Someone named Sally writes…
Why are there so many producers on a TV show or movie? Sometimes, there are seven or eight or more.
Well, the first thing you need to know about the title "producer" is that it, in its various permutations, is just about the only title of any importance that can be bestowed on anyone. The Writers Guild has strict rules on what someone must contribute in order to get a "Written by" credit. The Directors Guild controls director credits. But if your company is doing a TV show, you can make your three-year-old son a producer on it.
So sometimes people get it for ceremonial reasons…like they were involved in the deal that sold the show. Or they're a biggie in the production company. Since it doesn't cost anything, the title is sometimes given out in negotiations. You ask for $25,000 to write a TV show. They counter by offering you $18,500 and a producer credit.
You can not only negotiate that, you can negotiate to be Executive Producer, Producer, Co-Producer, Supervising Producer, Creative Producer, Associate Producer, etc. There are no fixed definitions of any of those but obviously, some suggest that they're higher ranked than others.
Also, there's this: When I was doing the original Garfield and Friends show, my credit was originally "Written by," which was all I wanted. I didn't even want to be credited as Voice Director. Then one year, we were nominated for an Emmy for Best Animated Series and one of our Executive Producers, Lee Mendelsohn, realized something. According to the Emmy rules then, a Best Show Emmy went only to the producer(s) of an animated series. Lee felt it would be a shame if the show won and I didn't get a statuette so beginning with the following season, he added my name on as Co-Producer.
Nothing else changed. Just that. We never won, by the way. Those Emmy rules have since been changed and I believe now, someone who writes a certain percentage of the episodes qualifies for an Emmy if the cartoon show wins Best Series. But there are other situations where folks fight for producer credits because the way the rules are configured, if the show gets an Emmy, they don't. Unless they have a producer credit.
Lately, a lot of folks who in earlier days might have been credited as Story Editors or Script Consultants now ask for and get producer credits. Some stars want them. A manager who once wanted to represent me as a writer told me that if I signed with him, he would get 15% of everything I was paid but he would also demand an Executive Producer credit on any show or movie I wrote. If they wouldn't give it to him, we wouldn't take the deal. I did not sign with this person.
Long ago on a TV show, you could easily pinpoint which of the names in the credits was the person who had the main creative say. It was the man or woman designated as producer. Now, everyone's a producer so they refer to the person with the main creative say as the "showrunner," a title which I don't think ever appears on-screen.
What I'm getting at is that you shouldn't take producer credits too seriously. One might mean something or it might not. I did a show once with two Executive Producers. One had day-to-day involvement making important decisions…though not as much as the guy credited as Supervising Producer. The other Executive Producer was the agent who made the initial deal with the network to do the show. I wrote on that show for three years, never met that Executive Producer and almost never heard his name mentioned. He may not even have watched the program.
