Organisational Structure of a Television Station
Published by Emil Abraham,
A television station is a business, organization or other enterprise that transmits content over television. A television transmission can occur via analog television signals or through digital television signals. Broadcast television systems standards are set by the government, and these vary around the world. Television stations broadcasting over an analog system were typically limited to one television channel, but digital television enables broadcasting through sub channels as well. Television stations usually require a broadcast license from a government agency which sets the requirements and limitations on the station.
The President: This is the highest executive position at a television station. He/she is often the owner or the representative of the owner of a television station. In other television stations this position carries the name of the Managing Director or the General Manager. This person overseas all activities done in the organization like production, advertising, budget issues, community relations, ensuring achieving goals of mission statement, etc. He/she is the decision maker of short and some long term objectives apart from the television board committee.
The vice president: He\she is in second command to the president. Usually his major work is to ensure active implementation and monitoring of implemented ideas and programs succeed on behalf of the president. A director is a person in charge of working out production details; coordinating the activities of the production staff and non-camera talent; working out positions of camera and talent or actors and presenters on the set; selecting the camera shots during the production; and supervising post production work. The director therefore his main role is to coordinate activities so that his team produces the desired output worthy to broadcast.
Producers: They come up with production concept. In other words the ‘they hatch the production concept’. He then budgets for the entire production process, makes major decision which guide the production process. He is the team leader thus works with writers, decides on the key talent, hires the director where there is no in- house director, and guides the general direction of the production. The producer is assisted by the assistant producer throughout the production.
Assistant Producers: They are the sources contributors and stories for the program. They assist the producers.
Anchors: They are those who have professional and personal strength and authority, as though the bearer of that title, through a combination of experience, personality and charisma is holding the program together and somehow grounding it in reality. They are also newsreaders or news casters.
Assignment Editors: They are in charge of assigning duties to reporters. Where reporters to get news, when to bring news items, are some of activities they look into. They also write and come up with headlines on fished stories which they as well edit before broadcast.
Reporters: They fetch news stories and sometimes do write down those news ideas into readable stories. These make the news department live and active.
Writers: Their duty is to write down news stories from news ideas brought by reporters.
Videographers: They are also called cameramen. They do shoot shots assigned by the responsible producers. For example whether it is a shooting script or treatment script videographers are right people to manage the shooting job.
Sports editors: Their duty is to edit sports news. They do assign sports reporters to reporting duties.
Meteorologists: They do prepare news of climate and weather changes. They even report forecast of climate as well as weather.
All discussed positions above fall under the news department which comprise program manager who design new programs, control and monitors them; production manager, who is responsible of making sure that the programs are produced as intended by the producer as well as directed and ensures programs are made ready for broadcast. He also checks matters of decency and laws to comply with laws of the land and journalistic principles like ethics; talent, includes actors, reporters, hosts, guests, etc; and studio crew which include all studio personnel like lighting, technical, camera operators, costume directors, electronic character generators, audio and visual directors, etc.
Another department is business. This department is composed of business manager, accounting manager, personnel manager, sales manager, local sales manager, national sales manager, account executives, traffic manager, and building maintenance. The business manager is responsible for managing all television business activities across business department including advertising and coverage of public and private functions which is one way of generating finances for the television.
Another important department is the engineering department. This department is headed by chief engineer who subordinates transmitter manager, remote manager, maintenance manager and engineers. The main duty of this department is to ensure that the broadcast transmission is perfect and technical faults like picture blurring, sound jamming are avoided and/or rectified on time with desirably with improvement like that of picture quality. The engineering department also expands the transmission network for a television to have wide viewership.