How to build a live stream rundown

A rundown isn’t a script

The word misleads. In television, the script for a live programme isn’t what the presenter says: it’s the rundown, the ordered list of what will appear on screen, with its timings and its notes. What’s said over the top is nearly always improvised.

For a reaction or commentary stream it works exactly the same way. Your rundown is the list of posts, clips, videos, photos and topics you’re going to show, in the order you mean to show them. Nothing more. If you try to write down what you’ll say, two bad things happen: it takes three times as long and it sounds read.

What each item carries

Three things, and two will do.

What gets shown. The link, the clip, the image. Specific and already found, not “look for that post about the drama”.

What you say over it. One line, not a paragraph. The point of that note is to remind you of what you were about to forget: the minute to cut at, the fact you meant to check, the warning not to spoil the ending.

Whether it’s sensitive. If an item can’t go on air — a screenshot with a name in it, something you can’t talk about yet — it has to be marked in a way that doesn’t depend on you remembering, live.

Order matters, but doesn’t rule

Building the rundown in order does two jobs: it gives the stream a shape — an opening, a body, an ending — and it means that at any moment you know what’s next without thinking.

What the order must not do is tie you down. If chat latches onto the second item and you spend twenty minutes there, fine: the rest is still waiting. The difference between a rundown and a rigid plan is that a rundown can be skipped at no cost.

One trick that works: start from the ending. Decide what you want to close with before you order the rest. The streams that fall apart are usually the ones that reach the end without knowing how to get out.

What to check before you start

Almost every scare in a live stream is something that could have been looked at earlier.

• Is the video where it will be needed? If you’re going to air a local file from another device, it has to have arrived beforehand, not while you’re talking.
• Does the page load? A site that asks you to sign in, or takes eight seconds to paint, isn’t a problem until it is — live, with people watching.
• Is anything marked private sitting one tap away from the public output? It’s the most expensive mistake there is and the easiest to avoid.

The question that covers all three: can I start? If you can’t answer it by looking at one screen, you’re leaving that check to memory.

What you didn’t use

There are always items left unaired at the end. That isn’t a planning failure: it means you had material to spare, which is how it should be.

What must not happen is that they sit there going stale. When you close the show, whatever went unused moves in one go: to the topic it belongs to, or to the next stream. If that takes more than one gesture, it never happens, and you end up with a list of old things nobody cares about any more.

How Inessa does it

In Inessa the rundown is the main screen of every show. Items are draggable, each carries its note, and there are text blocks for the parts you talk through without showing anything.

Before you start, a per-item check answers the question above: if a video hasn’t arrived or a page won’t load, you see it there and not on air. During the show, whatever wasn’t in the rundown can be searched across your whole library without leaving the live screen. And when you wrap, what you didn’t use moves where it belongs in one go.