What Live Production Workflow Support Costs and What Moves the Price

Workflow support is a service built from time, not equipment. When a producer asks what it costs, the honest first answer is that the figure follows the number of days we spend with the team and the amount of preparation that happens before those days. We plan rundowns, sit in on rehearsals and write the fault-finding procedures the gallery will use when something goes wrong mid-programme.

Most of the work is quieter than people expect. A good share of it is reading your existing running orders, asking who calls what, and finding the points where a programme usually slips. That preparation is charged at the same rate as time in the building, because it is the part that decides whether the live hours run to time.

Our standard day rate for this work is £650, and a half day is £360. Everything below explains how the final quote lands above or below those figures.

• Day rate £650, half day £360
• Preparation time is charged like time on site
• Written procedures are part of the work, not an extra

A ten-minute news bulletin with two presenters and a handful of packages needs far less structure than an hour-long live show with remote guests and a studio audience. The more moving parts in the rundown, the more cue points, transitions and fallback routes we have to plan and rehearse.

We usually start by asking how many items run in a typical edition, how many people sit in the gallery, and how often the format changes. A stable daily programme can be supported with a short, focused engagement. A show that changes its structure each week needs more of our attention up front and a clearer set of notes for whoever runs it afterwards.

This is why we do not publish one price for a programme type. Two bulletins of the same length can differ by a full day of planning.

Rehearsal support is where most of the budget goes, and also where most of the value sits. Running a programme through from the top, with real timings and deliberate faults, shows the team how the gallery behaves under pressure. We would rather find a missed cue in rehearsal than on air.

The number of rehearsals depends on how new the team is to the format and the studio. A crew that has worked together for years may need one full run and one partial. A newly formed crew, or one moving into a rebuilt studio, often benefits from three. Each run is charged as a half or full day depending on length, including the short debrief afterwards.

We suggest agreeing the rehearsal count in the written quotation, with a note on what happens if a further run turns out to be needed.

• Experienced crew: often one full run plus a partial
• New crew or new studio: commonly three runs
• A debrief follows every rehearsal

The written side of the service covers what to do when a source drops, an intercom channel fails or a graphic does not arrive. We set these out as short, ordered steps that a tired operator can follow at speed, rather than long manuals nobody opens during a broadcast.

Writing them properly means walking through your actual signal paths with the engineer who looks after them. If your studio already has clear documentation from an earlier installation or audit, this part takes less time. If the paths are partly undocumented, we spend extra hours tracing them, and the quotation reflects that.

The result is a short set of laminated or printed sheets at the gallery desk, plus a digital copy for your records. They are yours to keep and update.

Several things push the figure up: travel to sites far from Perth, working outside normal hours because the studio is only free in the evening, a very short lead time, and productions with remote contributors whose connections need testing as well. Each of these adds hours or constraints, and we state them in the quotation instead of folding them into a single number.

Things that bring it down are mostly about preparation on your side. Sending the current rundown template, a list of gallery roles and any recent fault logs lets us arrive with the planning half done. Booking rehearsals on consecutive days also saves setup time between sessions.

Mid autumn is a sensible time to plan, since many broadcasters are settling their winter schedules and have space for a calm rehearsal before the busier weeks.

• Raises: distant sites, evening work, short notice, remote guests
• Lowers: supplied templates, fault logs, consecutive days

You begin with an enquiry through the contact page, describing the programme, the studio and the dates you have in mind. We reply with questions if anything is unclear, then send a written quotation setting out the days, the rate and any conditions that affect the price.

Once you confirm the quotation in writing, we issue an invoice, payable by bank transfer. Nothing is paid through the website itself. If plans change, cancellations and refunds follow our payment and refund policy, which is worth reading before you confirm.

We do not promise outcomes from the work. What we commit to is the time, the preparation and the documentation described in the quotation, delivered by the people named in it.