‘Designated Survivor’ encounters another showrunner switch

Showrunner switches can often be incredibly difficult, largely because you get used to one particular creative vision only to have that flipped around on its head at the last second with someone else taking on the spot. You want and hope that the tradition is as seamless as it can possibly be, but when the dust settles, there’s really not all that much of a guarantee out there for that at all.

The latest show facing this sort of change now in “Designated Survivor” on ABC, and the particularly ironic part of this story is that this is not the first time in which it is making the change. According to a new report from THR, Jeff Melvoin is being brought in as the showrunner for the Kiefer Sutherland series, replacing Jon Harmon Feldman, who is going to stick around with ABC Studios and could potentially have several different products coming up as we get closer to entering pilot season.

Originally, Amy B. Harris of “The Carrie Diaries” was meant to be the showrunner for the series, but that was changed over to Feldman after the pilot stage when the show was ordered to series.

There are so many different components that go into being a showrunner that it would seem utterly unfair for us to start to speculate on the reason for all of the changes too much; we will say that in particular with broadcast TV this job can be especially hard, given that you’ve got different demands from a production company and a studio. ABC in the past has had a history of trying to configure many of their series to be on the same sort of crazy-twist level as shows like “Scandal,” that way they can generate a wide array of social-media impressions.

There is going to be yet another new episode of “Designated Survivor” airing on ABC before long, and if you want to preview what’s coming up without further delay, you can do that just by heading over to the link here. (Photo: ABC.)