At the bottom of the pyramid are the outside freelancers who may write no more than two or three episodes a season for various shows. At the top are the producers and executive producers. Producer titles are often given to writers and are usually associated with seniority and supervisory responsibilities for a writing team. The desirable career path, then, involves moving from freelancer, to staff writer, to associate producer, to supervising producer to executive producer. Executive producers are given sole responsibility for controlling a television series, are usually owners or part owners of the series, and may work on several series at once.
Writers usually become executive producers by creating their own series.
But this generally occurs only after writing successfully in other positions, and after being recognized by studio and network executives as someone with the potential to create and control a series. Only in the rarest of circumstances are new program ideas purchased or developed from freelancers or beginning writers. Readers are a critical element in a freelance television writer's working life, because they control whether or not one's work reaches senior staff with hiring authority. An entire subordinate industry exists in Los Angeles to educate writers about the process and criteria reviewers employ, even though readers describe themselves as without significant influence. Agents are also a fact of a television writer's life because production companies and their readers generally will not consider any work from a writer unless it is submitted by an agent, preferably an agent known to that production company.