Live Streaming Production Manager

Midwest Cards•Columbus, OH

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Live Streaming Production Manager About Midwest Cards Midwest Cards is a specialty sports and trading card retailer in Columbus, Ohio. We run a physical store, a growing ecommerce business, and a live selling Breaker team on Whatnot and Fanatics Live. We're an authorized reseller for Topps/Fanatics and Upper Deck, and we sell to everyone from the kid buying a first pack to the collector chasing a specific card. Live selling is the fastest-moving part of this business, and most of it looks the same: one camera, one table, one person opening packs and reading names off a board. It works, and it has a low ceiling. The next era of live selling belongs to whoever treats it as programming instead of a webcam with a checkout button. That's the job. The role The Live Streaming Production Manager owns every frame Midwest Cards puts on air. You are the executive producer, creative director, and technical lead for our live channels — accountable for what the shows are, how they look, how they run, and whether people stay to watch. This is not a stream-operator job. We are not hiring someone to hit go-live and hand the room to the talent. We're hiring the person who decides that Tuesday night is a different show than Saturday afternoon, who builds the formats, designs the set, cuts the cameras, writes the segments, and sends talent on air with a plan. Sales follow the show. Your job is the show.

Requirements

4+ years producing or directing live or live-to-tape programming — broadcast, sports, esports, shopping, event, or high-volume creator production
Demonstrated experience building a show from a blank page: format, rundown, segments, graphics, set, talent
Hands-on with multi-camera switching and live production software and hardware (vMix, OBS, Blackmagic ATEM, Companion/Stream Deck, or equivalents) — you can run the room, not just spec it
Working command of lighting, audio, and camera fundamentals, and the design tools to build your own graphics or direct someone who does
Calm under live failure, and decisive about what happens next
Active, current participation in the live selling ecosystem — you watch Whatnot, Fanatics Live, TikTok Shop, and eBay Live, and you can name who's good, who's rising, and exactly why
Understanding of how live commerce mechanics actually work: breaks, auctions, giveaways, sweeps, drops, the pacing of a buy, and how chat behaves
Fluency in the trading card hobby, or the appetite and speed to get there fast
Strong point of view on creative, held loosely enough to test it and drop it
Comfortable directing on-air talent, including people more senior or more famous than you
Organized enough to run a schedule, a crew, and a budget alongside the creative
Nights and weekends are when live selling happens; you're built for that rhythm

Nice To Haves

You've worked in a control room on a show people have heard of
You've built a channel, series, or format from zero and grown it
You collect, break, or sell cards yourself
A demonstrated ability to work well within a team.
You have motion graphics, editing, or set-build skills you can point at
You can show us a stream you watched and articulate, shot by shot, what you'd change
You have opinions about why some live sellers hold an audience for four hours and others lose them in twelve minutes

Responsibilities

Programming and show development: Build the schedule the way a network builds one — distinct shows with their own identity, hosts, pacing, and reason to tune in. Create and maintain a weekly programming grid across Whatnot, Fanatics Live, and any channel we add, with each slot built for the audience actually watching at that hour. Develop original show formats, recurring segments, and franchise bits that give viewers something to come back for beyond the next break. Write and run the run-of-show for every broadcast: cold open, segment order, beat-by-beat timing, planned moments, clean out. Build tentpole programming around the release calendar, hobby events, holidays, and store moments — including multi-hour and multi-host specials. Develop competition, game, and reveal mechanics that make watching entertaining whether or not the viewer is buying that night. Maintain a format pipeline: pitch, pilot, measure, keep or kill.
Look, sound, and feel: Own the on-air visual identity: set design, staging, backdrop, product presentation, and the physical space the shows live in. Design and maintain the graphics package — lower thirds, break boards, odds and price cards, countdowns, transitions, stingers, replay wipes, hit reveals. Direct lighting design for a room that has to look good on camera for eight hours straight, not just at 7 p.m. Build a camera language: angles, coverage, close-ups on the card, overheads on the rip, macro on the hit, and the cuts that make a pull land. Own audio as a first-class discipline — mics, mix, music beds, and sound design that carries energy without burying the host. Keep the visual system consistent across channels and clips so the show feeds social, and social feeds the show.
Live execution and talent: Direct shows live: switching, camera calls, graphics triggers, audio cues, replays, and the judgment to throw out the rundown when something better is happening. Produce the on-air talent — prep them before the show, talk to them during it, give notes after it, and develop their on-camera range over time. Cast and rotate hosts and guests; build chemistry pairings and know which personality fits which format. Own the technical stack end to end: cameras, switchers, encoders, capture, streaming software, control surfaces, network redundancy, and the backup plan for when something fails mid-break. Build and lead the production crew, whether that's operators, a floor lead, or freelancers for big nights, and set the standards they work to. Own pre-show checklists and post-show teardown so quality doesn't depend on who happened to be working.
Performance and iteration: Own the metrics that matter for live: concurrent viewers, watch time, retention through segments, chat participation, repeat viewership, conversion, and revenue per broadcast hour. Review tape. Find the minute people left and fix what happened before it. Run structured tests on formats, time slots, set changes, and segment order, and make calls based on what the data says. Report out weekly on show performance and what's changing next. Watch the competition and the wider live-selling and creator ecosystem closely enough to know what's about to be copied — and to be the one being copied.