Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez, and I haven't read any of the books in George R. Martin's The Song of Bison Fire.

I'm Joanna Robinson. I've read every book in George R. Martins, A Song of Ice and Fire.

And I'm Neil Miller, and I have also read all of those books.

We are headed back to Westeros to cover the Game of Thrones spin-off series, House of the Dragon.

We'll be answering your question, so send us a raven at trial by content at gmail.com.

Take some bread and salt and join us Thursdays on the trial by content feed, and don't worry,

you're safe. The reins of Castamir hasn't even been written yet.

All right, it is Monday, August 22nd. In movies, the director is king, but in TV, it's the showrunner.

This is the writer-producer who leads the writer's room and generally is responsible for the

creative direction and output of the show. Sometimes it's also the creator who writes the

initial pilot script. Sometimes it's not, but it's basically a combination of someone who has

writing skills, management, and overall vision for what these characters in this show should be.

In the past 15 years, we've seen the rise of the showrunner in Hollywood, perhaps now the most important job in the industry.

It's also one of the most lucrative.

The top showrunners can make nine figures from places like Netflix, Warner Brothers, Disney,

if you can deliver, not just quality, but quantity.

If you're Chuck Lorry or Dick Wolf, these guys have made dozens of shows over the years,

made hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars doing it.

So let's say you're a studio or network head.

You're assembling a showrunner all-star team.

Five picks, the best team possible.

That's what we're going to do today.

...