BBC appoints Kate Phillips as Director of its Unscripted division

BBC has appointed Kate Phillips to the newly created Director of Unscripted role following an internal restructure of BBC Television’s senior leadership team to accelerate the BBC’s strategic priorities. The promotion was announced by Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore. “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 UK," Phillips said. "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.”

As the Director of Unscripted, Kate will be responsible for the overall commissioning strategy for the full range of unscripted content, harnessing her relationships with talent and suppliers to ensure content distriubtion in the UK. She will also lead new collaborations between genres and with Nations commissioning teams.

"Unscripted programming plays a vital role across broadcast and on-demand; it is crucial to growing BBC iPlayer and keeping our channels strong," the press release states. "This new structure will bring together all of our commissioning teams across Entertainment, Factual, Arts & Classical Music and Daytime, Early-Peak & Events into a single commissioning unit under the leadership of Kate Phillips, to keep pace with changing audience behaviour and unlock new creative opportunities. "

Kate will report to Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore, while the existing Director of Entertainment and Director of Factual, Arts & Classical Music roles and a new Head of Entertainment commissioning role created. The Heads of Commissioning who will report directly to Kate are Suzy Klein for Arts & Classical Music- Daytime, Early Peak & Events -  Lindsay Bradbury (acting), Documentaries, History & Religion - Clare Sillery, Entertainment – to be advertised, Natural History & Science - Jack Bootle, Popular Factual & Factual Entertainment - Catherine Catton. In this new structure, Kate will be accountable for the overall performance and editorial strategy, empowering the respective Heads whilst ensuring the portfolio of commissions align to the agreed audience and supply objectives.

Fiona Campbell will return to her role as BBC Three Controller. The Directors of Comedy, Drama and Film roles remain unchanged. “Kate’s extensive experience working as Controller of BBC One, running Entertainment for the last 5 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," Charlotte Moore, BBC’s Chief Content Officer said. "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.”