Readings Tender Autumn 2015

READINGS TENDER AUTUMN 2015

Programme type: BOOK AT BEDTIME

Commissioning Editor: Jeremy Howe

Reference: 47056

Day: MONDAY - FRIDAY

Time: 22.45 - 23.00

Duration including annos: 14'

Estimated number of programmes available: 520

Transmission period: April 2016 – March 2018

Guide price: £2,245 per programme

PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES CAREFULLY

This round we are commissioning two years of business beginning April 2016.

Both indie suppliers and BBC departments are eligible to apply.

There are currently 7 suppliers with batches varying from 8 weeks to 22 weeks over the 2 years. Radio 4 will take into account the capacity of the supplier to deliver effectively on schedule and on budget across the entire period as well as the editorial quality of the offer.

Please put in the offer the size of batch you are bidding for.

There should be ONE PROTEUS entry only for Book at Bedtime submitted to round 4 16/17 Brief 47056 plus an email to [email protected] with an MP3 and supporting paperwork (see below in Track Record).

We are expecting half a dozen well-argued pages.

The deadline is NOON 12th November 2015.

We aim to announce the results on 10th December 2015.

What is the Book at Bedtime?

The slot showcases the best contemporary and classic fiction – mostly (but not exclusively) novels offering listeners a real treat at the end of their day.

In brief we want to broadcast top and emerging writers' new work close to publication, and to revisit classics and novels that you are passionate about.

Each episode is listened to by between 400K and 600K people, which is just shy of 20% of the total audience listening to all radio at this time of night (and is the same audience size as that of Newsnight on BBC2). With the introduction of downloads in the iPlayer Radio app in July, Book at Bedtime has been downloaded 60K times to date – the third biggest title for Radio 4.

Book at Bedtime Reach and Share trend

The average age of the audience is early to mid 60s (considerably older than the average Radio 4 listener age, 55).

Most titles will run over 10 eps, quite a few over 5, very occasionally over 15.

What we commission and why

Will the book play out well at 22.45? Ulysses is a brilliant book but it is arguably too cerebral and plotless to run in the Book at Bedtime slot.

Does it have a good story and the right structure to allow it to successfully play out over 5 or 10 episodes? Birdsong is a wonderful book, but all the time shifts make it a challenge for an audience to follow the central narrative over 10 nights. Golding’s Rites of Passage may have been a masterpiece, but it was hardly story-driven. It is not something I would care to listen to at 22.45.

A high percentage of the titles will be broadcast on or around publication – these will be novels by well-established writers and by newbies, or publishing sensations. On its literary merit it is arguable whether or not we should have broadcast Go Set a Watchman but it was the publishing event of recent times, it was a must-have commission, and our only regret is that we didn’t do it immediately on publication and bigger – we might have cleared the schedules for it and stripped it across a day.

I think we made a mistake not running Stoner a couple of years back when it became a publishing phenomenon of 2013.

We want as much range in the slot as possible. We like popular fiction (Girl on a Train got an AI of 81 and was the most downloaded programme on BBC radio that week) as much as we like literary fiction (I am still not sure how good it was, but Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant was certainly worth doing). We like thrillers as much as we like middle-of-the-road fiction (when did we last do a Joanna Trollope?), etc, etc While the bedrock of the schedule will continue to be books on publication, I think we can be more eclectic and wide ranging in our choices, less driven by the agenda of the publishing world, and a bit more showbiz.

We want classics in the slot – Dubliners was a standout piece of broadcasting. Often this will be in conjunction with the Classic Serial or the 15’ Drama. In the Appendix is a list of dramatisations we are planning to run in 2016.

From time to time we want to be able to link the slot with Network initiatives, e.g. we have commissioned some contemporary European titles to link in with the ongoing series Reading Europe; when we are running the Gore Vidal biography in Book of the Week we are planning to run one of his novels in Book at Bedtime, etc.

We are also keen on the books you are passionate about – we want our Book at Bedtime producers to not only be knowledgeable about what is coming up in the publishing world, but we want producers who are passionate about books, and we will want to run with your passions. Equally important, what are the books that got away, i.e. the big hitting books that we didn’t do on publication? I was surprised that we were not offered Jonathan Frantzen’s Purity, Terry Pratchett’s The Shepherd’s Crown or the Stieg Larsson follow up The Girl in the Spider’s Web – all big recent publishing moments.

If we have an exceptional title we are also interested in breaking out of the slot – we are planning to use a Book at Bedtime commission to do a two hour continuous reading for Fright Night next year. Two weeks of late night horror probably won’t play out well, but over two hours we think it will be a gripping listen.

This is a stunt. We like the occasional stunt.

How will you secure a batch?

This will be a fiercely competitive process.

Please read these guidelines carefully. What we are asking from you is different from the last time the Book at Bedtime was tendered.

Just because you have a batch now, it doesn’t mean it will be renewed.

Just because you don’t have a batch now doesn’t mean that – if you make a strong bid – you won’t get one for the next two years.

To be successful the key things that you will need to demonstrate are:

i. Your passion for readings and for reading, and how you will translate that into brilliant Books at Bedtime for Radio 4. ii. Your capabilities as a producer/supplier, particularly in the field of readings, whether for Radio 4 or for someone else, and your ability to deliver good programmes to budget and to the delivery schedule. iii. Your editorial strength and your DNA as a supplier – what makes you stand out, what makes you different, what makes you excellent as a potential supplier for the slot. iv. Track Record – how good are your programmes? All we need for this is an MP3 of your work in readings.

Your bid needs to make a compelling case in all four areas.

i. Your passion for reading and readings

Tell us in broad brush strokes (and in under a page) about you and books: your passion for fiction, your interest in the publishing world, the kind of books you want to produce for Book at Bedtime, in what way you can bring something different and fresh to the slot either in terms of its editorial mix or in production, etc., etc. (but don’t try to reinvent the slot – it doesn’t need reinventing, and please don’t suggest things over which you have no control, e.g. changing its transmission time). ii. You as a supplier

Tell us about your track record in either Book at Bedtime or readings.

To be successful in this tender you will have to demonstrate that this is an area in which you have considerable and current production experience, that you have experience of producing and directing long form readings, that you have cast and directed professional actors, selected books and commissioned the abridgements. This need not be for BBC Radio 4. If you cannot, you will need

to demonstrate that you have comparable production and editorial experience, eg in drama, and tell us how you would hone those skills for readings.

For those making commercial audiobooks, you will need to demonstrate that you also have experience of choosing and abridging books.

Tell us about your track record on delivery. Please note that your ability to be flexible and make programmes at short notice is often very useful in this slot.

Please list who will be producing and who you will be using as abridgers, and briefly tell us about their experience in readings. iii. Your DNA as a producer

Tell us about what makes you stand out, what makes you different from the rest of the pack, why you will make an excellent supplier for Book at Bedtime.

Tell us here, in detail, about your contacts and your links with the publishing world, with senior editorial staff and with authors’ agents. Explain how these links have paid off in your editorial choices, and illustrate with standout titles that you have secured. If you don’t have these contacts you will need to argue why it won’t be an issue in your editorial choices.

Pitch THREE titles you want to offer Book at Bedtime for Q2 (April to June) 2016. Tell us briefly about the book, the author, how it has come to your attention, why you want to do it, whether or not the rights are available, and why you think it will work well for the slot.

Because we will be commissioning Q2 2016 hard on the heels of the tender results being published, if you are successful in getting a batch we may expect you to deliver these as programmes in short order.

We would like at least TWO of these to be books to be txed on publication; we will need details of the publisher/agent, whether you have discussed it with them, the publication date and we want to know if you have read the ms.

It may be that one of the titles is a classic or an absolute passion of yours that you think that we should be doing, or it could be a book that will chime with a Radio 4 initiative (see APPENDIX: Radio 4 – looking forward in 2016 for details). Pitch it to us. iv. Track Record

Please supply ONE MP3 of recent readings productions or something comparable made or broadcast since January 2012 that you have made that shows off your production skills and editorial strengths. It could be a Book at Bedtime (actually one complete episode of three separate Book at Bedtimes, or of an abridged serialised reading of a work of fiction would be best).

The total length should be no longer than 45’. We want complete episodes not extracts.

Accompanying this please include details of the titles, authors, publishers, abridgers, producer, performers and any presentation details that help set it up.

It must be of a reading that you or your department or company has produced, and made by someone who will be producing/abridging in the period of the tender.

Please submit the audio as an MP3 using a file serving service such as www.wetransfer.com and the supporting material to [email protected]

BBC Radio 4 Extra Short Stories

BBC Radio 4 Extra will broadcast ten weeks of published short stories between April 2016 and March 2018, a total of 50 x 15’ episodes.

This business will be shared between a small number of companies or departments that are successful in this Book at Bedtime tender.

The guide price is £1600 per ep.

APPENDIX

Radio 4: looking forward into 2016

1) Some initiatives coming up on Radio 4 where there could be synergy between Book at Bedtime and Radio 4.

 Dangerous Visions - dystopic storytelling  A Martian Festival – Radio 4 holds a festival on Mars  The Cold War – a revisionist history  The science behind sleeping and dreaming  The North of England – how it has helped shape English culture  The Reformation at 500  Reading Europe – contemporary European fiction; over the next year we plan to visit Italy, Greece, The Balkans, Scandinavia, the Baltic and Russia.

If you suggest titles for these please don’t be obvious, think outside of the box, be clever.

2) Commissioned dramatisations spring 2016 onwards

 The Forsyte Saga  Tales of the City  Brave NewWorld  My Brilliant Friend  The Power and the Glory, The Confidential Agent & Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene  Revelation by CJ Sansom  Moll Flanders & Journal of a Plague Year  The Heart is a Lonely Hunter  Ann Veronica by HG Wells  Kidnapped , Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Terror in the South Seas by RL Stevenson  Stardust by Neil Gaiman  Jezebel by Irene Nemirovsky  Watership Down

Book at Bedtime titles 2014-15

The Miniaturist A Song for Issy Bradley The Thrill of It All The Children Act The Bone Clocks Nora Webster The Restoration of Otto Laird Sherlock Holmes: The Valley of Fear In Love and War Academy Street The Diary of a Provincial Lady The Girls of Slender Means The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher Curtain Call The Bottle Imp The Illuminations In Certain Circles The Buried Giant The Leipzig Affair The Ladies of the House Gorsky The History of the Peloponnesian War The Green Road The Wolf Border I Saw a Man Saint Mazie True Grit Elizabeth and Her German Garden The Girl on the Train The Mark and the Void Go Set a Watchman Tightrope The Past