The Creators: Jeff Melvoin

Jeff Melvoin 

Emmy award winner Jeff Melvoin has been a writer-producer on over a dozen dramatic series, serving as showrunner on eight of them. In all, he’s helped produce over 470 hours of primetime television, most recently as an Executive Producer on season three of the BBC America series, Killing Eve. Other Exec Producer credits include Designated Survivor, Army Wives, Alias, Early Edition, and Picket Fences. He was Supervising Producer of the CBS series Northern Exposure, for which he won an Emmy and two Golden Globe Awards. Other writer-producer credits include the NBC series Hill Street Blues and Remington Steele.  

Melvoin is also founder and chair of the Writers Guild of America’s celebrated Showrunner Training Program, now entering its eighteenth year.  In February 2015, he received the Morgan Cox Award, the WGA’s highest recognition for Guild service. In making the announcement, Guild President Chris Keyser said, 'If this is a Golden Age of television, the program Jeff so lovingly shepherds deserves its fair share of credit. Thanks to him, as an art form and as a business, we are better at what we do.'

He has taught at USC School of Cinematic Arts, UCLA, Harvard, and the Sundance Institute, has spoken on college campuses throughout the United States and at media conferences around the world, and is one of several executive producers featured in the 2014 documentary, Showrunners. 

Melvoin is a past board member of the Mystery Writers of America (Southern California Chapter) and the Writers Guild of America, West. Before entering television, Melvoin was a Time magazine correspondent. He is married to Martha Hartnett Melvoin and has two sons, Nick and Charlie.  
Jeff's book, Running the Show: Television from the Inside, was published in September 2023 to great acclaim. 

Greg Berlanti, executive producer, The Flight Attendant, All American, You, Supergirl, and over twenty other television series describes it as: 
'...the best book on showrunning I've ever read…captures the many changes our business has gone through and vast challenges one has to navigate if you want the dream job of telling stories for tv.'

Michelle & Robert King, creators and executive producers, The Good Wife and The Good Fight, said: 
'...as valuable to would-be showrunners as it is fascinating to veterans...There's great advice in every chapter.'
 
Jeff facilitated our Showrunner Training workshops for The Creators Year One. The feedback we received from participants was exceptional.
 
‘The showrunner training, run by Jeff Melvoin was inspiring. Jeff is a great teacher, passionate, patient and well-informed.’

‘With Jeff Melvoin’s sessions we were gifted the most comprehensive breakdown of the television-making process imaginable. Jeff covered everything from creative frameworks to scheduling, budgeting, applied creativity through development, production and post-production, crew management, and stakeholder relations. And he did it with humility, charm, and a disarming pragmatism that can only come from someone with his level of experience and achievement.’
 
‘I have never had as concentrated a burst of knowledge in my working life.’