BBC Studios Productions CEO Zai Bennett has announced changes and appointments across his team in the Factual and Entertainment genres and in the international production business.
Kate Ward (MD Factual) will lead a new business, Unscripted Productions, that merges the Factual, UK Entertainment and Entertainment Development portfolios to create a single production entity.
In her new role as MD, Ward will be responsible for “leveraging the producer’s combined commercial scale and make the most of talent, commissioner, and buyer relationships” across the Factual and Entertainment units and labels including the Natural History Unit, Science Unit, Specialist Factual Productions, Documentary Unit, BBC Studios UK Entertainment – as well as labels and invested indies including Voltage TV, Mothership TV, Samphire Films and Mettlemouse Entertainment.
Ward has been md of Factual since 2023 managing a current slate that includes landmark NBC Universal’s natural history series The Americas, the forthcoming Walking with Dinosaurs for the BBC, and Nat Geo’s Tucci in Italy. She’s also overseen the portfolio’s expansion with the acquisition of Voltage TV and partnerships with Samphire, Mothership and Bango Studios.
Suzy Lamb, MD Entertainment UK, and Karl Warner, EVP UK Ents and Digital Development, will continue to lead the creation of formats and franchises, now reporting directly to Bennett whilst also working to Ward on the overall strategy for the Entertainment business. Lamb’s team produces over 1,000 hours of content every year with titles such as Strictly Come Dancing, The One Show, Glastonbury, The Weakest Link and Dragons’ Den, with Warner and team tasked with developing new hits.
Bennett is also “pledging resource and investment” to scale BBC Studios in international markets. A standalone, newly titled Global Production business will be led by Matt Forde as President to accelerate production activity outside the UK. Forde has already steered BBC Studios expansion in key markets with local producer acquisitions including STV in the Nordics, Brutal in Spain and Werner in Australia, as well as growing a slate of successful internationally adapted formats such as The 1% Club, Ghosts, and The Honesty Box.
Zai Bennett, BBC Studios Productions CEO and Chief Creative Officer, said: “There’s been an increased demand for unscripted programming in our customers’ content strategies, so a single Unscripted business gives us an incredibly potent offering for the market – and it’s the right moment to significantly increase our international production footprint. I’m thrilled that the collective creative and commercial expertise and experience of Kate, Matt, Suzy and Karl will be leading this charge, and I couldn’t ask for better leaders to empower our amazing teams to deliver even greater success.”
Kate Ward, MD Unscripted Productions, BBC Studios added: “BBC Studios Unscripted Productions brings together an extraordinary creative portfolio, led by a world class group of creatives with unrivalled expertise across the breadth of the unscripted genre: from entertainment to natural history, science to factual entertainment, live events to documentary. It’s an honour to be taking on this new role, and I’ll strive to support all of our units, labels and invested indies to even greater success, producing genre defining new shows, whilst continuing to deliver our existing slate of some of the UK’s most loved, successful and impactful programmes.”
Matt Forde, President, Global Production, commented: “I couldn’t be more excited to deepen our production presence globally with our local offices. We’ve seen rapid growth over the last three years internationally and increasing the number of markets BBC Studios operates in is vital if we’re to leverage a truly global creative network and produce even more format hits – as well as creating original content for local audiences across the world.”
All changes take place with immediate effect.
Jon Creamer
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