Description
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.
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. 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.
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, 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.
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.
The company is on track to meet its five-year target of returning £1.2bn to the BBC by 2021/2022. 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.
