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Who This Is For and What You Can Decide
This is for regional and district managers, franchise operations leads and facilities teams who field a steady stream of store requests. Can we add a TV by the bar? Can we move the lobby screen? Can we get the local game on the patio? Without a defined multi-location TV request process, each answer gets improvised. A year later one store has a screen above the host stand, another has a retail-bought TV with a consumer device plugged into it, and a third swapped a receiver that nobody recorded.
This workflow helps you decide three things:
- Which requests a store manager can handle without asking anyone
- Which requests need your approval, and what information you need before you give it
- Which requests go to corporate or your TV provider because they change the account or need a technician
The goal is not more control for its own sake. It is saying yes quickly to the requests that fit your standard, saying no clearly to the ones that do not, and keeping a record so the next person knows what is on the wall.
Sort Every Request Into One of Three Lanes
Most confusion comes from treating every request the same. A store manager who wants captions turned on should not wait on the same approval as a store that wants three new screens on the patio. Sort by what the change touches: settings, the room, or the account and infrastructure.
| Lane | Typical requests | Who decides | What gets recorded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local | Tuning to a channel on the approved list, volume and captions, temporary tuning for a scheduled event, replacing remote batteries, relabeling | Store manager | Nothing, unless it becomes the new default |
| Regional | Moving a screen, adding a screen that fits the existing standard, changing a zone's default programming, replacing a TV with a same-tier model, setting up a recurring event schedule | Regional or district manager | Intake form, approval, updated site record |
| Corporate and provider | New receivers, programming package changes, new cabling or dish work, screens in an area type the standard does not cover, anything that changes the account or the bill | Corporate owner of the TV account, coordinated with the provider | Intake form, approval chain, provider work order, updated site record |
A simple rule of thumb travels well: if the next shift can undo it in a minute, it is local. If it needs a ladder, it is regional. If it needs a technician or changes what you pay for, it goes up the chain.
A One-Page Intake Form for Store Manager TV Requests
The form is where the time savings come from. A complete request can be approved from a desk; an incomplete one turns into a phone call, a follow-up and sometimes a site visit. Keep it to one page, because a long form gets skipped and the manager makes the change anyway.
Ask for:
- Location and requester, plus the best time to reach them
- Request type: add, move, remove, replace, change default programming, or set a schedule
- Screen numbers affected, using the same numbering on the TV, receiver and remote (see how to label TV receivers and remotes if your sites do not do this yet)
- The job the screen will do: who watches it, when, and why it helps guests, customers or staff
- Photos of the wall or mounting spot and the view from where people will sit or stand
- Power and cabling: is there an outlet and existing cable near the spot? Yes, no or unknown is fine
- Sightlines: does the screen block signage, menu boards, exits or the host stand?
- Date needed, and whether it is tied to an event, a season or a remodel
- Budget owner: store, region or corporate
Photos do most of the work. A shot of the wall and a shot from the dining room or sales floor will usually tell you whether a placement fits your standard faster than any written description.
The Approval Workflow, Step by Step
Once requests come in through a form, the review itself can be short. Here is a sequence that works for a region of a handful of stores or a national operator with district layers.
- Submit through one channel. A shared inbox, a ticketing queue or an online form, never texts to the regional manager's phone. One channel means requests do not disappear when someone goes on vacation.
- Check the lane. If the request is actually local, send it back with a note that the manager can go ahead. If it is a repair, not a change, route it to your multi-location TV issue reporting process instead.
- Check against the standard. Does it fit your franchise TV equipment standard for screen tier, placement and mounting? Does it fit what the site record says is already there?
- Decide within a published response time. Approve, approve with changes, decline with a reason, or escalate to corporate. Pick a response time your team can keep and tell the stores what it is.
- Hand off technician work as one request. One named person opens the work with your provider and attaches the form and photos, so the technician arrives knowing the room.
- Schedule around trading hours. No installs during a Friday dinner rush or a Saturday sale. For regions spanning more than one time zone, write the visit in the store's local time, as covered in the multi-location time zones guide.
- Close the loop. The store sends a photo of the finished work, and someone updates the one-page site record with the screen number, location, receiver and default programming.
- Review patterns each quarter. If the same request keeps coming from several stores, it may belong in the standard or the local lane.
Honest Trade-Offs to Settle Up Front
No workflow removes every tension. It just makes the choices visible so you make them once instead of every week.
Speed versus consistency. Tighter approval protects the brand but slows stores down. The fix is usually a wider local lane for low-risk items, not a faster rubber stamp on everything.
Local knowledge versus brand view. The store manager knows where guests actually sit and where the glare hits at four in the afternoon. The region knows what every other location looks like. Photos and a written reason let the store's knowledge reach you without a trip.
One standard versus real exceptions. Some sites genuinely differ: a corner unit with odd walls, a patio, a newly purchased location still carrying the previous owner's equipment. Keep a short exceptions list with the reason for each, rather than pretending the standard fits everywhere. The acquired location setup guide covers how to bring inherited screens into line.
Batching versus one-off visits. Grouping technician work across several stores can be efficient, but the first store in the queue waits for the last. Decide which request types can wait for a batch and which cannot, such as anything tied to a dated event.
Franchise versus company-owned. Franchisees may own their equipment and budget, so your role may be approving against the standard rather than approving spend. Check what your franchise agreement says about who controls TV equipment and programming, and write the workflow to match.
Common Mistakes in Regional Approval of TV Changes
- Approving by text or in a hallway. The approval is real but the record is not. Six months later nobody can say why a screen is where it is.
- No screen numbering. The TV by the door means three different screens to three different people. Number everything before you build any process on top of it.
- Letting stores buy their own TVs or devices. A retail-bought set may not match your screen tier or support commercial features, and a consumer account or device is generally not set up for business viewing. Settle that question with your provider rather than discovering it later.
- Moving the screen but not the plan. A TV gets moved across the room and the receiver stays in the old cabinet, the remote no longer reaches, and the cable run is a trip hazard.
- Treating programming changes as local. Adding a package at one store or setting a default to a channel outside your lineup changes the account. That belongs in the corporate lane.
- Declining without a reason. Managers who hear no without an explanation stop asking and start doing it themselves.
- Mixing repairs with requests. A dead receiver is not a change request. Keep broken equipment on the support path so it does not wait in an approval queue.
What to Ask Your TV Provider
Your workflow is only as smooth as the provider at the end of it. Before you formalize the process, ask:
- Who is our contact for changes, and does that differ by location or region?
- Can you accept requests from our regional or corporate team and coordinate the technician at the store?
- Do you have technicians in every state where we operate?
- How do you handle a change at one store versus a rollout across a whole region?
- Can you restrict who is authorized to make changes on our account to named people, so a store cannot add programming without approval?
- After a visit, will you send back an updated equipment list we can drop into our site records?
- Can installs and changes be scheduled before opening or after close?
- How do you keep programming consistent across locations while allowing approved local differences?
Get the answers in writing and build them into your workflow, so the handoff in step five works the same way every time.
Sports Direct | DLM Media is an authorized commercial dealer with 30+ years of expertise and technicians and engineers in all 50 states. You can read more about our commercial TV support service, or talk with a programming specialist about how your request workflow would connect to your account.