Having had various levels of involvement in a number of award shows in Aus - the logies, brownlow medal and a number of other sporting ones.... Once TV becomes involved, your traditional theatre running methods take a back seat, and you enter TV land. They tend to liase directly with the end client, and then the venue and AV supplier liases directly with the TV company.
On the night, the show call is done by the floor manager of the company, or the director. Everything is basically an order of magnitude larger - instead of an in room vision mixer, you have an in room mixer for imag + an OB van. Instead of 2 audio consoles (FOH + FB) you have 3 (a broadcast split is added). Lighting design is a collaboration between the LD, the director and the engineers in the OB van who invariably say "It's too dark. We need more light".
As far as the venue goes, the most important thing to do is before the first truck arrives in the loading dock, take a digital camera and a representative of the station with you and walk through the venue, taking photographs of the state the venue is in - note down what is damaged, and take photos. At the end of the show, do the same thing. Then get ready to write out a bill. I have seen awards shows that take 5 days to install come out in 6 hours. They only come out in that time frame because the guys who rip it all out don't care about the venue. We average an $8k repair bill after each TV company comes through.
If there is no TV involvement, awards shows are simple, boring and repetitive. Show caller/SM is optional - most AV techs can do an awards show in their sleep. With these smaller awards shows and the like tend to follow the corporate AV mindset, in that a "show caller" is more likely than an SM, and the technicians are expected to know how to do their jobs with minimal to no prompting.
