Producer runbook — Temerarii Media Back Office

The scenes you cut

All 40 scenes in the loaded collection (2026-08-09 26b2c6f, 1920×1080). This table is generated from the broadcast build, so it cannot describe a scene that no longer exists — and 5 of them carry a constraint you have to know before you cut to them.

Scene	Sources	What it costs you
Starting Soon	—	—
BRB	—	—
Technical Difficulties	—	—
Ending	—	—
Host Solo	1 cam · HUD	—
Two Up	2 cam · HUD	—
Three Up	3 cam · HUD	—
Quad	4 cam · HUD	—
Host Focus	3 cam · HUD	—
Screen + PiP	1 cam · 1 screen · HUD	—
Hot Seat	1 cam · HUD	—
Diff Screen	1 cam · 2 screen · HUD	—
The Record	1 cam · HUD	—
Game Board	1 cam · HUD	—
Cold Open	—	—
Package	—	—
Elimination	2 cam · HUD	—
Standings	—	—
Gate Verdict	—	—
Segment Card	—	—
Week Card	—	—
Interstitial	—	—
Credits	—	—
Grid 5	5 cam · HUD	560px cells · plate full
Grid 6	6 cam · HUD	560px cells · plate full
Grid 8	8 cam · HUD	484px cells · plate name
Grid 9	9 cam · HUD	484px cells · plate name 9 individual feeds exceeds the ~8-decode ceiling for one box — take a composited room view as ONE source, or cut to pods
Grid 12	12 cam · HUD	414px cells · plate name 12 individual feeds exceeds the ~8-decode ceiling for one box — take a composited room view as ONE source, or cut to pods
Pod Tech	4 cam · HUD	747px cells · plate full
Pod Creative	4 cam · HUD	747px cells · plate full
Pod Producer	3 cam · HUD	747px cells · plate full
Pod EM	3 cam · HUD	747px cells · plate full
Roll Call	1 cam · HUD	—
Active Speaker	1 cam · HUD	—
Roster	—	—
Screen + 1	1 cam · 1 screen · HUD	484px cells · plate name · sharer needs ≥19px editor screen is 64% of frame — the sharer must set their editor to >=19px or the code is unreadable on stream
Screen + 3	3 cam · 1 screen · HUD	484px cells · plate name · sharer needs ≥19px editor screen is 64% of frame — the sharer must set their editor to >=19px or the code is unreadable on stream
Screen Panel	3 cam · 1 screen · HUD	484px cells · plate name · sharer needs ≥23px editor screen is 53% of frame — the sharer must set their editor to >=23px or the code is unreadable on stream
Screen Corners	2 cam · 1 screen · HUD	307px cells · plate initial · sharer needs ≥15px editor
SFX	—	—

The stream guide is the rig. This is everything around it — getting people ready, staying reachable, deciding fast, and keeping the record that settles arguments later.

The number that defines this seat: twenty-four. Twelve participants on the show and twelve unpaid standby, each on their own computer and their own phone, in their own house, on their own connection. You are accountable for all of them being broadcast-ready. That is not a side duty of producing — on this show it is most of the job.

Intake — getting one person broadcast-ready

Run this the moment somebody is selected, and again the moment a standby seat is activated mid-season — that is the version that has to work under time pressure, because someone was fired on Saturday and the show goes out on Monday.

Send the setup sheets and ask which card they are using. Do not ask what equipment they own — you will get a paragraph. Ask which card.
Confirm the release is signed before they are on any call that records. Unsigned means not on camera. There is no discretion in this one and it is not yours to waive.
Run a real test call — not a message asking if it works. Watch their camera, listen to their level, confirm headphones.
Get their upload number, tested at the hour they will actually be on. Evening and morning are different networks.
Record the outcome: device card, upload, mic, known weaknesses. You will not remember twenty-four setups and neither will your replacement.
Set up their screen share before they ever need it. Raise the editor and terminal font sizes, and have them share a 1920×1080 region rather than a whole 4K desktop. The thresholds and the arithmetic behind them are on the broadcast architecture page. This one is not a policy preference and there is nothing to ratify — it falls out of how much of the frame a screen occupies, and no layout change recovers a screen nobody can read.
Book their fallback. Everyone should have tried tethering once, before the day they need it.

OpenThe minimum participant specification is not ratified.
The setup sheets currently tell participants 1080p, headphones, and 10 Mbps upload. That is a sensible floor and it is what is published — but it has not been signed off, which means you cannot currently hold anyone to it. Until it is ratified, a participant who arrives at 4 Mbps is a negotiation rather than a breach. Proposed: adopt those three as the hard floor, with the producer empowered to refuse a session below it.

Staying reachable

You are the channel between the show and the people on it. That works when it is one channel; it collapses when it is four.

One group channel for everyone, one direct line to you. Anything agreed in a private message that affects the show gets repeated in the group, or it did not happen.
Call times in one time zone, always the same one, with the local equivalent spelled out. Participants are international; "9pm" alone will cost somebody an episode.
Broadcast changes go out in writing, even when you have already said them live. People forget what they heard while nervous.
Standby participants stay on the list. Somebody activated in week nine who has heard nothing since week one is not ready, and that is a producer failure rather than theirs.

OpenOn-call hours are undefined.
Producers "communicate with all participants" — but not whenever. With international participants, an undefined window means either somebody answering messages at 3am or somebody stranded before an episode. Proposed: a stated window on weekdays, plus from ninety minutes before any broadcast until it ends. Outside that, no expectation of a reply.

The show day

When	What
T−90	Rig up. Scenes checked, sources unlocked only while you work, then locked.
T−45	Test broadcast and test recording, played back. The pre-flight gate.
T−30	Participants join. Camera, level, headphones, name spelling — every person, out loud.
T−15	Release status confirmed for everyone on camera today.
T−5	Anyone not ready is cut from the layout now, not at go-live. Tell them; do not let them discover it.
Live	Produce. Log incidents with timestamps as they happen.
After	Verify files play, hand off, file the log — including clean nights.

Disruption and pay — what you owe the decision

Pay is fixed-price against a deliverable. So the question that reaches you is never "how many hours" — it is "did the work happen", and when a session falls apart, whose side the failure was on.

You do not decide this. You produce the evidence it is decided from. An incident log written live — what failed, at what time, for how long, and what you did — is the whole basis. A log reconstructed the next morning is worth very little to someone arguing they were not paid, and worth nothing at all if they are right.

What happened	What you record
Participant never joined	Time, and every contact attempt you made.
Joined, unusable, on their side	What specifically failed, and whether it was flagged at intake. A known weakness nobody fixed is a different fact from a surprise.
Joined, unusable, on our side	Say so plainly. If our rig lost them, that is ours, and a producer who logs it honestly is doing the job.
Partial — dropped and returned	Minutes lost, and what still got delivered.
Stream disrupted, work delivered anyway	Note it. The broadcast failing is not the work failing, and these are easy to confuse after the fact.

OpenHow rig failure affects pay has not been decided.
There is no rule yet for "their connection died — do they get paid for that session?" This will come up, probably in the first fortnight, and settling it live in front of a participant is the worst possible time. Proposed: the deliverable governs. Work delivered is paid even if the broadcast failed; work not delivered is unpaid regardless of the reason; and a failure caused by our rig never costs a participant. Needs the Chairman and the EM to ratify before week one.

Deciding under time pressure

The ownership split says the EM approves. Five minutes before air there is no time to route anything, so this is the standing rule.

Situation	Call
Anything purely about the broadcast — layout, cut, cut away, drop a source, start late	Yours. Make it, log it, mention it after.
Someone unusable at T−5	Yours. Cut them from the layout and tell them.
Anything that changes what the episode says about a brand	Executive Manager. If unreachable, cut rather than guess.
Anything about whether this is a good episode of the show	Executive Chairman.
Anything about somebody's employment	Never yours, never live, never on air outside the elimination format.

When you cannot tell which it is: cut away, then escalate. Cutting away is reversible in ten seconds. Broadcasting the thing you were unsure about is not reversible at all.

The first broadcast you run is the pilot, and it is not a rehearsal. Three things this show needs are not built yet — the audio bus for twelve to twenty-four open microphones, a confidence feed so you can see what you are cutting, and any control over a guest’s own device. The pilot exists to find out what each of those actually costs, at a point where the price is one broadcast rather than an episode of the season. They are named in full on the broadcast architecture page. Producing that pilot honestly — logging what did not work rather than getting through it — is more use than a clean one.

The master stream guide · where the machine lives and why the scenes are shaped the way they are · what participants receive · the programme.