producers…

11

I guess that showrunner only made it to mainstream press recently. (as opposed to industry press like Variety)

Or maybe I just did not hear it for 20 years :smiley:

12

I think Showrunner is a term that was mainly an industry that has become more widely known because so much of the Backstage info is now public because of the Internet and the expansion of Media Reporting on itself. It’s really only the last 15 years or so that people even cared who created a show. Unless the creator was also the star, like Seinfeld, most people didn’t care. It didn’t matter to them.

Now TV is in a different era and people follow the behind the camera talent they care about as much as the the in front of the camera talent.

13

I think I first became aware of “show runners” from reading a book on The Simpsons, which has used different show runners in different seasons, which may, according to some, account for differences in style, focus, and/or quality between one season and another.