New structure for BBC Studios Factual to drive creativity

BBC Studios makes an extraordinary range of factual content - from Natural History and science landmarks like Africa and Brian Cox’s Forces of Nature to thought-provoking factual drama and documentaries such as Don’t Take My Baby and Life and Death Row and much loved daytime and primetime features and formats like Countryfile and The One Show. We win awards for our specialist factual and we are renowned for the quality of our arts, history, religious and ethics programming. When I look at the range and depth of our in-house output I’m so proud to be here.

I believe it’s incredibly important that we protect and nurture our factual programme-making heritage through this charter and the next, for audiences and licence fee payers. So my job is to ensure the health of BBC Studios Factual for the future and make it a brilliant place to work.

There are a number of areas I want to focus on in order to achieve this. Firstly, I want to remove obstacles and complexity wherever possible, make it easier for Factual teams to collaborate and build a confident culture, reflective of our world-class skills and creatively. I also want to give the Factual creative heads greater autonomy, so they can be accountable for their businesses and have the freedom to create and deliver what they do best.

Finally I want to create a structure that enables our customers to clearly see what we have to offer. We are going to continue to work across our UK bases in order to be best positioned to successfully deliver to the BBC and ,subject to regulatory approval the wider market, giving talent the opportunity to work with us wherever they live. But it’s important that we are not simply one big Factual division, hard to navigate and too broad to define.

With all of this in mind, last week I announced a new structure for BBC Studios Factual, to empower our creative talent, play to the strengths of the team and establish navigable production units that will, over time, have a distinctive style and tone of content.

The creative business units are:

• Factual Scotland: A cross genre creative business unit with proven skills to deliver a wide range of factual content. BBC Studios Factual Scotland will produce local and network Arts, Daytime, Docs, and History. This is an exciting business, founded on the reputation of recent titles such as the award winning Handmade, What Artists Do All Day and the highly successful Landward produced out of Aberdeen.
• Popular Factual (working title): Based across Bristol, Northern Ireland and Wales, this unit will focus on building new returning lifestyle and features series, spanning the genres and offering an opportunity to work differently with talent on screen and off, bringing teams together from different genres and bases, to encourage collaboration and creativity.
• Natural History Unit: With a global reputation and rich heritage, it is our ambition to build on that reputation, driving innovation, broadening our offer and deepening our storytelling skills.
• Documentaries: Bringing together Arts, History and Documentaries and building on the success of the existing London team, this unit will supply reputational, popular, and critically acclaimed factual television, from observational access series through to history, arts, factual drama and feature length singles. At the heart of this unit will be a commitment to brilliant story-telling and high production values.
• Science: We will look to build on the success of programmes such as Forces of Nature with Brian Cox and Trust Me I’m A Doctor. With our global reputation and important co-production partnerships we are confident that we can continue to excel.
• Topical and Live: Based across London and Salford, BBC Studios Topical and Live is a new creative business unit that encompasses The One Show, Consumer and Live and the topical unit based in Salford. Our aim is to make this unit a powerhouse in it's field, with credibility and expertise unmatched elsewhere in the market.

Religion and Ethics will continue to operate as they currently are, based in Salford, with Sunday Morning Live coming from Northern Ireland.

As you can see, overall we are moving away from a rigid genre structure, with Popular Factual, Factual Scotland, Documentaries and Topical and Live being cross-genre hubs, with a broad remit. Each of these units has a distinct purpose and will give real focus to Factual from both a creative and business perspective as we move into a more competitive landscape.

We face significant challenges over the next few years as we adapt to the new world we are entering but it is enormously exciting that BBC Studios is on track to become a wholly-owned subsidiary, able to seek out opportunities to make programmes for other UK and global broadcasters, as well as the BBC and deliver even greater value to the BBC Group. We have secured support in principle from PACT, Government, the BBC Trust and OFCOM. The regulatory approval process in underway and we expect to hear the outcome by the end of the year.

We have an opportunity to do things differently and better, to ensure BBC Studios Factual continues to be a production powerhouse, imbued with the BBC values and attributes of creativity, risk-taking and quality. We have an amazing heritage and now we want to set ourselves up for a successful future.

Lisa Opie is Director of Factual, BBC Studios.