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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for TV Manager

💰 $60,000 - $120,000

BroadcastTelevisionManagementOperations

🎯 Role Definition

The TV Manager (Broadcast Operations / Station Manager level) is the operational leader responsible for end-to-end television station or channel operations. This role oversees programming and scheduling, master control and playout, technical delivery (satellite/IP/streaming), regulatory compliance, staff and vendor management, budget and capital planning, audience growth initiatives, and cross-functional coordination with programming, sales, production and engineering teams. The ideal TV Manager drives reliable 24/7 broadcast operations, delivers high-quality live and scheduled content across linear and OTT platforms, optimizes audience reach and revenue, and enforces safety and legal standards.

Keywords: TV Manager, broadcast operations manager, master control, programming schedule, broadcast compliance, OTT distribution, live television, station manager, television operations, channel manager.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Broadcast Technician or Master Control Operator
  • Programming Coordinator or Traffic Coordinator
  • Production Assistant or Line Producer

Advancement To:

  • Director of Broadcast Operations
  • Head of TV / Channel Director
  • General Manager / Station Manager

Lateral Moves:

  • Content Manager / Head of Programming
  • Technical Operations Manager
  • OTT / Digital Channel Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Own and execute the day-to-day broadcast operations of the station/channel, ensuring continuous 24/7 playout quality for linear and digital streams and minimizing downtime and delivery errors.
  • Develop, implement and maintain programming schedules in partnership with programming and sales teams; balance audience demand, advertiser commitments, and regulatory requirements to maximize ratings and revenue.
  • Lead master control activities: oversee playout automation, ingest, graphics insertion, live switching, and time-sensitive rollouts to ensure frame-accurate broadcast and seamless transitions.
  • Manage live event and remote broadcast logistics including signal paths, satellite/ISPs, STLs, backup feeds, OB coordination, and on-site technical staff to guarantee high-quality live coverage.
  • Supervise and mentor operations staff (master control operators, traffic coordinators, scheduling staff), including hiring, training, performance reviews, shift rostering, and career development planning.
  • Coordinate with engineering to maintain broadcast transmission infrastructure (encoders, routers, playout servers, automation systems) and prioritize incident response to restore services quickly.
  • Maintain compliance with broadcast regulations and station policies (FCC rules, copyright, closed captioning, EAS/alert compliance), document compliance activities and manage remedial actions when required.
  • Own the station’s outage and disaster recovery plans: develop redundant signal paths, test failover procedures, and lead incident command during major technical or operational incidents.
  • Manage vendor relationships and service contracts for playout automation, traffic systems, signal delivery, CDN/streaming services, and technical maintenance—negotiate terms and oversee SLAs.
  • Implement and optimize traffic and ad insertion workflows; ensure accurate spot scheduling, reconciliation with sales/traffic systems and timely delivery of ad materials.
  • Drive continuous improvement of operations by evaluating automation tools, improving workflows, documenting SOPs, and introducing best practices to reduce manual errors.
  • Collaborate with programming, editorial and production teams to plan content delivery timelines, coordinate preflight checks, QC, ingest procedures, and rights/clearance verification.
  • Monitor broadcast quality metrics and viewer experience KPIs (uptime, stream health, encode quality, deliverability); produce regular operational reports and present findings to senior leadership.
  • Oversee content asset management and archival processes: enforce metadata standards, manage media life-cycle, and coordinate with legal for rights expiry and content removal.
  • Lead budgeting and capital planning for the operations department: forecast operational costs, propose hardware/software investments, and track P&L impact of operational initiatives.
  • Ensure audio/video technical quality assurance including loudness compliance (EBU/ITU/R128 or CALM Act), closed caption accuracy, and legal IDs as part of pre-broadcast and live monitoring.
  • Coordinate cross-functional launches for new channels, program blocks, or platform rollouts, including test schedules, soft launches, and go-live readiness reviews.
  • Analyze audience data and ratings metrics (Nielsen, Comscore, platform analytics) with programming and sales to recommend schedule adjustments and programming strategies that drive growth.
  • Oversee ad-hoc and scheduled maintenance windows, ensuring communication to stakeholders, minimal viewer impact, and proper rollback plans.
  • Implement and monitor OTT and multi-platform distribution strategies: manage packaging, stream profiles, DRM, ingest for streaming platforms, and ensure parity between linear and digital experiences.
  • Create and enforce health & safety procedures for studios, transmission facilities and remote locations, including electrical, RF safety and personnel access controls.
  • Lead post-incident RCA (root cause analysis) and continuous improvement initiatives to reduce repeat incidents and improve mean time to repair (MTTR).
  • Ensure accurate documentation of operations, SOPs, escalation matrices, and runbooks to support on-call teams and shift handovers.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc operational reporting and exploratory analysis for programming, sales and executive teams to inform short-term decisions and campaign rollouts.
  • Contribute to the organization’s broadcast strategy and technology roadmap; evaluate emerging technologies (IP-based workflows, cloud playout, OTT CTV) and recommend pilots.
  • Collaborate with business units (sales, marketing, production) to translate operational constraints into scheduling and technical requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning, project status reviews and cross-functional stand-ups for technical and product teams launching broadcast-related features.
  • Conduct regular training sessions and tabletop exercises for emergency alerts, outage scenarios and live-event troubleshooting.
  • Coordinate content clearance and legal checks with the compliance team and outside counsel to reduce risk exposure.
  • Manage inventory and procurement cycles for critical spares, broadcast consumables and service renewals to maintain uptime.
  • Oversee vendor onboarding tasks, technical integrations and acceptance testing for new software/hardware providers.
  • Maintain the broadcast schedule’s master clock; perform pre-air checklists, QC checks and final sign-offs for scheduled playout.
  • Support marketing and social media teams by providing timely clips, promo cutdowns and technical specifications for multi-platform distribution.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Broadcast operations and master control proficiency: automation systems, playout servers, ingest, scheduling and splice timing.
  • Experience with traffic and scheduling systems (WideOrbit, Imagine Communications, MovieSlate, or equivalent) and ad reconciliation workflows.
  • Strong knowledge of broadcast signal delivery technologies: satellite, fiber, STL, IP contribution, CDN and OTT distribution.
  • Familiarity with video codecs, encoding/transcoding (H.264, H.265/HEVC), streaming protocols (HLS, DASH), and DRM concepts.
  • Hands-on experience with monitoring and QC tools for A/V quality, loudness normalization, caption verification and closed caption workflows.
  • Regulatory and compliance expertise: FCC rules, public file management, EAS systems and copyright/clearance processes.
  • Proven vendor and contract management skills: negotiating SLAs, managing third-party integrations and supervising service-level performance.
  • Technical troubleshooting and incident management: root cause analysis, failover planning and disaster recovery implementation.
  • Strong Excel and reporting skills; experience with analytics platforms for audience measurement (Nielsen, Comscore) and operational dashboards.
  • Budgeting, P&L ownership and capital expense planning for broadcast operations and technical upgrades.
  • Familiarity with broadcast IT and network fundamentals: IP routing, VLANs, multicast, and securing broadcast systems.
  • Experience with OTT platform ingestion workflows and content packaging for multi-platform distribution.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management: hiring, developing, coaching and retaining multi-shift teams in a 24/7 environment.
  • Clear communicator with the ability to translate technical issues to non-technical stakeholders and executives.
  • Excellent decision-making and calm problem-solving during live broadcasts, outages, and high-pressure events.
  • Project management skills: ability to scope, prioritize and deliver technical and operational projects on time and on budget.
  • Collaboration and stakeholder management: build trust across programming, sales, engineering and production teams.
  • High attention to detail and process orientation to minimize on-air errors and compliance risks.
  • Adaptability and continuous learning mindset in a rapidly evolving broadcast/digital landscape.
  • Customer-focused outlook: balancing advertiser commitments, audience expectations and commercial objectives.
  • Time management and shift coordination to ensure smooth 24/7 operations and hand-offs.
  • Conflict resolution and negotiation skills for internal escalations and vendor disputes.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Engineering, Media Studies, Communications, Film & Television, Business Administration or relevant technical discipline; OR equivalent professional experience in broadcast operations.

Preferred Education:

  • Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Media Management, Broadcast Engineering, or Business; industry certifications (SMPTE, SCTE, vendor certifications) are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Broadcast Engineering
  • Media Management
  • Communications and Journalism
  • Business Administration
  • Computer Networking / IT

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–10+ years in television or broadcast operations with progressive responsibility.

Preferred: 7+ years of broadcast or channel operations experience including at least 2–3 years in a supervisory or managerial role, hands-on master control exposure, and proven track record managing 24/7 linear and OTT delivery.

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