Why the price is a range, not a single figure
People ask me for a price for newsroom scheduling in the first phone call, and I understand why. A studio manager has a budget line and wants to know whether the conversation is worth having. The honest answer is that the figure depends on how many moving parts your daily output has, and two newsrooms of similar size can differ a good deal.
Newsroom Production Scheduling at showlixir means coordinating crews, studios and gallery time so that daily bulletins run to a dependable plan. The work is the same in kind everywhere, yet the amount of coordination is not. A single studio with one evening bulletin is a small job. Several studios, a morning programme, a lunchtime update and overnight crews make a larger one.
Our prices page sets out the current figures in pounds sterling. This article explains what sits behind them, so that you can see which of your own circumstances will push a quotation up or down before you write to us.
The first driver: how many bulletins and how often
The most direct influence on cost is the number of bulletins and programmes the schedule has to hold each day. A plan for one half-hour bulletin has a handful of fixed points: crew call, rehearsal, line-up, transmission and de-rig. A plan for six bulletins across a broadcast day has those same points repeated, and each repetition has its own handover.
Frequency matters as well. A schedule that runs seven days a week carries different rota demands from one that follows a Monday to Friday pattern, because weekend crews are usually smaller and cover more roles each. Planning that cover properly takes more setup time at the start.
When you write to us, tell us the bulletins by name or slot, the days they run and any that change on certain days. That one list does more to fix a quotation than any other piece of information you can send.
- Number of bulletins per day
- Days of the week covered
- Slots that change on particular days
The second driver: studios, galleries and shared resources
Studios are rarely used by one programme alone. Where two productions share a studio, or one gallery serves more than one set, the schedule has to manage changeovers, and changeovers are where bulletins lose minutes. Each shared resource adds a dependency that has to be tracked and checked against everything else on the day.
A newsroom with one studio and one gallery has a simple map. One with three studios, two galleries and a pooled set of cameras and microphones has a map with many more crossings. We price the work according to how many of those crossings the plan must protect.
It helps to know, before you contact us, which spaces are shared, which are fixed to one programme, and where the tight turnarounds currently occur. Those turnarounds are usually the first thing a schedule is asked to put right, and they shape how much planning time the job needs.
The third driver: crew patterns and how much they change
A stable crew on a regular rota is straightforward to schedule. A crew drawn from staff, freelancers and borrowed colleagues, with availability that shifts week by week, takes more care. The plan has to name who is needed, check who is free, and show clearly where there is a gap before it becomes a problem on the morning.
Roles matter too. Floor managers, camera operators, vision mixers, sound and lighting staff each have their own call times and their own limits on how long they can work. A schedule that ignores those limits looks tidy on paper and fails on the day.
So the more irregular your crewing, the more time goes into building and maintaining the plan. We would sooner say so plainly in the quotation than hide it in a flat rate that does not fit your newsroom.
- Staff, freelance and borrowed crew mix
- Roles with fixed call times
- Frequency of rota changes
What a written quotation covers, and what changes it
Once you have sent an enquiry through the contact page, we reply with a written quotation. It states what the price includes, in plain terms: the setup of your schedule, the way it is shared with the gallery and floor, and the support we give while your team settles into it. After you confirm it, we send an invoice, paid by bank transfer.
Several things can change the figure after the quotation is written. A new studio brought into the plan, an added bulletin, or a change from a fixed rota to a rotating one will each alter the amount of coordination involved. We confirm any such change in writing before it affects the invoice.
Cancellations and refunds follow our payment and refund policy, which you can read on its own page. Nothing is bought on the website itself, and no payment is taken there; the quotation and the invoice are how the arrangement is made.
What to have ready before you ask
A quotation is only as accurate as the picture it is built on. If you send us a short, clear account of your output, we can give you a figure that will not need revising a fortnight later. It does not need to be polished; a plain list is entirely enough.
Useful items include the bulletins and their running times, the studios and galleries in use, the usual crew size for each slot, and the points in the day where things most often slip. If you already work from a spreadsheet or a printed running order, a copy tells us a great deal quickly.
At this time of year, many newsrooms are also thinking about winter pressures on their schedules, from longer evening output to staff leave over the holidays. If that applies to you, mention it, because it changes how the plan should be built rather than how much it weighs.
- Bulletins, slots and running times
- Studios and galleries in use
- Typical crew for each slot
- Where the day usually slips
The cost of newsroom scheduling follows the shape of your output: how many bulletins, how many shared spaces, and how settled your crews are. None of it is mysterious, and we would rather walk you through the reasoning than hand over a bare number. Send us your list through the contact page and we will reply with a written quotation that says what is included and what would change it.
