Ask Slashdot: Justifications for Creating an IT De

jjoelc writes: This may sound like an odd request, so first some background. I work in a broadcast television station. I have found it to be very common for IT to be lumped in with the engineering department at many TV stations. I believe this is mainly because the engineers were the first people in the business to have and use computers in any real capacity, and as the industry has moved to file-based workflows, it has simply stayed that way, despite having obviously different priorities. I do believe there is a need for IT to be its' own department, with its' own goals, budgets, etc. But I am having a bit of a rough time putting together the official proposal to justify this change. Likely because it seems so obviously the way it should be and is done everywhere else. So I am asking for some pointers on the best ways to present this idea to the general manager. What are the business justifications for having a standalone IT department in a small business and how would you go about convincing upper management of those needs? There are approximately 100 employees at the station I am currently at, but we do own another 4 stations in two states (each of these other stations are in the 75-100 employee range) The long term goal would be to have a unified IT department across all 5 stations.