BBC appoints Kate Phillips to head up unscripted commissioning in leadership restructure

Kate Phillips

Kate Phillips will take on the newly created role of director of unscripted at UK pubcaster the BBC, following a restructure of the corporation’s senior commissioning leadership team.

Phillips, who is currently director of entertainment commissioning, will take on responsibility for the overall commissioning strategy of all unscripted content, reporting to chief content officer Charlotte Moore.

The new structure will bring together all BBC commissioning teams across entertainment, factual, arts & classical music and daytime, early-peak & events into a single unit under Phillips. These changes will scrap the existing director of entertainment and director of factual, arts & classical music roles, while a new head of entertainment commissioning role is being created.

Fiona Campbell, who had been serving as acting director of factual, arts & classical music roles, following the departure of Patrick Holland earlier this year, will return to her role as controller of BBC Three. The corporation’s search for a full-time replacement for Holland appears to have been fruitless, with the solution being to close the post and merge it into Phillips new role. The director roles for comedy, drama and film remain unchanged.

The heads of commissioning who will now report directly to Phillips are Suzy Klein (arts and classical music), Lindsay Bradbury (daytime, early peak and events), Clare Sillery (documentaries, history and religion), Jack Bootle (natural history and science) and Catherine Catton (popular factual and factual entertainment).

The new head of commissioning for entertainment post will also report to Phillips once the role, which is being advertised, has been filled.

Phillips previously served at the corporation as controller of BBC One, alongside her five years as director of entertainment commissioning, as well as channel executive for BBC One and BBC Three and creative director of formats for BBC Worldwide.

Moore said this experience, alongside her years in production, makes Phillips “uniquely placed” to take on the new role. “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 that the new structure 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.”