BBC Studios execs reshuffled as production, content partnership units combined

BBC Studios is combining its production and content partnerships businesses into a single BBC Studios Productions entity, with new roles for several senior executives leading four genres.

Ralph Lee

BBC Studios (BBCS) Productions will cover four genre-based areas: scripted, factual, global formats group and children’s.

Ralph Lee, as CEO of BBCS Productions, will have overall responsibility for all of BBCS’s productions and content investment. Each genre’s managing director, reporting to Lee, will be responsible for overall strategy, creative health, pipeline and production capability.

Lee will be supported by chief operating officer Martha Brass, who will continue to oversee business development, production operations and strategy. Brass will also assume overall responsibility for content investment in distribution rights, collaborating across BBCS.

Mark Linsey

Mark Linsey will take up the new role of MD of scripted and his new responsibilities will span BBCS’s existing teams in drama productions, daytime, continuing drama series and comedy productions, alongside its scripted labels (Lookout Point, Sid Gentle, Clerkenwell Films, Baby Cow Productions and House Productions) and the scripted indie minority shareholdings and distribution relationships.

Tom McDonald, current MD for factual, will continue to oversee BBCS Factual labels (The Documentary Unit, The Science Unit and The Natural History Unit) but with expanded responsibilities covering all of Factual’s content investment as well as factual indie relationships.

A Global Formats Group will be created from three existing areas of the business: Factual Entertainment & Events (FE&E), Entertainment & Music (E&M) and International Production & Formats (IP&F) and with BBCS’s indie partners.

Cecilia Persson

This group will focus on unscripted entertainment for the global market, chaired by Ralph Lee and including Brass and MDs Hannah Wyatt (FE&E), Matt Forde (IP&F) and Suzy Lamb (E&M).

Cecilia Persson, the recently announced MD for Children’s, will lead BBCS Children’s genre activity, including the soon-to-be-transferred BBC Children’s in-house productions team, who join the commercial arm in April. Persson will oversee BBCS’s relationships with indies and content investment in this space.

BBCS CEO Tom Fussell said: “As both the UK’s most commissioned production company and its biggest distributor, BBC Studios is already delivering excellent growth with considerable future ambition. This move will both strengthen and simplify our content offer, securing our support for the very finest creative talent and stories, and benefitting audiences in the UK and internationally.”