Playbook
What Is a Run of Show?
Format, Example, and How to Build One
A run of show is not a schedule. A schedule tells people when things happen. A run of show tells each person what they do at that moment, and what cue starts it. That difference is the whole value of the document.
The short answer
A run of show (also called a running order in the UK, a cue sheet when it covers only the technical calls, and a flow or event flow on many India-based production teams) is a time-indexed document listing every segment of an event, the person responsible for each one, the cue that triggers it, and the technical state that must be true while it runs. It is the single operating document on show day: if something is not in it, nobody is reliably doing it.
What a run of show actually is
Most teams start with an agenda, hand it to the AV crew, and discover during the first segment that nobody knows who dims the lights, who walks the speaker to the stage, or what plays while the panel swaps chairs. The agenda was correct and still useless, because an agenda describes the audience experience and a run of show describes the work that produces it.
| Document | Audience | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| Agenda / programme | Attendees | What will I see, and when |
| Event timeline | Planning team, weeks out | What has to be finished by which date |
| Run of show | Crew, on show day | What do I do right now, and on whose cue |
| Cue sheet | AV, lighting, sound operators | Which technical change fires on which call |
Point
The test of a run of show: hand it to someone who has never seen your event, and they should be able to call the show. If they would have to ask you a question, the answer belongs in the document.
The columns, and what each one is for
A run of show is a table. Teams argue about which columns to include; the argument is usually about event size rather than principle. These are the columns that earn their place.
- Clock time — the real wall-clock time, not elapsed time. Crew check their watches, not a stopwatch.
- Duration — how long the segment runs. This is what you cut from when you are late.
- Segment — a short name everyone uses on the radio. 'Keynote in' beats 'Opening remarks by the Chief Executive'.
- Owner — one named person, never a department. 'AV' is not an owner; 'Priya' is.
- Cue — what starts it. A clock time, a line of dialogue, a stage manager's call, or the end of the previous item.
- Audio — which microphones are live, what playback runs, what the room hears.
- Vision — what is on the screens and on the stream output.
- Lighting — the state, not the instruction. 'Stage warm, house at 30%' rather than 'bring lights up'.
- Notes — anything a newcomer would otherwise ask about.
Columns to leave out
Resist adding budget codes, vendor contacts, or dietary counts. Everything you add is read on a phone screen in a dark room by someone who is already behind. Those details belong in the production book, not in the operating document.
Note
Write cues as states, not verbs. 'House lights at 50%' can be verified at a glance by anyone looking at the room. 'Fade the house lights' cannot — you cannot tell whether it already happened.
A worked example
Here is a fragment from the opening of a half-day conference with a single stage. Clock times are the live column; durations are derived from them and kept visible so the team knows what can be compressed.
| Time | Dur | Segment | Owner | Cue | Audio / Vision |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08:30 | 30m | Doors / registration | Sam | Clock | Walk-in playlist at low level. Holding slide on screens. |
| 09:00 | 2m | Chimes / seat the room | Sam | Stage manager call | Playlist out. Chime stinger. Countdown clock on screens. |
| 09:02 | 3m | Host welcome | Dev | Chime ends | Host handheld live. Logo slide. |
| 09:05 | 1m | Sizzle video | AV — Lee | Host line: 'take a look' | Host mic muted. Video full-screen with sound. |
| 09:06 | 25m | Keynote | Dev | Video out | Speaker lapel live. Speaker deck on screens, confidence monitor on. |
| 09:31 | 7m | Moderated Q&A | Dev | Keynote ends | Two roving handhelds live. Camera to wide shot. |
| 09:38 | 2m | Reset for panel | Sam | Q&A ends | Bed music up. Holding slide. Four chairs and water set. |
Notice what the example does. Every row names one person. Every cue is something observable in the room. The reset is its own row with its own duration, because furniture changes are where live events lose time and the fix is to schedule them rather than hope.
Point
The most common structural mistake is treating transitions as free. Walking a speaker on, swapping chairs, loading a deck and getting a wireless mic onto a panellist all take real minutes. Give each one a row.
How to build one
- 01
Start from the two fixed points
Doors open and the hard end time. Almost everything else is negotiable, and these two are usually contractual — venue access, union or crew hours, a livestream slot, the last train or flight your audience needs.
- 02
Block the content backwards from the end
Place the segments the event exists for, then see what time is left. Building forwards from doors always produces a show that overruns, because the optimism accumulates.
- 03
Insert every transition as its own row
Speaker changes, set changes, video rolls, award handovers. If you cannot name who performs the transition, you have found a gap in your staffing rather than an unimportant detail.
- 04
Assign one owner per row
Where two names appear, ownership is ambiguous and the row will be missed. Put the second person in the notes column as support.
- 05
Write the cue for every row
Clock time is a valid cue only for items that genuinely cannot start early, such as a livestream going public. Everything else should be cued off the previous item so the show self-corrects.
- 06
Add the technical state per row
Fill audio, vision and lighting even when nothing changes — write 'no change'. A blank cell is read as 'nobody checked' and operators will call you to ask.
- 07
Mark what is cuttable
Flag two or three segments that can be shortened or dropped. Decide this in the calm of planning, not on the day while the room waits.
- 08
Walk it with the crew out loud
Read the document start to finish with the people who will execute it. The gaps surface in the first ten minutes of reading, and they are always the same gaps: who is holding the microphone, and who opens the door.
A rough check on your durations
Before you commit to a timing, sanity-check the parts that scale with headcount. Registration is the usual failure point. The arithmetic is simple and you should run it with your own measured numbers:
If check-in takes 20 seconds per guest and you have 15 minutes before doors must close, each lane processes 900 seconds ÷ 20 seconds = 45 guests. For 300 guests, 300 ÷ 45 = 7 lanes. Replace 20 seconds with a figure you have actually timed at a similar event — badge collection, bag checks and a photo wall all push it up, and a pre-printed badge on a long table pulls it down.
Note
Do the same for any queue you create: coat check, catering lines, shuttle buses, lift capacity. Throughput equals available seconds divided by seconds per person, multiplied by the number of parallel lanes. Every assumption in that formula should be a number you measured, not one you inherited.
Running it on the day
Versions and distribution
- Put a version number and a timestamp in the header of every page
- Name the current version aloud at the crew briefing so everyone can confirm they hold it
- Distribute as a PDF for printing and as a live document for the few people allowed to change it
- Decide one person who may edit during the show — usually the stage manager or show caller
- Print spares; phones die, and a dark room is a bad place to find a charger
When you fall behind
- 01Say the number. 'We are six minutes down' on the radio, not 'we are running a bit late'. Everyone can then do their own arithmetic.
- 02Cut from the flagged items, in the order you decided in advance.
- 03Protect the hard end time rather than the individual segments. Audiences forgive a shortened panel; they do not forgive missing their transport.
- 04Tell the people affected before you tell the room. A speaker who learns on stage that their slot halved will not recover gracefully.
- 05Do not try to claw back time inside a transition. Rushed set changes are where equipment gets dropped and people get hurt.
Key takeaways
- A schedule says when; a run of show says who does what, on which cue. Build the second one.
- Every row needs one named owner and one observable cue. Clock-time cues only for items that truly cannot start early.
- Transitions are segments. Give set changes, speaker walk-ons and video rolls their own rows and durations.
- Decide in advance which segments are cuttable, then protect the hard end time rather than individual slots.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
An agenda describes what the audience sees and is written for attendees. A run of show describes the work that produces it and is written for crew: each row names an owner, a cue, and the technical state of the room. You usually need both, and they should be generated from the same source so they cannot drift apart.
A cue sheet is the technical subset — the audio, vision and lighting calls an operator follows. On a small event the two can be a single document. Once you have a sizeable crew or a live stream, split them, because operators need a dense technical list and floor staff need the hospitality and logistics rows that would clutter it.
Detailed enough that someone who has never seen your event could call the show from it. In practice that means every transition has a row, every row has one owner, and no cell is left blank — write 'no change' instead. Stop before you add information nobody will read in a dark room, such as budget codes or vendor contacts.
One person, usually the producer during planning and the stage manager or show caller during the event itself. Multiple editors on show day is how two versions end up in the room. Everyone else proposes changes to that person rather than editing directly.
Have a complete draft before your final production meeting so the walkthrough can be a review rather than a drafting session. Expect the speaker and content rows to keep moving until the last day; the structural rows — transitions, ownership, room states — should be settled well before that.