Weekly Schedule Template: Plan Your Week Smarter

In broadcast and media production, a missed deadline isn't just an inconvenience — it can mean a delayed delivery, a damaged client relationship, or a budget that spirals out of control. And more often than not, the root cause isn't a lack of talent or effort. It's a lack of visibility.

A weekly schedule template gives production managers, heads of post, and broadcast operations teams a structured, seven-day view of their work — so they can plan proactively, allocate resources accurately, and stay in control no matter how fast things move. Whether you need a simple week schedule template or a fully integrated weekly scheduling system, the right approach makes a measurable difference.

In this guide you'll find:

• What a weekly schedule template is and why it matters for media teams
• The types of templates that are most useful in broadcast and production environments
• How to choose and build one that fits your operation
• How farmerswife transforms weekly planning into a fully integrated production management system

What is a weekly schedule template?

A weekly schedule template is a structured layout that maps crew bookings, facility reservations, project tasks, and deadlines across a seven-day period. Sometimes called a timetable template weekly or a 7 day weekly schedule template, it gives broadcast and media teams the operational backbone they need for any production week — one place where everything is visible, organised, and accountable.

Templates come in several formats:

• Printable grids — quick to reference but impossible to update dynamically or share in real time
• Spreadsheet templates — flexible for smaller operations but difficult to scale across multiple projects or teams
• Digital planners — shared online tools that improve visibility but often lack deep project integration
• Production management software — platforms like farmerswife that connect your weekly schedule directly to resources, projects, financials, and deliverables

For media operations juggling multiple productions simultaneously, the format you choose has a direct impact on how efficiently your team can work. A static template gives you a snapshot. A live production management system gives you control.

Why you need a weekly schedule

Production weeks are rarely predictable. Shoots overrun. Editors call in sick. Clients revise briefs at the last minute. Without a clear weekly plan, these disruptions cascade — and suddenly your team is firefighting instead of delivering.

A structured weekly schedule changes that dynamic entirely:

See your entire operation at a glance. Seven days in one view lets you spot resource conflicts, protect key production windows, and balance workloads before problems surface — not after.

Boost team productivity. When crew and staff know exactly what's happening and when, they spend less time chasing information and more time on the work itself. Structured planning consistently reduces time lost to constant re-prioritisation.

Reduce costly last-minute changes. Most production crises are avoidable. A weekly plan surfaces conflicts early — double-booked edit suites, clashing shoot days, overloaded departments — when there's still time to fix them.

Prioritise effectively across projects. When multiple productions run in parallel, a weekly view makes it far easier to identify pressure points and available capacity.

Keep your whole team aligned. Shared schedules eliminate back-and-forth emails, conflicting information, and the "I thought you had the suite booked" moments that slow productions down.

In production, clarity isn't a nice-to-have. It's what keeps shows on air and clients coming back.

Types of weekly schedule templates

Different production environments need different scheduling approaches. Here's a breakdown of the most relevant template types for broadcast and media teams, and what each one is built for.

Classic weekly schedule template

The classic format is a simple Monday-to-Sunday grid — days across the top, tasks or bookings down the side. For smaller production companies or independent crews managing a focused production week, it's a clean starting point that covers the basics without over-engineering the process.

It works well when projects aren't overly complex and the team is small enough to manage from a single shared view. It won't handle resource conflicts or multi-project visibility, but as a first step toward structured weekly planning, it does the job.

Best for: Small production companies, independent filmmakers, single-project production weeks.

Weekly work schedule template

This version focuses specifically on working days and professional responsibilities — shoot days, edit sessions, client review calls, delivery deadlines, and departmental handovers. It strips out personal noise and gives production managers and heads of department a clean, professional frame for the week ahead.

For managing team schedules and productivity across distributed or hybrid production teams, this format provides the shared reference point that keeps everyone pulling in the same direction.

Best for: Production managers, heads of department, office-based media teams, remote production coordinators.

Weekly schedule template with time segments

When precision matters — and in broadcast, it usually does — hourly or half-hourly time blocks give you the granularity to plan the day properly. This format is the practical foundation of time blocking: assigning specific windows to specific tasks so that edit time, review sessions, briefings, and turnaround windows don't bleed into each other.

It's particularly valuable for post-production environments where a single suite might handle multiple projects in one day and every hour of capacity counts. A proper post-production schedule template built on hourly time segments gives you the precision to manage turnarounds without overlap or wasted downtime.

Best for: Post-production supervisors, edit suite managers, broadcast schedulers, teams managing time-sensitive turnarounds.

Biweekly schedule template

Some productions don't fit neatly into seven days. A biweekly template spans 14 days, making it ideal for productions with rolling schedules, phased deliveries, or tasks that require planning across multiple shoot and edit cycles simultaneously.

It bridges the gap between week-by-week detail and the broader project timeline — giving teams enough runway to anticipate what's coming without losing sight of what's happening now.

Best for: Longer-form productions, series work, agencies managing phased campaign delivery, teams working in two-week sprints.

Weekly work shift schedule template

Broadcast doesn't stop at 6pm. For facilities and networks running around the clock — live news, sports coverage, OB units, broadcast centres — shift scheduling is a critical operational function, not an admin task.

This template format maps staff names, shift hours, break times, and role assignments across the full week. It gives operations managers and facility heads the visibility they need to guarantee coverage, manage team capacity, and avoid the staffing gaps that can derail a live output.

Best for: Broadcast facilities, live news operations, post houses, networks, OB and remote production units.

Weekly to-do list template

Sometimes the simplest tool is the right one. A weekly to-do list — tasks, priorities, checkboxes — works well for individual contributors who need a lightweight way to manage their week without a full scheduling system. Editors, researchers, and coordinators handling their own workload often prefer this format's flexibility over a rigid time-blocked structure.

This is exactly where Cirkus comes in. Cirkus is built for teams that need an intuitive, collaborative task management tool — assign tasks, set deadlines, flag priorities, and track progress all in one place, without the complexity of a full production scheduling system. For teams following structured post-production scheduling steps, Cirkus makes weekly reviews faster, flags blockers early, and makes it easy to communicate progress to clients or executives without lengthy status meetings.

Best for: Individual contributors, freelance crew, coordinators, and researchers managing their own workload.

How to choose the right schedule template

The right format depends on the complexity of your operation and how many people need to use it. A weekly work schedule template focused on working days works well for office-based teams. A shift-based template suits facilities running round-the-clock. And for operations managing multiple concurrent productions, a full weekly scheduling system connected to resources and projects is the only format that genuinely scales.

Start with these questions: Are you scheduling one project or many? One person or an entire crew and facility? A single week or an ongoing, multi-phase production?

Printable templates work for quick reference — a day's call sheet, a simple run of show — but they can't be updated dynamically or shared in real time. They fall apart the moment something changes.

Spreadsheet templates offer more flexibility and can serve smaller teams reasonably well. But once you're managing multiple projects, crew availability, equipment bookings, and client deadlines simultaneously, spreadsheets become a liability rather than an asset. They're not designed for the resource scheduling best practices that fast-moving production environments demand.

Production management software is where scheduling becomes genuinely powerful. Real-time updates, conflict detection, resource allocation, financial tracking, and team collaboration — these aren't add-ons. They're the infrastructure that allows complex productions to run efficiently.

For broadcast and media teams managing more than one active project or more than a handful of staff, digital scheduling software isn't a luxury. It's the operational foundation your team needs.

Step-by-step guide to using a weekly schedule template

Here's a practical approach to building a weekly plan that holds up under production pressure:

1. Define your time structure. Decide whether you'll plan by day or by hourly block. Post-production environments and live broadcast operations usually benefit from hourly granularity. For broader project oversight, a daily view may be sufficient.

2. Lock in fixed commitments first. Shoot days, broadcast deadlines, client review sessions, and recurring team meetings are your anchors. Build everything else around them.

3. Map your key deadlines and milestones. Identify what absolutely must be delivered this week. If everything appears urgent, go back to your project brief and reorder ruthlessly — not everything that feels urgent is genuinely critical.

4. Assign realistic time to each task. Overloaded schedules are one of the leading causes of production overruns. Be honest about capacity — including travel, setup, technical checks, and handover time.

5. Use time blocking. Group edit sessions together. Batch client calls. Protect windows for focused, uninterrupted work. Context switching is one of the biggest hidden costs in creative production, and time blocking is the most effective counter to it.

6. Colour code by project or department. When multiple productions run in parallel, colour coding makes it immediately clear which task belongs to which project — no scanning through lines of text required.

7. Build in contingency time. Production schedules running at 100% capacity are schedules built to fail. Leave 15–20% of your week as buffer for overruns, client revisions, and the unexpected. This buffer is what separates teams that cope from teams that deliver.

9. Review weekly — without fail. A 20-minute review at the start or end of each week to assess what happened, adjust what's ahead, and reset priorities is one of the highest-ROI habits any production team can build.

The goal isn't a perfect schedule. It's a realistic, shared one that keeps your team informed and your productions on track.

Create your personalised weekly calendar with farmerswife

Templates give you a starting point. farmerswife gives you a production management system built specifically for the realities of broadcast and media operations — where deadlines are tight, teams move fast, and spreadsheets quickly fall behind. The best post-production scheduling software doesn’t just digitize a template. It connects your entire operation. Crew, facilities,  deadlines, budgets, and deliverables — all in one place, always up to date, and fully collaborative.

Hourline and Long Form scheduling

farmerswife offers two integrated scheduling views designed for different planning horizons. The Hourline is built for short-term, precision scheduling — booking resources by the hour, minute, or day with a visual, drag-and-drop interface. The Long Form gives you a bird's-eye view of your facility across longer periods, so you can spot capacity gaps and optimise resource allocation at scale. Together they give production teams both the detail and the overview they need.

Resource and crew management with conflict detection

Assign crew, studios, and equipment to any booking and farmerswife will flag conflicts in real time before they become problems. You can group resources by location or team, track availability across the full week, and ensure that no suite, editor, or piece of kit is double-booked. For operations running multiple productions simultaneously, this visibility is the difference between a smooth week and a costly one.

Full project and financial integration

Every scheduled item in farmerswife connects directly to the project it belongs to — including budgets, cost tracking, rates, and invoicing. Your weekly schedule isn't a separate document sitting in a silo; it's a live reflection of where every production stands financially and operationally. This is what separates a planning tool from a genuine production management system.

Time tracking and reporting

farmerswife includes built-in time tracking that lets team members log hours directly against bookings and projects, via the desktop application, web client, or iOS app. Managers get real-time visibility into how time is being spent, making it straightforward to monitor productivity, track actuals against estimates, and generate accurate reports for clients or internal review.

Real-time sharing and multi-platform access

Schedules update in real time and are accessible across Mac, Windows, web, and iOS — so whether your team is in the facility, on set, or working remotely, everyone sees the same current picture. When a booking changes or a deadline shifts, the whole team knows immediately. No outdated versions, no miscommunication, no surprises.

Integration with the tools your team already uses

farmerswife connects with a wide range of external platforms including SAP, Slack, QuickBooks, Sage, MS Exchange, Google Calendar, iCal, and more — alongside an open REST API for custom integrations. Your weekly schedule doesn't live in isolation; it connects to the broader systems your operation already depends on.

Enhance weekly scheduling with the right software

A solid weekly schedule template is one of the simplest, highest-impact tools available to production teams and broadcast managers. It brings clarity to complex operations, surfaces conflicts before they become crises, and keeps every team member aligned around what matters most.

But as productions scale in complexity, static templates reach their limits. They don't detect resource conflicts. They don't connect to your project financials. They don't update when a broadcast date moves or a client revises their deliverables. And they certainly don't give you the operational picture you need to make confident decisions under pressure.

For broadcast and media teams who are serious about running tighter, more profitable productions — farmerswife is the platform built for you.

Ready to see it in action?