Every organization has to have an organization chart that shows the relationships between individuals, who is in charge, who has authority to make decisions, who carry out decisions, how information is communicated, how the positions are coordinate, etc.
(Hall et al 1997: 448) discuss that organization charts illustrate the structure of the business. The structure of the business allows: to spot communication problems. This is because the organization charts indicate how employees are linked to other employees in the business; the organization chart helps individuals see their positions in a firm. This can help them appreciate their responsibilities, who have authority over them, and who they are accountable to; the organization chart also helps to pinpoint where specialists are needed, and organization charts show how different sections of the firm relate to each other.
The television organization chart has these components as described by Hall. Below is an illustration of a television organization structure according (Stovall 2010: 14).
The President. This is the highest executive position at a television station. He/she is often the owner or the representative of the owner of a television station. In other television stations, this position carries the name of the Managing Director or the General Manager. This person oversees all activities done in the organization like production, advertising, budget issues, community relations, ensuring achieving goals of the mission statement, etc. He is the decision-maker of short and long-term objectives apart from the television board committee.
(www.ehow.com) argues that the General Manager reports to the station owner while several departments report to the GM, including the news department, production, sales, business, and engineering.
The vice president is in the second command of the president. Usually, his major work is to ensure active implementation and monitoring of implemented ideas and programs succeed on behalf of the president. Such ideas can be like a new youth program sensitizing on positive living for good health and long life for the development of Malawi
The News Director heads the news department. Checks how news programs are being run, how producers are coordinating with reporters, and also lead duties designed by producers during production.
(Fourie 2005: 390) argues that a director is a person in charge of working out production details; coordinating the activities of the production staff and non-camera talent; working out positions of camera and talent or actors and presenters on the set; selecting the camera shots during the production; and supervising post-production work.
The director therefore his main role is to coordinate activities so that his team produces the desired output worthy to broadcast. (Cronje et al 1996: 108) argue that coordination means the dividing up of the total task of the enterprise into smaller units so as to take advantage of specialization to achieve the aims of the enterprise as productively as possible. This dividing of the work into smaller jobs, however, immediately raises the problem of cooperation or the coordination of the divided tasks and the various objectives which the various departments are working towards as an integrated whole to achieve the primary objective of the enterprise.
Producers come up with a production concept. In other words the ‘they hatch the production concept’. He then budgets for the entire production process, makes a major decision which guides the production process. He is the team leader thus works with writers, decides on the key talent, hires the director where there is no in-house director, and guides the general direction of the production. The producer is assisted by the assistant producer throughout the production.
Anchors are those that have personal strength and authority, as though the bearer of that title, through a combination of experience, personality and charisma is holding the program together and somehow grounding it in reality. They are also newsreaders or newscasters (Boyd 2001: 165).
Assignment editors are in charge of assigning duties to reporters. Where reporters get news, when to bring news items, are some of the activities they look into. They also write and come up with headlines on fished stories which they as well edit before broadcast.
Reporters fetch news stories and sometimes do write down those news ideas into readable stories. These make the news department live and active.
Writers do write down news stories from news ideas brought by reporters.
Videographers are also called cameramen. They do shoot shots assigned by the responsible producers. For example, whether it is a shooting script or treatment script videographers are the right people to manage the shooting job.
Sports editors edit sports news. They do assign sports reporters to reporting duties.
Meteorologists do prepare news of climate and weather changes. They even report forecasts of climate as well as weather.
All discussed positions above fall under the news department which comprise program manager who design new programs, control and monitors them; production manager, who is responsible for making sure that the programs are produced as intended by the producer as well as directed and ensures programs are made ready for broadcast. He also checks matters of decency and laws to comply with laws of the land and journalistic principles like ethics; talent, includes actors, reporters, hosts, guests, etc; and studio crew which includes all studio personnel like lighting, technical, camera operators, costume directors, electronic character generators, audio and visual directors, etc.
Another department is business. This department is composed of a business manager, accounting manager, personnel manager, sales manager, local sales manager, national sales manager, account executives, traffic manager, and building maintenance.
The business manager is responsible for managing all television business activities across the business department as mentioned in the above paragraph including advertising and coverage of public and private functions which is one way of generating finances for the television.
Another important department is the engineering department. This department is headed by the chief engineer who subordinates the transmitter manager, remote manager, maintenance manager, and engineers. The main duty of this department is to ensure that the broadcast transmission is perfect and technical faults like picture blurring, sound jamming are avoided and/or rectified on time with desirably with improvement like that of picture quality. The engineering department also expands the transmission network for television to have wide viewership.
Finally, the organization chart shows areas of specialization. (Cronje et al 1996: 108) define specialization as the basic principle on which organization rests is that of specialization or the way in which a task is broken up into smaller units so as to take advantage of specialized knowledge or skills to improve productivity. The best example of specialization or the division of labor is still the assembly line, which is usually attributed to the inventive mind of Henry Ford.
REFERENCES
Boyd, A. 2001. Broadcast Journalism. 5th edition. London
Cronje, GJ et al. 1996. Introduction to Business Management. 3rd edition. London
Hall, D et al. 1997. Business Studies. OrmsKirk: CPL
Fourie, PJ. 2005. Media Studies. 2nd Volume. Lansdowne: Juta.
Julia, C. 2011. ‘Organization structure of a television station’. Accessed at www.enhow.com. Date Accessed: 26/02/11.
Stovall, JG. 2011. ‘Television and Radio Charts’. Accessed at www.enhow.com. Date Accessed: 26/02/11.
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What of organogram structure of engineering department
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