ABSTRACT
While the above definition might be a reasonably neat and fairly comprehensive summary, its brevity is in danger of seriously underestimating the breadth, importance and seriousness of the work it involves. Discussions about the comparative importance of various roles on the production team are largely fatuous, each member and every skill having a unique part to play in the completion of a project. Despite (or possibly because of) this acknowledgement of the collective effort and teamwork required in television production, I make no excuse for emphasising the singular nature of the role of production management, if only because of the largely unregarded, and it has to be said, undervalued, work it represents. It is this crucial contribution that production management makes to the ultimate success (or failure) of the project that should lead us to acknowledge that the accomplishment of the set of tasks it represents is one of the most important in the production process.
