RELATED: How we choose them

	Carol Mendelsohn, "CSI" (CBS) Ann Donahue, "CSI: Miami" (CBS) Pam Veasey, "CSI: New York" (CBS) Those looking for gender parity in television need look no further than the massively popular "CSI" franchise, which has three shows all being run by women (though Mendelsohn does co-run with Naren Shankar). They began as writers (Mendelsohn on "Hardcastle and McCormick," Donahue on "21 Jump Street," Veasey on "Gimme a Break"), and today they stay involved with their scripts while also logging time editing, casting and producing. Stories are all vetted by Jerry Bruckheimer Television to ensure the shows share sensibilities, but not plots. "There are only seven ways to kill someone, and you don't want two shows using carbon monoxide poisoning the same week," Veasey says. But otherwise, each runner sticks to her own turf. Notes Donahue, "We all know what we're doing, so we tend to talk just for the heck of it."
	Rene Balcer, "Law & Order" (NBC) Neal Baer, "Law & Order: SVU" (NBC) Keeping the "L&O" franchise chugging along takes four separate showrunners. (USA Network's "Criminal Intent" splits duties between Walon Green and Robert Nathan.) But all agree that the biggest priority is "protecting the writers," Baer says, "so they feel they can take chances." They mostly eschew the writers room, though Nathan says he likes beating out a story in a group: "It's silly to waste the intelligence of the people we have," he says. In general the "L&O" runners -- all of whom (except Baer) have held other positions in the franchise -- employ various permutations of solitary writing. Balcer doesn't give notes -- "Instead, I just do the rewrite. And I don't jump credit" -- while Green tries to "get the writers to do as much as they can on their own." Baer, meanwhile, has incorporated his medical background into his showrunning, making the rounds to check up on his scribes' progress. He gives notes in purple ink and approval with smiley faces. Now, that's comforting.
	Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse "Lost" (ABC) Cuse hired young writer Lindelof during the final season of his "Nash Bridges," a show Lindelof now jokes he helped "run into the ground." Six years later, Lindelof remembered Cuse when he was looking for someone to bring order to the first season of "Lost." The partnership now starts daily over breakfast. Both believe in writing as a collaborative effort, a process Lindelof equates to "taking something from the blue-sky phase to the assembly line." Their chemistry has led to one of TV's most ambitious shows, and they "agree so much of the time, it's scary," Cuse says. But no relationship is perfect -- Cuse roots for the Red Sox; Lindelof likes the Yankees.
	Carter Bays and Craig Thomas "How I Met Your Mother" (CBS) Their acerbic comedy survived for three and a half underrated seasons with a cult following but little critical or commercial success. Then something strange happened after the WGA strike ended: While most series suffered steep declines, "Mother," boosted by Britney Spears' guest appearances, shot up in the ratings. The momentum continues with a string of series highs and rich syndication deals -- major vindication for creators Bays and Thomas. As two of the youngest showrunners working on their first series (Bays and Thomas are both 33), they already have made their mark by pioneering the multicamera hybrid format, which has been adopted by all networks and studios. Shot in a studio without live audience, "Mother" combines the efficiency of a multicamera sitcom with the quick pace of a single-camera comedy.
	Seth MacFarlane "Family Guy," "American Dad," "The Cleveland Show" (Fox) MacFarlane is a one-man animation factory, co-showrunning two current and one forthcoming Fox half-hours packed with his love-it-or-leave-it sense of humor. Plus he recently launched the Google-distributed "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy," which racked up 14 million views in its first three weeks this fall. The Rhode Island School of Design graduate squeezes in procrastination time by playing Wii tennis, which he calls "the best part of my job." But it's the variety of duties that keeps him interested -- and busier than ever. "My assistants have gotten my phone voice down pat so I don't have to talk to my mother."
	Greg Berlanti "Eli Stone," "Brothers & Sisters," "Dirty Sexy Money" (ABC) Berlanti rises at 6 a.m. so he can pack in four hours of writing before the phone rings -- and he needs every minute. In addition to co-running "Eli Stone" (with Marc Guggenheim), which returned Oct. 14 for its second season, he exec produces ABC's "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Brothers & Sisters," and is co-writing the Warner Bros. tentpole "Green Lantern." Not bad for a guy who's just 36. "I'm not cut from the same cloth as Aaron Sorkin or David Kelley," says Berlanti, who also created the WB's "Everwood and "Jack & Bobby." "I can't hammer out a script in 48 hours, so I lean on the writers for a lot of that."
	Shonda Rhimes "Grey's Anatomy," "Private Practice" (ABC) Her only medical background may have been as a candy striper, but Rhimes has put a new spin on hospital-based melodrama that resonates with critics and viewers alike. Her "Grey's" is still a top-rated drama in its fifth season; and while the WGA strike limited "Private Practice" to just nine episodes in its debut season, ABC has already picked up the show for a full 22 this year. "The first season of 'Private' wasn't twice the amount of work compared to just working on 'Grey's,'" she admits. "It was five times the amount of work." Still, she insists she's having fun and she won't relinquish her duties anytime soon. "No aspect of the job troubles me," she says.
	Josh Schwartz "Gossip Girl" (The CW), "Chuck" (NBC) First Schwartz defied the odds and had a TV pilot picked up at age 22 ("Brookfield"). Then -- with "The O.C." -- he became the youngest person (26) in network history to create and run a series. Last year, "Chuck" and "Gossip Girl" hit the airwaves on two separate networks, and both were modest hits. This season "Girl's" ratings are sizzling, though "Chuck's" have been cooling down. Schwartz, the son of Rhode Island toy inventors, says only half-jokingly that writing, exec producing and showrunning both programs is a good outlet for his ADD: "The biggest challenge for me is focus since I'm easily distracted, but it allows me to do a lot of things at once," he says. "It's doing one thing that's the challenge."
	Chuck Lorre "Two and a Half Men," "The Big Bang Theory" (CBS) Someone forgot to tell Lorre that the sitcom is dead. The former musician now runs two hit multicam half-hours for CBS -- ratings stalwart "Two and a Half Men" (with co-creator Lee Aronsohn) and newcomer "The Big Bang Theory" (with co-creator Bill Prady). Both series have held their own in the ratings this season as most shows have sunk. "On the dark days, doing a second series seems like the worst idea in the world," says the New York native, who went from writing show theme songs to creating "Grace Under Fire" and "Cybill" and co-creating "Dharma & Greg." "But then every once in a while you get it right, and it's so thrilling."
	Shawn Ryan "The Shield" (FX), "The Unit" (CBS) The job of showrunner never sleeps -- which means that for a multitasker like Ryan, neither does he. Late at night, he is likely to be found on the telephone, offering instruction to his writers on "The Unit," now in its fourth season -- or typing detailed notes to staffers on "Shield" (whose final season's premiere drew a steady 2.1 million viewers). That punishing schedule is doubled when both series have occasionally been in production simultaneously. He's not keen on delegating but knows it's part of the job. "I'm fortunate to have worked with two extraordinary writing staffs," he says. "Our writers room is very productive." Nevertheless, he's still often up until sunrise shaping material. "I need sleep," he insists. "I just don't get it."

	Joss Whedon "Dollhouse" (Fox) Whedon believes in the power of the writers room so much that after filming three episodes of his forthcoming midseason drama "Dollhouse," he shut down production because he hadn't spent enough time there. "I use the room for (script structure) and then I send people off on their lonesomes to write," he says. Whedon prefers that approach for himself, too; he'll head to a restaurant with his Pilot Razor Points and listen to movie soundtracks while composing scripts by hand. He is a showrunning vet (at one point he was in control of "Angel," "Firefly" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), but Whedon says that doesn't make him experienced. "The thing about showrunning is you never learn anything," he admits. "The biggest part is to surround yourself with smart people and then take credit for it."
	Tim Kring "Heroes" (NBC) Showrunning is not a task that sits easily on Kring's shoulders. "You go from being someone who gets paid to be reclusive to suddenly being a manager of people," he explains. Though Kring has TV experience dating back to the first incarnation of "Knight Rider," NBC's "Crossing Jordan" was his first shot at running his own show. "You learn very quickly about motivating people and delegating," he says. "The tone of the workplace comes very much from you." "Heroes'" third season has been down in the ratings compared with last year, but Kring says he remains focused solely on the work. "(Showrunning) doesn't come naturally to me," he says. "I'm still someone who needs to go into my office for a couple of hours every day and be that solitary person again."
	Ron Moore and David Eick "Battlestar Galactica," "Caprica" (Sci Fi) When Studios USA first approached TV exec-turned-producer Eick in 2001 about shepherding a four-hour miniseries remake of "Galactica" for Sci Fi, he swayed longtime "Star Trek" writer Moore to come aboard as creator. Moore recast the campy 1970s series as a dark, post-9/11 morality tale that became a cult TV sensation. In addition to the final season of "Galactica," Moore and Eick are overseeing its prequel, "Caprica." Additionally, Eick also is working on scripts for the midseason NBC drama "The Philanthropist," which he's running. "Ron and I will be talking about 'Caprica,' and I'm in the role of objective, nonwriting executive producer; then an hour later, I'll be discussing an episode of 'The Philanthropist,' and I'm the guy trying to protect every word," Eick says. In both roles they insist the needs are the same: "Honest partners who will tell you when to dig in and fight and when you're digging in for the wrong reasons," Eick says.
	Alan Ball "True Blood" (HBO) How often does a TV writer-producer win an Oscar before an Emmy? Ball cut his teeth on the sitcoms "Grace Under Fire" and "Cybill" before creating his first series, the ABC comedy "Oh, Grow Up," which premiered a week before his first feature, "American Beauty," hit theaters. "Grow Up" was quickly canceled, but "Beauty" won five Oscars, including best original screenplay for Ball. Still, he went back to TV, creating HBO's "Six Feet Under" and winning an Emmy for directing the pilot. This fall's follow-up, the vampire drama "True Blood," has already been picked up by HBO for a second season.
	Glenn Gordon Caron "Medium" (NBC) Before "dramedy" was a word, there was "Moonlighting," Caron's detective show that launched Bruce Willis and scored 16 Emmy nominations in its first year. Caron went on to create CBS' critically praised drama "Now and Again" and now heads "Medium," which has become a solid utility player for NBC and earned star Patricia Arquette an Emmy. Caron is the rare showrunner who also directs the pilots of his series to set the tone, just one of his idiosyncrasies. "I don't bible my shows; I let them grow organically," he says. "Part of it is that I'm easily bored and resist anything that smells like a formula."
	Ryan Murphy "Nip/Tuck" (FX), "Glee" (Fox) If "Nip/Tuck's" production offices resemble the entrance of a fancy hotel, that's by design. "I love how it makes me feel when I walk in (here) every day," says Murphy, an Emmy nominee whose obsession with creating ambiance and visual texture translates to the screen. He'll be in those offices for a while -- FX has ordered the series' final episodes, but they won't finish airing until 2011. For Murphy, showrunning comes down to the finest of details -- including clothes and vases. "I want my finger in every pie," says the former journalist, adding that he does trust his staff implicitly. "But there isn't a day I don't work. I'm one of those amazingly lucky people whose job and dreams intertwine."
	James Duff "The Closer" (TNT) Ratings don't worry Duff, which is easy for him to say given he runs the most watched original series on basic cable, with 8 million viewers per episode. He is more concerned with making sure his ensemble cast isn't overshadowed by Golden Globe-winning lead Kyra Sedgwick. "We have an orchestra supporting a concerto," he says. "But they're all brilliant musicians." The Emmy-nominated writer says he gives each season a thematic arc related to single-word ideas like "family" and "power." This season's unofficial theme could be "spawn" -- Duff is developing a spinoff for TNT. But he remains humble about success, paraphrasing Charles de Gaulle: "The cemetery is full of indispensable people."
	Matthew Weiner "Mad Men" (AMC) "I was raised by good people," Weiner says of the lessons he learned on "The Sopranos" and "Becker." "You go to as many meetings as possible, learn everybody's name, and don't waste people's time. He's now grown up to full-fledged showrunner with "Mad Men," which won six Emmys in September. Its audience has grown in its second season, a testament to Weiner's singular vision, which means his tone meetings alone can take five hours while he performs the script for the director. "I've seen a lot of shows where the writers are suggesting gently to the director and hoping the director gets it," he says. "(This way is) time-consuming, but it saves on everything. I hope I can keep that pace up."
	Jenji Kohan "Weeds" (Showtime) Kohan honed her writing skills on shows like the WB's "Gilmore Girls" and NBC's "Will & Grace" -- the latter of which was co-created and exec produced by her brother David Kohan -- before landing her own series at Showtime. The Emmy-nominated pot-comedy "Weeds" has since broken several ratings records for the pay cabler, becoming its most watched laugher ever.
	Bill Lawrence "Scrubs" (ABC) After co-creating and running the hit 1990s sitcom "Spin City," Lawrence's "Scrubs" proved that single-camera comedies could be both cost-effective and popular with viewers. During the series' first two years, Lawrence wrote and rewrote around the clock, but since Season 3, he's changed that setup -- now he writes and plays video games around the clock, thanks to an on-site game arcade. Having transitioned the show to ABC for its eighth season, the two-time Emmy nominee says he is careful to run the show as a creative endeavor, not a business enterprise. "If you don't watch it, you're spending 80% of your time on budget, postproduction and dealing with the studio and network," he explains. "I accomplish more while playing video games with my writing staff and crew."

	David Shore "House" (Fox) How does a former lawyer end up running a show about a curmudgeonly doctor? In the case of Shore (who co-runs with Katie Jacobs), the career change was "an unbelievably stupid decision that worked out well." Relocating from his native Canada, Shore co-ran Paul Haggis' "Family Law" before creating "House" in 2004. "I'm pretty good at delegating every aspect of the show," he says, but he's "continually focusing on scripts." Shore invites writers into his editing process, but they only get to watch the cuts being made on a monitor, without a keyboard of their own -- a trick he learned from Haggis. Clearly, he's doing something right -- "House's" fifth season premiere drew 14.7 million viewers, and a spinoff is in development.
	Howard Gordon "24" (Fox) Gordon's first season as showrunner of the groundbreaking action series won five Emmys in 2006, including best drama. He's been there since Season 1, working closely with creators Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran. The top job fits Gordon nicely because he's "constitutionally more suited to being a showrunner than to being a writer -- I like the social atmosphere." The show's grueling writing and shooting schedule has taught him the value of "offloading responsibility," but "I'm a little obsessive and a perfectionist, and have an almost masochistic ability to analyze a script," he says. "I definitely try people's patience."
	Ed Bernero "Criminal Minds" (CBS) Bernero retired from the mean streets of Chicago, where he worked as a beat cop until 1996, and headed to Hollywood. He first co-created "Third Watch" and now heads "Minds," where he's dealt with another change-up -- the sudden departure of star Mandy Patinkin at the start of Season 3 (he was replaced by Joe Mantegna). The ratings prove Bernero is still in the drivers seat; "Minds" pulled 17 million viewers in September for its Season 4 premiere. He says his open-door policy lets everyone on the series know they have an important role to play, but Bernero has to multitask a bit more -- he's got three projects in the works, including CBS' potential remake of "Hawaii Five-O." "There are no great showrunners," says the ex-flatfoot. "Just lucky ones who have a lot of people around who work hard to make them look good."
	David Zabel "ER" (NBC) Having jumped aboard the NBC medical drama in 2001 as an executive story editor, Zabel has been steering the show for four and a half years. He credits exec producer John Wells for establishing a collaborative atmosphere that has lasted 15 seasons. "We've been blessed with an incredibly talented group of actors who are also really smart, and I'd be remiss not to use that as a resource," he says.
	Shane Brennan "NCIS" (CBS) The military drama has been on a ratings upswing since Brennan took over from series creator Don Bellisario in summer 2007, regularly landing in the Nielsen Top 5 this fall. Credit can go to the Aussie, who helped produce CBS' "CSI: Miami" and the WB's "One Tree Hill" before taking his current gig. He says the key to effective showrunning is to maintain a singular vision. "This really can't exist as a democracy. When you have too many people with too many different visions contributing, you wind up with a show that's all over the place."
	Peter Tolan "Rescue Me" (FX) "I was speaking to a group of aspiring showrunners in New York City recently, and while trying to describe my approach to the job, I stumbled upon a real truth," says the "Murphy Brown" and "Home Improvement" vet, who once ran HBO's "The Larry Sanders Show." "I am not just a writer, director and producer on my shows; I am the father and mother to everyone involved. Mostly a father, but a real mother when it's called for." Now running "Rescue Me," which returns for its fifth season next year, Tolan is also writing, with Matthew Perry, "The End of Steve," a Showtime pilot for Perry to star in.
	Greg Daniels "The Office" (NBC) Harvard-bred Daniels was smart enough to know that "The Office" had to be different from its British predecessor. So he fought to cast star Steve Carell, and he brought an improvisational style to the show, which is now in its fifth season and boasts five of the top 15 most watched episodes on video streaming site Hulu.com. Now Daniels -- who has Emmys for NBC's "Saturday Night Live," Fox's "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill," which he co-created, as well as an "Office" pair -- is being challenged again. He'll preside over the as-yet-untitled Amy Poehler single-camera comedy (which he's co-creating with Michael Schur). "Fortunately, I have a very deep bench of talented writer-producers," he says. "The more I allow these people to do, the better the show is."
	Tina Fey "30 Rock" (NBC) With her spot-on Sarah Palin impression dominating the election season (and sending "SNL's" ratings sky-high), it's easy to forget that Fey has a day job keeping her Emmy-winning (if ratings-challenged) "30 Rock" afloat. With 12-hour shoots five days a week and 35 scenes packed into 30 scripted pages, Fey and co-showrunner Robert Carlock often work into the night. "Me and a few other writers often finish the day at Tina's apartment in Manhattan at 4 in the morning," Carlock says. The duo are used to the pace -- she was "SNL's" first female head writer, and he's a former writer-producer on "Friends" and "Joey." How do they retain their sanity? "By injecting German into our scripts whenever I can," he says. "It's the funniest language there is."
	David E. Kelley "Boston Legal" (ABC) Were there legal shows before Kelley? The writer-producer who turned the Bill of Rights into a play for his senior thesis at Princeton is continuously redefining the genre, from "L.A. Law" to "Ally McBeal" to "The Practice" and now "Boston Legal." That show might never have scored blockbuster ratings, but it's an Emmy favorite, with seven nominations last season. Kelley once said he never works on weekends, which makes sense considering he's married to Michelle Pfeiffer, but he's not taking any time off after his current show wraps its fifth and final season in 2009. His next project, this time for NBC under a new deal with Warner Bros. Television, is another hourlong spin on -- shocking! -- the legal genre.
	Greg Garcia "My Name Is Earl" (NBC) Garcia notoriously spent his WGA strike days with a temp job at Burger King, an exercise in "experiencing life when you live and work behind gates," he recalls. But the Virginia native has always been looking out for the little guy, crediting Alan Kirschenbaum (with whom he created CBS' "Yes, Dear") for setting the example of "how to run a show when you get your own shot to do it." Today, the man who got his first gig as a PA on "Step by Step" has a mantra to go with his 2006 writing Emmy: "Treat everyone who works on 'Earl' with equal respect." The show finished last season with 7.3 million viewers, and its fourth-season debut in September was down to 6.4 million, but Garcia certainly shouldn't worry about looking for a full-time fast food gig.

	Steven Bochco "Raising the Bar" (TNT) The founder of the modern police procedural ("Hill Street Blues") and producer of "NYPD Blue" and "L.A. Law" endured a dry spell recently. Last year he declared, "I really don't feel like banging heads with the current generation of network-runners," effectively distancing himself from the Big Four nets. Instead Bochco reinvented himself on cable with FX's "Over There" and "Raising the Bar," which had the biggest audience ever for a basic cable series premiere. "Coming up with a successful television series is such a long shot," he says of his good fortune. "It's akin to winning the lottery."
	Marc Cherry "Desperate Housewives" (ABC) An admitted control freak, Cherry believes showrunning is the perfect job for him. But he's also accepted that in order to have a life outside of work, he has to delegate. "I wrote 80% of the episodes in Season 1 (of 'Housewives'), and it nearly killed me," says the two-time Emmy nominee. He's dialed it back while sending his primetime soap ahead five years this season. "The safest thing a showrunner can do is take risks," says the California native, who once worked as Dixie Carter's personal assistant. "It's the hardest job there is in showbiz because you're never really finished."
	Brenda Hampton "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" (ABC Family) After running "7th Heaven" for 11 seasons and 243 episodes, Hampton could be excused for wanting a break. But she was so anxious to get back into the weekly series game that she wrote the pilot and an entire six-episode series arc for "Secret Life" -- on spec. That paid off when she sold the show to ABC Family, and it quickly turned into the highest-rated series in the network's history with its 11-week summertime run (the finale pulled in 4.5 million viewers, soundly beating the CW's "90210"). Her next order is for 13 more to air starting in January. Such quick turnaround requires a firm hand, she admits: "This isn't a democracy. My philosophy is that the writers write, the actors act, the directors direct, and I'm in charge. But I don't micromanage. Everyone has creative freedom within their area."
	Mara Brock Akil "The Game" (The CW) Don't let her looks or age (she's 38) fool you -- Akil has already created and run two series, including one of the longest-running comedies of the past decade, "Girlfriends," which ended in March after eight years. She's now focusing solely on "The Game," in its third season, but for the past two seasons she had been running both shows, churning out 44 episodes per year. "To run two shows successfully you have to hire well, preplan and make everyone, from the writers, to the actors, to the crew, feel invested," she says.

Profiles reported and written by Nellie Andreeva, Rebecca Ascher-Walsh, Stacey Brook, Randee Dawn, James Hibberd, Noel Murray and Ray Richmond.



How we chose them:
For The Hollywood Reporter's inaugural look at the top television showrunners, editors based the selections on the following key criteria:
1. Direct responsibility for the day-to-day operation and creative output of a scripted show
2. How prolific the showrunner is: Producers with more than one show on the air were given added weight.
3. Nielsen ratings of the current show(s)
4. Critical praise and/or Emmy Awards won
5. Track record and proven ability to deliver high quality and high ratings
NOTE: Not included are nonwriting showrunners or show creators and uber-producers -- such as Dick Wolf ("Law & Order"), Anthony Zuiker ("CSI"), J.J. Abrams ("Lost," "Fringe") and John Wells ("ER") -- who oversee franchises, but are not the daily showrunners.