Running the Show: Television from the Inside

by Jeff Melvoin

Overview

Running the Show takes you inside building a show from the ground up and what a showrunner’s life looks like in Hollywood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493075294
Publisher:	Applause
Publication date:	09/01/2023
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

As a writer and producer, Jeff Melvoin has worked on more than a dozen series, contributing to over 375 hours of one-hour drama as a showrunner. He’s worked in every platform on Emmy-award winning shows. He has taught at USC, UCLA and Harvard, and led workshops at the Sundance Institute, the American Film Institute, and Northwestern. He speaks at professional conferences around the world, and for the past twenty years, he has chaired the Writers Guild of America’s Showrunner Training Program, a six-week master class for emerging writer-producers.

Editorial Reviews

Melvoin has done pretty much everything in this business. And, more fundamentally, thought about everything. I recommend this book for any writer, or aspiring writer.

David Shore

There’s no one in the field who has mentored as many young writers and contributed more to this generation of showrunning than Jeff Melvoin. A powerful and necessary read.

Veena Sud

For me, this was the best book on showrunning I've ever read. It's for anyone who wants to run shows or just know how they've been run across the years, even as the medium has changed greatly. It captures the many changes our business has gone through and the larger-than-life personalities and vast challenges one has to navigate and be successful at if you want the dream job of telling stories for TV.

Greg Berlanti

Whether you aspire to produce a television series or just want to know how it’s done, there’s finally a book with the answers. Invaluable! It’s rare that a “how-to” book is also a page-turner, but Melvoin has great stories to tell and invaluable skills to share. An essential book for anyone interested in the form. RUNNING THE SHOW is mandatory reading.

Edward Saxon

A wonderful ride through the raging waters of creating television.  It’s a book full of sharp insights, great advice and legitimate wisdom.

J.J. Abrams

An insightful, entertaining, insider's look at the entire process of showrunning written by one of the foremost practitioners of the craft. Jeff Melvoin's book is a gift to anyone who's ever considered pursuing a career in television or wondered what a showrunner actually does!

John Wells

Jeff Melvoin is the oracle and Yoda of showrunning, and this book demonstrates his decades of hard work and earned wisdom running award-winning one-hour drama series. Melvoin is also the founder of the Writers Guild Showrunner Training Program, now entering its 18th year, guiding hundreds of top showrunners through the unique challenges and rewards of becoming a successful showrunner. Each compact chapter offers his experiences in the trenches, along with practical advice on developing, pitching, selling, getting staffed in a writers room, and, ultimately, running a show — all with candor, nuance, humility, and humor.

Neil Landau

Running The Show is as valuable to would-be showrunners as it is fascinating to veterans. Jeff Melvoin offers that rare combination: up-to-themoment accuracy about a changing television landscape and an insightful historical perspective. There's great advice in every chapter.

From the Publisher