What a run of show is, and why a good event day is boring

A run of show, also called a run sheet or an event rundown, is the crew's minute-by-minute document for an event day: a line for every cue, with a time and a named owner against each one.

If you have ever been at an event where nothing appeared to happen and everything worked, you were watching a run of show.

It is the least glamorous document in this business and the one that decides how the day feels. Not how it looks, how it feels: whether the room senses that somebody has it, or senses that people are figuring it out.

It is not the programme

The programme is what guests are told will happen. Reception, dinner, awards, performance. Eight lines, maybe ten.

The run of show is what the crew does to make those eight lines occur, and for the same event it runs to sixty or more. Every cue, every microphone change, every screen state, every person who has to be standing somewhere specific before something else can start. It includes a great deal the audience will never see, which is exactly why it exists.

What goes in one: the columns

A spreadsheet is the usual home for it, with one row per action rather than per segment, so a single award can take four or five rows. The columns:

• Time. When the line starts, to the minute.
• Length. How long it runs, so a slip shows up in everything after it.
• What happens. One action, in the words the crew will use: "Emcee to stage, mic 1 live".
• Owner. One person, by name.
• Where. Where that person, or the next presenter, has to be standing.
• Cues. Sound, screen and lighting for that line.
• Notes. What the line is guarding against.

Read one

Here is an extract from the middle of a gala evening, the part where an awards segment is threaded into dinner service. Open any line to see why it is written the way it is.

Every line has one owner

The rule that carries most of the weight: no line belongs to a team, a supplier, or an idea. It belongs to a person, by name, and that person knows it belongs to them before the day.

Shared responsibility is how a trophy ends up nowhere near the stage while four people each assume one of the others has it. Once every line has a name against it, the run sheet stops being a schedule and starts being an allocation.

A programme has eight lines. The same event's run of show has sixty, and every one of them has a name against it.

A lunch has a different shape

The same document runs a daytime event, but the shape changes. A Chinese New Year lunch is the clearest case: a seated ballroom, an address, a meal, something on stage, and a hard stop, because guests are due back at work. There is no dance floor for the day to end on.

At a Chinese New Year lunch our team worked on, the photographs show an erhu played alone on stage against a bright white screen, and the whole room gathered in front of the stage for one picture taken from it. Neither happens by itself. A solo instrument needs service to stop, and a group photograph needs every table on its feet at once. Each is a line with an owner.

The evening version, from the welcome to the last song, is in how a dinner and dance runs. If your lunch is the whole company in a ballroom, plan it like a company dinner and dance held earlier in the day.

One document, one owner, printed

A run of show that exists in four slightly different versions is worse than none, because everyone believes they are working from the truth. One person edits it, it carries a version number and a time stamp, and the version used on the day is printed as well as shared. Phones die, screens are hard to read in a dark room, and a printed sheet can be marked up by hand.

Send the current version the day before, and be explicit that it supersedes everything earlier. That single sentence prevents more problems than any amount of formatting.

It is a plan, not a contract

Every event slips. A course runs late, a speaker overruns, a video does not resolve. The run of show is not there to prevent that, it is there so somebody can see the consequence immediately and decide what gives.

Which means one more thing has to be written down: who is allowed to change it during the day. One person. Everybody knows who. Without that, a delay produces a conversation instead of a decision, and the conversation is what the audience actually notices.

When it is right, the day is boring in the best possible way. Things happen at the time they were going to happen, nobody is hurrying, and nobody in the room has any idea how much of that was decided in advance.

Common questions

What is a run of show?

A minute-by-minute document covering an event day, with a line for every cue and a named owner against each one. It is not the programme. The programme is what guests are told will happen; the run of show is what the crew does to make it happen, including everything the audience never sees.

What is the difference between a run of show and a programme?

The programme is guest-facing and lists segments. The run of show is crew-facing and lists actions: who speaks, who cues, which microphone is live, what is on screen, where the next presenter is standing. A programme has perhaps eight lines. The same event's run of show has sixty.

What is a run sheet?

Another name for a run of show: the crew's minute-by-minute document for the event day, with a time, an action and a named owner on every line. Some teams call it an event rundown.

What columns should a run of show template have?

Time, length, what happens, who owns it, where they need to be, the sound, screen and lighting cues, and notes. Use one row per action rather than per segment, so a single award can take four or five rows.

Who writes the run of show?

One person owns it, and only that person edits it. Multiple copies of a run sheet in circulation is the most reliable way to have a cue land on nothing. It should carry a version number and a time stamp, and the version on the day should be printed as well as shared.