A run of show for a streamed town hall is a minute-by-minute document that tells everyone, presenters, production and platform, what happens when, who is on, what is on screen and what audio is live. Below is the step-by-step template we use for corporate town halls, from T-minus 60 minutes to stream-end, followed by the roles, timings and failure plans that make it work. Copy it, adapt the timings, and your next town hall will run like a broadcast, because that is what it is.
The Template
T-60: Crew in position, all sources checked, both streaming chains live to a private test. Remote speakers join tech-check, audio and lighting verified, fallback recordings confirmed on the playout machine.
T-30: Full rehearsal of the open: walk-in graphic, mics live, first speaker’s opening 60 seconds, handover to any remote guest, Q&A mechanics tested end to end.
T-15: Holding slide with countdown live on the public stream, background music bed on (stream-safe), moderators admit early joiners.
T-5: Presenters mic’d and standing by. Quiet on comms except the director.
00:00 – Open: Countdown ends, live cut to host. Host welcomes the room and names the remote audience within the first 30 seconds.
00:02 – Leadership segment: CEO or leadership update, slides integrated into the stream cut, lower-thirds for every speaker.
00:20 – Q&A block one: Moderated questions, alternating room and remote. Remote questions read back by the moderator so the stream hears them cleanly.
00:35 – Second segment or remote guest: Bidirectional guest appears on room screens and stream simultaneously; fallback recording standing by.
00:50 – Closing Q&A and wrap: Host closes with next steps, points both audiences to where the recording and clips will appear.
00:55 – Stream end: Out on a branded endboard, not a dead cut. Recording stops after the endboard, both recorders verified before anyone de-rigs.
Roles: Who Owns What
The director calls the show and owns the run sheet. The vision mixer cuts cameras and slides. The audio engineer owns both mixes: room and broadcast. The streaming engineer watches stream health and makes the failover call. The moderator owns the question queue. For smaller town halls roles combine, but the run sheet still names one human per responsibility: ambiguity is the failure mode.
The Failure Plans Worth Writing Down
Remote guest drops: host bridges, director rolls the fallback recording. Stream chain one dies: engineer fails over to chain two, and the stream-safe audio path means the platform never pulls you for a music bed. Autocue or slides fail: presenters have printed notes. Power blips in the control area: recorders on separate supplies keep rolling. None of this improvises well, all of it rehearses in minutes: the redundancy architecture behind it is in redundancy by design.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a streamed town hall be?
45 to 60 minutes. Remote attention degrades sharply after 25 minutes in any one format, so structure two or three distinct segments: the data is in our drop-off analysis.
What does a professionally produced town hall cost?
A single-room, multi-camera streamed town hall with redundancy typically runs £3,000 to £8,000 in the UK: context in our cost guide.
Zoom, Teams or a broadcast stream?
For under 100 remote staff with heavy interaction, the meeting platform wins. Beyond that, broadcast quality with managed Q&A serves better: see webinar versus live event streaming.
Want the Run Sheet Run For You?
Town halls are a weekly staple for us, including bidirectional formats with remote leadership. Talk to us.
