Gone are the days when I just sat down and enjoyed TV. Before Moonlight I was the furthest thing from a TV Junkie that anyone could imagine. Never even heard of the word showrunner! As I tried to find out more information yesterday I was amazed at how much people who follow TV know. Names of potential showrunners were thrown out like casual acquaintences. I am now convinced that to actually support Moonlight or any other show, I have to understand the industry better. Anyone who knows more (not too difficult a challenge) chime in. For those of you like me who are learning I have placed a quiz at the end of the blog. Answers tomorrow!

Showrunners from wikipedia.org:
Show runner is a term used in the United States television industry referring to the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television series, in other words, the person who "runs" the show. The term is also occasionally applied to people in the television industries of other countries.

Variety defines it as the executive producer. The de facto showrunner may, however, be someone completely different. The blog (and book) Crafty Screenwriting defines showrunner as "the person responsible for all creative aspects of the show, and responsible only to the network (and production company, if it's not his production company). The boss. Usually a writer."

Los Angeles Times columnnist Scott Collins describes show runners as:

"hyphenates," a curious hybrid of starry-eyed artists and tough-as-nails operational managers. They're not just writers; they're not just producers. They hire and fire writers and crew members, develop story lines, write scripts, cast actors, mind budgets and run interference with studio and network bosses. It's one of the most unusual and demanding, right-brain/left-brain job descriptions in the entertainment world....[S]how runners make - and often create - the shows, and now more than ever, shows are the only things that matter. In the "long tail" entertainment economy, viewers don't watch networks. They don't even care about networks. They watch shows. And they don't care how they get them.

Traditionally, the showrunner is the creator or co-creator of the series, but this is not always the case. In long running shows, often the creator of the show moves on, and day to day responsibilities of showrunning devolves to other writers or writing teams. ER, The Simpsons, The West Wing and NYPD Blue are all examples of long running shows that went through multiple showrunners.

Notable TV Showrunners - What shows are they famous for?

• Shonda Rhimes
• David Chase
• Lynn Marie Latham
• Lydia Woodward
• Aaron Sorkin
• David E. Kelley
• Agnes Nixon
• William J. Bell
• Marc Cherry

I hid the answers in the comments of my Blog about Season 2 But one thing I learned was that these successful showrunners were both the creators and the ex. producers (showrunners). All of these guys were the creative vision behind the shows that they ran.

I still don't know enough to figure out what will happen with ML. The creator was Munson but they didn't like his creation and hired Koslow from Beauty and the Beast to write with him. Then they hired Chip to be the showrunner. So ....... is there enough creative vision to get these 4 episodes out and to keep up what we love about the show? We will find out. They did manage to produce episodes 10, 11, and 12 without Chip.