Television and Lean

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article concerning the effects of the Writer’s Strike on Television Production yesterday.

From a lean perspective, the strike might have a profound effect on the production of future shows.

Presently an "anachronism that dates from the early days of TV" is used - the pilot season.
This costs millions of dollars as every television studio competes to snap up available talent.

An entire year’s worth of production is done in a few months. “Push” production with all its wastes.

But, with the strike, networks are considering abandoning this practice and moving to a “more year-round program development, shooting pilots at other times of the year as a way to sidestep the costly race for talent that occurs during pilot season and to lavish more time and attention on their shows.”

Aha!
Pull Production!
Lean!

Think about it – instead of pushing every show through at once, and then having the “inventory” of unaired shows and their accrued costs, the industry is going to “pull” shows through when they need them.

Putting on our lean goggles it’s not that difficult to imagine the industry converting to JIT production including, even, a kanban.

A television channel sees that it has upcoming free broadcast time and submits a work order to a production team.
Kanban in hand, the team hires the necessary elements and creates a “pilot.”
The pilot is created in time to fill the free air time.

No held inventory, no wasted production costs.
The television industry is lean.

Lean television, only in the age of the internet.