![]() Logo used since 2021 | |
Type | Public subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Television production |
Predecessor | BBC Worldwide |
Founded | 27 February 2015 |
Headquarters | BBC Television Centre, London , England |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Tom Fussell (CEO) [1] |
Brands | BBC Earth |
Revenue | ![]() |
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Total equity | ![]() |
Parent | BBC |
Divisions | BBC Studios Home Entertainment BBC Studios Productions BBC Studios ScriptWorks BBC Studios TalentWorks BBC News (overseas) |
Subsidiaries | Baby Cow Productions BBC Studios Africa BBC Studios America BBC Studios Australia BBC Studios Canada BBC Studios France BBC Studios Germany Productions BBC Worldwide Holdings BBC Studios India BBC Studios Singapore BBC Studios Intermediadora de Programadora Estangeira BBC Studios Japan BBC Studios Mexico BBC Studios Polska BBC Studios Productions Nordics BritBox International (50%) Clerkenwell Films Demon Music Group Firebird Pictures House Productions Lookout Point TV Mighty Productions Moonage Pictures Rapid Blue Sid Gentle Films UKTV Voltage TV |
Website | www |
BBC Studios is a British content company. It is a commercial subsidiary of the BBC that was formed in April 2018 through the merger of the BBC's commercial production arm and the BBC's commercial international distribution arm, BBC Worldwide. BBC Studios creates, develops, produces, distributes, broadcasts, finances and sells content around the world, returning around £ 200 million to the BBC annually in dividends and content investment. [2]
BBC Studios Productions brings together the majority of BBC Television's former in-house production departments; Factual, Drama, Comedy, (both combined as Scripted in the new division), Entertainment, and Music & Events. [3] BBC Children's production is set to move into BBC Studios Productions from April 2022 to increase the potential of taking British children's content to the wider global market, along with BBC Three's in-house production team, which is joining from April 2021. [4]
BBC News and BBC Radio remain separate internal production divisions in the BBC (although BBC Radio Comedy is part of BBC Studios), and the rest of the former BBC Television division (channels and genre commissioning, including BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer) are part of the BBC Content division.
The BBC Studios production division was formed in 2016 and launched as a commercial entity in 2017, [5] enabling it to produce programming for other broadcasters and services to generate profit to return to the BBC to supplement licence fee income. In exchange, the BBC agreed to place production of much of its non-news programmes to tender, allowing third-party independents to compete with BBC Studios on bids to produce them.
The merger of BBC Studios and BBC Worldwide in 2018, brought the company in line with other major multinational studio conglomerates.
BBC Studios Productions was the UK's most commissioned creator of new content in 2019, with 77 new commissions from the BBC and third-parties. It achieved 73 awards and 202 nominations in 2019/2020. [6] [7]
BBC Studios represents formats and programmes made by hundreds of independent producers, as well as its own production teams and returned £176m to the independent sector in 2018/2019. [8]
The company is on track to meet its five-year target of returning £1.2bn to the BBC by 2021/2022. [4] BBC Studios has committed to growing this total by a further 30% to a new target of £1.5bn in the five years from 2022/2023. [9]
BBC Studios Ltd. as a production company was first registered on 27 February 2015. [10] In September 2015, the BBC's general director Tony Hall announced a proposal to split the BBC's in-house production units for non-news television programming into a separate BBC Studios division, which would eventually, with BBC Trust approval as part of the next revision to the BBC's charter, be spun-out as a for-profit subsidiary of the BBC. This proposal would allow the BBC's units to produce programmes for other broadcasters and digital outlets (which could be done in conjunction with its international distribution arm BBC Worldwide) in addition to the BBC's publicly funded properties. As a for-profit company, BBC Studios would be allowed to pay higher wages to its executives and talent, and no longer face scrutiny over them as it did as a public entity. [11] The proposal was described by The Guardian as being "one of the biggest changes to the BBC in its 93-year history". [12]
The proposal attracted criticism from independent studios, who felt that it would result in the formation of a "super-indie" that would unduly benefit from "guaranteed" programme commissions from the BBC. As part of the split, the BBC planned to tender its programmes, so that independent producers and BBC Studios could bid for the rights to produce its non-news programming, outside of top shows (such as Doctor Who ) assigned to BBC Studios. [11] The re-organisation and formation of BBC Studios as a division of the BBC was completed in April 2016. [13] In September 2016, the BBC announced that it would tender its non-news programmes over the next 11 years, beginning with programmes such as A Question of Sport , Holby City and Songs of Praise . [14] [15] [16]
In October 2016, the BBC announced that it planned to lay off 300 employees from the division seen as redundant. [12] In December 2016, BBC Studios announced that it had reached an agreement with Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT) in regards to the tendering plan, stating that it would tender at least 40% of the "in-house guarantee" within two years of approval of the transition. [17] The BBC Trust subsequently approved the creation of BBC Studios as a commercial subsidiary, with the process expected to be completed in April 2017. [16] [18] [19]
On 29 November 2017, the BBC announced that BBC Worldwide would be merged into BBC Studios effective 1 April 2018. The BBC stated that by handling both the production and sales of its programming within one unit, it would improve efficiency and be in line with the "global norms" of other major international media companies. [20] [21] Technically, BBC Ventures Group Ltd. [note 1] was renamed BBC Studios Group Ltd. on 3 April 2018, and then BBC Studios Ltd. 1 October 2018; [22] also in October, the production company established in 2015 was renamed BBC Studios Productions Ltd., [10] and so did BBC Worldwide Ltd., which was renamed BBC Studios Distribution Ltd. [23]
In April 2019, BBC Studios announced various agreements with Discovery, Inc.; the companies agreed to break apart their UKTV joint venture, with Discovery (which had acquired a stake in UKTV after its purchase of Scripps Networks Interactive) acquiring the BBC's stake in UKTV's lifestyle channels, and BBC Studios likewise acquiring Discovery's stakes in UKTV's entertainment channels and the video on-demand service UKTV Play. In addition, Discovery announced a 10-year agreement with the BBC's Natural History Unit to acquire exclusive subscription video-on-demand rights to its content worldwide (which would be incorporated into a forthcoming global streaming brand), and co-fund a development team. Discovery had previously served as the Natural History's Unit U.S. partner until 2013. [24] [25]
In August 2019, BBC Studios announced a long-term deal with WarnerMedia's upcoming HBO Max for streaming rights to past seasons of top BBC programmes such as Doctor Who, The Honourable Woman , Luther , and Top Gear . [26] In January 2020, it also sold second-window streaming rights to 14 series to CW Seed (a video on-demand platform operated by The CW, a television network co-owned by WarnerMedia). [27]
In November 2020, BBC Studios 2019/2020 UK Pay Gap Report was published, which showed that all median pay gaps were now below 10% and that women made up 53.2% of leadership roles. The report also voluntarily disclosed BBC Studios bonus pay gaps by ethnicity, disability and sexuality for the first time, as well as more detail on the three payment types that make up BBC Studios' overall bonus pay gaps. [28] [29]
In November 2020, BBC Studios Productions announced it was introducing new steps to improve diversity and inclusion across its content and teams, including an ‘Inclusion Rider’, spearheaded by Director of Content Ralph Lee. This sees a commitment to a minimum target of 20% of on-screen talent and production teams on all new BBC and third-party UK commissions coming from a Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic (BAME) background, having a lived experience of a disability, or being from a low-income background. There was also an additional commitment to a target of at least one senior role on scripted and unscripted production teams being appointed from one of these backgrounds. [30] [31]
In February 2021, BBC Studios launched a new streaming brand in North America known as BBC Select, dedicated to factual content. [32] On 22 February 2021, BBC Studios signed a first-look deal with Gobstopper Group. [33]
In March 2021, it was announced that the BBC Children's Productions and BBC Global News units would also be transferred into BBC Studios. With the change, BBC Studios will handle international distribution and advertising sales for BBC World News, while the public service BBC News operation will assume editorial control of the channel. [34] [35] More recently, the studio had set up a development deal with EbonyLife Media, which was affiliated with Sony Pictures Television, headed by Mo Abudu. [36]
In August 2022, it was revealed that BBC Studios planned to launch an international newsletter business, initially focusing on Canada and the US, the BBC's second largest non-UK news market behind India. [37]
BBC Studios has built up a stake in a variety of different production companies. [46]
BBC Records was a division of the BBC founded in 1967 to commercially exploit the corporation's output for radio and television for both educational and domestic use. [63] In the 1990s licensing and marketing of the BBC's recorded output become the responsibility of BBC Worldwide (formerly BBC Enterprises), and the corporation ceased the direct release of recorded material, instead licensing its products to other companies. BBC Worldwide was merged into BBC Studios from 2018, which now licenses the use of the BBC logo on commercial recordings.
BritBox is an over-the-top subscription video on-demand brand, which includes original programming commissioned or acquired by the company, and third-party content licensed from other UK channels such as BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Channel 5. Announced by BBC Worldwide & ITV plc as a joint venture back in 2016 & launched in 2017, [64] [65] it is now a fully owned subsidiary of ITV, after they announced in 2022 that they had bought out the BBC & its other partners with the intention of integrating the service with ITVX. [66]
Regular television broadcasts in the United Kingdom started in 1936 as a public service which was free of advertising, which followed the first demonstration of a transmitted moving image in 1926. Currently, the United Kingdom has a collection of free-to-air, free-to-view and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channels for consumers as well as on-demand content. There are six main channel owners who are responsible for most material viewed.
Independent Television News (ITN) is a UK-based media production and broadcast journalism company. ITN is based in London, with bureaux and offices in Beijing, Brussels, Jerusalem, Johannesburg, New York, Paris, Sydney and Washington, D.C.
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936.
BBC Canada was a Canadian English language specialty channel that mostly broadcast television series originally produced by the BBC, the public-service broadcaster of the United Kingdom. The channel was owned by Corus Entertainment and BBC Studios (20%).
Gold is a British pay television channel from the UKTV network that was launched in late 1992 as UK Gold before it was rebranded UKTV Gold in 2004. In 2008, it was split into current flagship channel Gold and miscellaneous channel, W, with classic comedy based programming now airing on Gold, non-crime drama and entertainment programming airing on W, and quiz shows and more high-brow comedy airing on Dave. It shows repeats of classic programming from the BBC, ITV and other broadcasters. Every December, from 2015 until 2018, the channel was temporarily renamed Christmas Gold. This has since been discontinued, although the channel still continues to broadcast Christmas comedy.
BBC UKTV is an Australian pay television channel in Australia and New Zealand, screening British entertainment programming, sourced mainly from the archives of the BBC, RTL Group and ITV plc. The channel was originally a joint venture with Foxtel, the RTL Group and BBC Worldwide. It is now owned solely by BBC Studios. It is the home of the channel's flagship programme The Graham Norton Show.
ITV Choice is a television channel owned and operated by ITV plc.
ITV plc is a British media company that holds 13 of the 15 regional television licences that make up the ITV network, the oldest and largest commercial terrestrial television network in the United Kingdom.
BBC Worldwide Ltd. was the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the BBC, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in January 1995. The company monetises BBC brands, selling BBC and other British programming for broadcast abroad with the aim of supplementing the income received by the BBC through the licence fee.
UKTV Media Limited, simply known as UKTV, is a British multi-channel broadcaster, which, since 2019, has been wholly owned by BBC Studios, a commercial subsidiary of the BBC. It was formed on 1 November 1992 through a joint venture between the BBC and Thames Television. It is one of the United Kingdom's largest television companies.
Yesterday is a British free-to-air history-oriented television channel broadcasting in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It launched on 30 October 2002 as UK History and relaunched in its current format on 2 March 2009. It is available on satellite through Sky, Freesat and through the digital terrestrial provider Freeview. Hours on Freeview had previously been cut, with transmissions finishing at 6 pm, but were restored on 1 June 2010.
Dave is a British free-to-air television channel owned by UKTV, a subsidiary of BBC Studios. It broadcasts mainly comedy, with some factual programming. The channel took the name Dave on 15 October 2007, but it had been on air under various identities and formats since October 1998.
There are several different types of mass media in the United Kingdom: television, radio, newspapers, magazines and websites. The United Kingdom is known for its large music industry, along with its new and upcoming artists. The country also has a large broadcasting, film, video games and book publishing industries.
ITV Studios is a British multinational television production and distribution company owned by the British television broadcaster ITV plc. It handles production and distribution of programmes broadcast on the ITV network and third-party broadcasters, and is based in 12 countries across 60 production labels, with local production offices in the UK, US, Belgium, Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Israel, France, Spain and Scandinavia.
All3Media Limited is a British worldwide independent television, film and digital production and distribution company based in London, England. The All3Media group comprises more than 50 production and distribution companies and labels from across the United Kingdom and all other parts of Europe, New Zealand and the United States.
Red Bee Media, formerly Ericsson Broadcast and Media Services (EBMS), is an international broadcasting and media services company and the largest access provider in Europe. Red Bee has its headquarters in London, England, with branch offices in Glasgow, Cardiff, MediaCityUK in Salford and Newcastle upon Tyne, and international offices in Australia, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Canada, United States and Abu Dhabi. It has 2,500 employees worldwide across eight media hubs and distributes over 2.7 million hours of programming each year worldwide. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ericsson.
Argonon is an independent media group founded in 2011 by James Burstall, the CEO of Leopard Films. Argonon has offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Liverpool, Oklahoma, and Glasgow. The group produces and distributes factual entertainment, documentary, reality, entertainment, arts, drama, and children's programming for various television networks and channels worldwide, although they focus on the UK, US, and Canadian markets. Argonon produces shows such as The Masked Singer UK (ITV), Worzel Gummidge, Dispatches, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, House Hunters International (HGTV) and Hard Cell (Netflix).
James Burstall is a British film and television producer and Chief Executive Officer of the international group Argonon which he founded in 2011. Argonon has many companies within the group located in London, Los Angeles, New York City, Liverpool and Glasgow.
BritBox is an online digital video subscription service, founded by BBC Studios and ITV, operating in nine countries across North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa. It is focused on British television series and films, mainly featuring current and past series and films supplied from two British terrestrial broadcasters of the BBC and ITV, in addition to original programming. BritBox is said to feature the biggest collection of British box sets available in one place, with additional original programming available from 2020.
This is a timeline of UKTV, a television company that broadcasts seven television channels in the United Kingdom.