BBC’s Kate Phillips & BBC Studios Janet Brown Talk Scripted Strategies

This morning in Cannes, Kate Phillips, the BBC’s new chief content officer, outlined her scripted strategy for the pubcaster while BBC Studios’ Janet Brown, president of global content sales, showcased how the content powerhouse is expanding the reach of British storytelling worldwide in a session moderated by World Screen’s Mansha Daswani.

“Don’t sanitize when you think of the BBC,” said Phillips following the screening of a trailer for Richard Gadd’s new series Half Man. “Don’t think, ‘The BBC will never go for that,’ because we are a broad church. And if it’s a great story, a brilliant narrative and beautiful characters, we will take it as far as we can.”

Collaboration is key for getting these high-impact scripted stories off the ground, she said. “I really like the partnerships we’re doing. I think the most important thing is that we’re creatively aligned and the people that want to make content with us also care about distinctiveness and originality.”

HBO is a partner on Half Man, and the BBC has also collaborated with the likes of Disney, Amazon and Netflix. Partnerships “increase the ambition and increase the impact. In a crowded global market, trying to get dramas that break through and get attention is getting harder and harder. So, the more partnerships we have, the better.”

Financing remains a key challenge. The BBC remains the biggest commissioner of U.K. drama, Phillips said. “We work with more indies than anyone else in the U.K. We’re not naive to the inflationary costs and the pressures that indies are under.” Being up front about costs at the outset is crucial, she noted. “Don’t think, ‘The BBC will never be able to afford that.’ Yes, we will! But we need to know early on what we’re looking at, what we’re dealing with, how we can manage that and how we can best support the indie to do their best work.”

Brown joined Phillips on stage to discuss BBC Studios’ role in supporting the BBC’s commissioning teams and referenced some key structural changes to help support that relationship. “We are even more able to work with Kate and her team. We brought together the sales team with our award-winning production portfolio under Zai Bennett, which is giving us one united face into the open market, but importantly into Kate and her team, so that we’re able to work together to fulfill the vision of finding the most distinctive stories.”

For creatives looking to work with BBC commissioning, Phillips explained: “We are open to all ideas and different sizes of indies as well. We just want the best ideas. And also a mix. We have a great acquisitions team. We’re always going to be committed to commissioning original ideas. Smart acquisitions that we now play at prime time and that feel like BBC originations. Having partners like BBC Studios to get these shows financed is invaluable.”

Similarly, “We are open for business,” Brown said. “We want to see the best stories. At BBC Studios, our job is to partner in bringing that story that you as a producer have carefully crafted and help you bring it out in the best way, with the best financing, with the most ambition, to the most like-minded partners who can continue to treat and grow your story so that it reaches audiences. We’re all here to make sure that the best stories reach the audiences that will appreciate it. And for us in the studio team, the first thing we do to support that vision is obviously bring together the financing. But the second thing is the work that we do here, which is seeking the best partners for the story who will help support and market the story to meet the audience.”

Shifting to digital-first content, Phillips said that the BBC would soon be announcing a new YouTube strategy involving new commissioning opportunities. Meanwhile, scaling iPlayer remains crucial, while linear “is stronger than we thought. The channels are, in effect, a marketing tool. Watch it on linear and then drive people to iPlayer to watch the rest of the series or binge in their own time. One of my trickiest jobs is still keeping linear strong but making sure that iPlayer is the ultimate destination.”

“We are embracing 100 percent the possibilities of YouTube,” Brown added.

Asked about the overall state of scripted, Brown noted that being selective about what to back is more important than ever. “You’re not going to take a whim on something. Budgets are bigger. We are being intentional even when we’re backing a project, thinking, Who’s likely to be appreciating this and who will really partner with us around the world? Those are the ‘watchwords’ of the market right now. Increasing selectivity and, therefore, as a studio and distributor, being very intentional.”

Phillips added: “When we get behind a show, there is no stopping us. Some streamers may have bigger pockets, but we do go for it and we make the impact in the U.K. market. And when we make the impact there, then we’ve got a great product to sell around the world.”