TV shows live and die by producers. Whether they are the creative showrunners, like J. Michael Straczynski, Ron Moore, or Vince Gilligan, guys handling the financial side of things, or intermediaries between the creative staff and the executives, like Rick Berman, they all have a major influence on a TV series. Sometimes they take shows in fantastic directions, sometimes they fire award winning composers. Sometimes they fumble the ball with poor planning, other times they reign in excesses from the writing staff. If theres one definitive lesson to be taken from the last decade of TV, its that showrunners need to have a plan when it comes to how the show plays out. It doesnt have to be a really detailed plan, just an outline of whats going to happen and what the answers are to the mysteries that are brought up in the show. After shows like Lost and Battlestar Galactica, where it was painfully obvious that the creative staff were making things up as they went, just having a producer with a clear idea of whats actually important is a breath of fresh air.