BBC Names New Director of Unscripted

Kate Phillips has been appointed to the newly created role of director of unscripted at the BBC.

Phillips’ appointment follows an internal restructure of BBC Television’s senior leadership teams, which brings all of its commissioning teams across entertainment; factual; arts and classical music; and daytime, early-peak and events into a single commissioning unit under Phillips’ leadership. In her new role, Phillips will be responsible for the overall commissioning strategy for the full range of unscripted content.

Phillips will report to Charlotte Moore, chief content officer.

The restructure will see the closure of the existing director of entertainment and director of factual, arts and classical music roles and a new head of entertainment commissioning role created. The heads of commissioning who will report directly to Phillips are: Suzy Klein (arts and classical music), Clare Sillery (documentaries, history and religion), the yet-to-be named head of entertainment, Jack Bootle (natural history and science) and Catherine Catton (popular factual and factual entertainment).

In this new structure, Phillips will be accountable for the overall performance and editorial strategy, empowering the respective heads while ensuring the portfolio of commissions aligns to the agreed audience and supply objectives.

Fiona Campbell will return to her role as BBC Three’s controller. The directors of comedy, drama and film roles remain unchanged.

Moore said: “Kate’s extensive experience working as controller of BBC One, running entertainment for the last five years and previously as channel executive for BBC One and BBC Three, creative director of formats for BBC Worldwide and her years in production, makes her uniquely placed to lead across this new role as director of unscripted. She is an outstanding leader and manager with an exemplary track record in commissioning, working with suppliers and talent, and she understands the critical and complex role unscripted plays on both iPlayer and the channels. By bringing the genres together as a single team, she will streamline development to empower our world-class team of commissioners to achieve even greater creative excellence.”

Phillips added: “I’m really looking forward to working closely with our extremely talented heads and their teams to ensure we continue to commission innovative, impactful and distinctive content for BBC audiences across the U.K. This new role will allow our unscripted teams to not only do their best work creatively, but also collaborate more with each other, leading to exciting opportunities for all our on- and off-screen talent.”