BBC Vision Restructures to Maximize On-Screen Spend

LONDON: BBC Vision, the British pubcaster’s commissioning, production and scheduling division, has unveiled what it is calling a "radical reorganization" in order to reduce internal costs and free up more funds to spend on content.

George Entwistle, the director of BBC Vision, announced the restructure today. The reorganization, combined with the proposals under the corporation-wide Delivering Quality First (DQF) mandate, aims to free up £27 million for reinvesting into content in 2013/2014.

The new structure will consist of one core "operational spine," delivering business support to the channels, platforms, commissioning and production teams. The restructure also creates three new genre groups: knowledge and daytime; comedy and entertainment; and drama, film & acquisitions. With this one operational spine for the genre groups, BBC Vision expects to reduce duplication, minimize internal transaction costs and deliver a more effective business model.

Under the new structure, a controller of business will be appointed for each genre group, reporting to Bal Samra, director of Vision operations and right and business affairs. The controllers of business will work in new leadership teams alongside the commissioning and production genre controllers in each of the key genre groups.

“The key to the creative future of the BBC is to ensure good people and good money spend less time tied up in process and more time creating the very highest quality television programs and multiplatform output," said Entwistle. "The hard choices we’ve already made through DQF, plus the radical new ways of working implicit in this reorganization, will help simplify what we do—freeing people and money to concentrate on serving our audiences.”

Samra will continue to be responsible for all Vision operations and rights and business affairs, while taking full responsibility for the production management teams across the genres.

Pat Younge, chief creative officer of BBC Vision Productions, will focus on the creative leadership of all network TV production in drama, factual, entertainment and comedy.