Roles and responsibilities
- Kate is responsible for the overall commissioning strategy for the full range of unscripted content, encompassing Entertainment, Documentaries, Specialist Factual, Arts & Classical Music, Factual Entertainment & Events and Daytime & Early-Peak.
- She oversees around 3000 hours of broadcast tv each year and is accountable for the overall performance and editorial strategy of the Unscripted commissioning division.
Biography
Kate Phillips was appointed Director of Unscripted in May 2022. She is responsible for the overall commissioning strategy for the full range of unscripted content, encompassing Entertainment, Documentaries, Specialist Factual, Arts & Classical Music, Factual Entertainment & Events and Daytime & Early-Peak.
This newly created role enables the BBC to keep pace with changing audience behaviour and unlock new creative opportunities, ensuring the ongoing strength of our unique specialisms and driving more value from new collaborations between genres and with Nations commissioning teams.
Kate is accountable for the overall performance and editorial strategy of the Unscripted commissioning division, empowering each of the respective Heads of Commissioning whilst ensuring the portfolio aligns to the agreed audience and supply objectives.
During the pandemic Kate was Acting Controller of BBC One, overseeing a vast array of programmes, working and commissioning with many genres including all of Factual, Current Affairs, Sport, Comedy, Drama and Entertainment.
Previously, Kate was Controller, Entertainment where she oversaw the entertainment strategy across BBC television and iPlayer. She commissioned more than 500 hours of original programmes a year, including shows such as Strictly Come Dancing, Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK, Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof, The Apprentice, Top Gear, The Graham Norton Show, Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel, Eurovision, The Weakest Link, I Can See Your Voice, The Hit List, The Wall, Have I Got News For You, Would I Lie To You, MasterChef, Eating with my Ex, Dragons’ Den, Comic Relief and the Bafta Film Awards.
Before taking up this role, Kate was Creative Director of Formats for BBC Worldwide. In this role Kate oversaw all of BBC Worldwide’s scripted and non-scripted formats, over 200 in total. She led the Formats team in London and worked closely with Sales and Production teams across all of BBC Worldwide’s Global Territories.
Prior to this Kate worked as Channel Executive for BBC One and BBC Three, working closely with the Controllers to oversee all editorial content on both channels, managing early development of commissions and formatting and liaising with scheduling, budgeting, marketing, press, and social media planning and strategy.
Kate’s extensive TV production experience was garnered through producing numerous comedy and entertainment shows for many broadcasters, as well as being a co-owner and Director of Mast Media, an award-winning television formats company which developed multiple shows airing on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and across the globe.
Kate also created and ran the successful BBC training scheme Future Formats and resided as the BBC Formats Representative on the European Broadcast Union. In this role she helped devise and establish the annual Creative Forum in Berlin. Kate has a degree in Politics from Bristol University.
Declaration of personal interests
Staff must make a declaration of their personal and business interests, including any memberships or directorships of public or industry bodies, and any shareholdings, as well as any interests that their immediate families may also have.
A summary is published where there is something to declare and where there is nothing to declare. Occasionally an individual will have something to declare but due to the personal nature of the declaration we do not publish details as to do so would breach the General Data Protection Regulation.
This information is published annually, although if any amendments are made during the year an updated summary will be published if necessary as soon as it is available.
