Rundown

In broadcast journalism, a rundown (sometimes called a lineup in print-influenced newsrooms) is the master schedule that drives a live show from open to close. It is built in production software such as ENPS, iNews, or Ross Inception and is updated continuously by producers, writers, and the director throughout the day.

A typical rundown row contains: a slug or story ID, the segment type (VO, VO/SOT, package, live shot, two-way, OTS), the anchor or correspondent assigned, the estimated runtime, the back-time, graphics and lower-third cues, and the script itself. The sum of segment durations must match the show's total available time after commercials, weather, and sports — a discipline known as timing the show.

Rundowns matter for political research because they reveal editorial priorities: which story leads, how much airtime a candidate or foreign crisis receives, and which voices are booked as interpreters of events. Media-effects scholars including Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw, whose 1972 Public Opinion Quarterly study of the 1968 Chapel Hill voters established agenda-setting theory, treat segment ordering and duration as proxies for issue salience.

Rundowns are normally internal documents, but they occasionally surface in litigation or congressional oversight. During the 2023 Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News defamation case, internal Fox production communications — including booking decisions adjacent to rundowns — were disclosed before the $787.5 million settlement, illustrating how show planning can become evidence of editorial intent.

For Model UN delegates and think-tank researchers, understanding rundown logic helps explain why a 90-second package on a UN Security Council vote may be cut for a breaking domestic story, and why op-ed segments are clustered in the C-block after the lead and second blocks. The rundown is, in short, the operational expression of news judgment.