V1 last updated by LL 18.02.21 BBC Radio Commissioning Brief_v1.1_2021 01 19
CONTENTS
SECTION A: RADIO 4 and FACTUAL PROGRAMMES ...... 3 SECTION B: COMMISSIONING OPPORTUNITIES ...... 17 SECTION C: COMMISSIONING TIMETABLE ...... 44 SECTION D: COMMISSIONING PROCESS ...... 46 STAGE 1: SHORT PROPOSAL ...... 46 STAGE 2: FULL PROPOSAL ...... 47 STAGE 3: CONDITIONAL COMMISSION AWARDED ...... 50
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SECTION A: RADIO 4 and FACTUAL PROGRAMMES
Introduction Mohit Bakaya, Controller
Another year, another commissioning round.
Except, of course, it is not really like any other year.
We go into this round in the midst of a global pandemic that has caused 100,000 deaths, dramatically altered our everyday lives and is forcing us to question many of our assumptions about the modern world and the way our society should work. Hopefully, by the time the ideas you pitch to us land in the schedule, we will be beyond the earth-shaking intensity of the virus but we will still be feeling the aftershocks.
Then there is the very different, but some might argue equally disruptive (in relation to our democracy at least), impact of social media. It’s a forum that can, when all the voices are put together, sound like an angry, attention-seeking child, dishing out truths and falsehoods in equal measure, without any guide to indicate clearly which is which. This infant has upended our democratic debate and poisoned the well of truth. It enables parallel communities to thrive where evidence matters less than feeling, where belonging to a tribe of true believers is more important than engaging constructively with naysayers.
And then there is climate change. The biggest challenge of our time.
It is into this uncertain landscape that your programmes will be broadcast, and it is this environment you should be mindful of when thinking up your ideas.
The first and most important thing we will have to get to grips with is, of course, what this seismic shock has done to us all. People have lost loved ones, livelihoods, friendships, routines, their sense of how the world works. They will still be dealing with the challenges brought on by months of lockdown, as well as illness and bereavement. Our collective mental health has been under severe strain. The generations have simultaneously been placed at odds with each other and brought closer together. Think hard about the communities and groups most affected by Covid: the elderly, the poor, those wrestling with long term health conditions. In these groups no life has remained untouched. We are a nation changed.
How do we capture that in a clever, original way? Crucially, how will your ideas complement what Radio 4 will be doing through its live and regular output next year? After a year when we have all gone through a collective trauma, finding different ways to explore the aftermath is going to be a challenge.
An equally big challenge is how can we take the audience beyond the misery of the pandemic? After over a year of unrelenting grimness, they will need a break.
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What are the dramas, comedies, documentaries and podcasts the audience will need in 2022/23?
How can we bring the audience together more, so their understanding of the plight of others improves and the unequal impact of Covid is properly felt? Where, as a result of staring so intensely at one story, has our collective gaze not fallen? How can we delight, engage and transport our audience after such a gruelling year? What is brewing out there that we might be able to smell but not yet hear or see? What are the dots that need joining up for the audience to identify the major trends waiting just around the corner?
These are some of the questions I’d love you to explore.
Also, this far out from when programmes will land, what big statements can we make? Can we set the agenda on the issues that will matter most to the audience but aren’t yet apparent? Are there issues that are best explored through comedy or drama? Is there a big literary work that gets underneath our culture today, maybe one from the last 50 years?
Through all of this there are two things that will continue to matter for our audience: truth and wonder.
We have a commitment to truth. It runs through all our programmes and podcasts. I’m talking about the truth implicit in a brilliant piece of political satire, a line of poetry or the plight of a character in the afternoon drama, as much as the truth revealed by an investigative documentary, exploratory interview or brilliant storytelling podcast.
This commitment is more important now than at any time in Radio 4’s fifty year history. I believe we have an absolutely vital role to play in supporting and developing civic well-being and critical thinking. Like social media, Radio 4 is a space where people come together - but to what end? I think we have a role in providing a nuanced, impartial, more evidence based conversation; supplying more light, less heat. More provoking of thought, less stirring up of rage, or (and this is as bad) complacent reaffirmation of strongly held views. We can think through to truth in a civil way.
Our democracy relies on evidence based knowledge, on context and history, on clear analysis and calling out untruths. It requires us to understand the lives, experiences and beliefs of people different to us and to voice our differences through informed, respectful debate.
If people are to make informed decisions at the ballot box and be engaged citizens, Radio 4 has an enabling role to play. That is not just with our existing audience but also those who don’t yet listen to our stuff but could and would … as long as it arrives in a form that works for them. So we need to keep thinking about ways to reach beyond our base, find people where they are with our content so that they, too, have access to all the brilliant thinking and enquiry that we have built our reputation on.
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I want Radio 4 to up its intellectual ambition. And I want us to broaden the range of people we hear from, so that we feel relevant in every corner of these islands.
We also have a commitment to wonder. People need intelligent delight. They want to be transported at a time when travel is hard. They want to feel close to the lives and experiences of others, whilst possibly still having to observe a physical distance. Things will ease over time but we will not be left unaffected. Radio can help with the post-Covid world. We can bring people closer and supply the joy, laughter and escape that have been so scarce in recent months.
I also want us to keep exploring new treatments for our classic genres: arts, drama, comedy, factual. We need to focus more on HOW we tell our stories, how we play with the form to surprise and delight, so we can reach a new audience in BBC Sounds and in the schedule. We’d like you to think about nifty new ways to reach an audience not brought up on speech radio, so that Radio 4 can build on its unparalleled success in Sounds. The mashing up of genres – entertainment with knowledge, drama with documentary – might be worth considering. How can truth and wonder come together to take us to new destinations?
You are our spies in the world. It is your knowledge, experience, contacts and insights that will help us get into the stories that will create compelling audio for our audience – existing and potential. That means we need our supplier base to better reflect and represent the nation we broadcast to, both in terms of make-up and of the questions it asks and the territory it explores.
We must not make lazy assumptions about who the audience is and what matters most to them. We cannot focus only on the issues, preoccupations and lives of some communities, at the expense of others. We must represent the whole country. So we will up our commitment to diversity, in every sense of the word: class, race, religion, gender, disability, region, political perspective. And we will buy programmes from suppliers across the whole UK in the hope that this broadens the scope of the lives we reflect and the stories we tell.
We want ideas that tell us important truths about the world around us, ideas that are clever in conceit so that they can engage new audiences, ideas that create awe and wonder, ideas that reflect the actual country we live in, not just the one we see in the mirror.
Finally, I know this has been a gruelling year. You have all done amazingly. You have made programmes, in incredibly challenging circumstances, to provide the audience with essential companionship as well keep them informed and entertained. And the audience feedback has been extraordinary. On their behalf, thank you.
I understand that working up new ideas for a commissioning round may feel like the last thing you want to do right now, especially as we had to postpone parts of the last round to take pressure off suppliers in the first lockdown and have only recently issued some results. However, the commissioning round is an important creative moment in the Radio 4 calendar. It allows all suppliers to stand together on a level playing field, as we fire the starting gun, setting off a contest which culminates in
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brilliant dramas, comedies, podcasts and documentaries delighting millions of people.
Millions …. It’s worth remembering that, I think. You can make programmes for so many outfits now and it is great that the market for speech audio is growing fast. However, nowhere else will you reach so many people across the UK. Your programmes on Radio 4 affect and influence the national conversation in ways that no other broadcaster does. Your comedies raise more laughs, your dramas move more hearts, your podcasts and documentaries stimulate more brain cells and, as a result, play a crucial part in our functioning democracy. If you care about that, Radio 4 is the place to try to shore up the values we believe in.
And this is not just linear radio. Radio 4 is the biggest network in BBC Sounds, as well as performing incredibly strongly on other platforms. 15 out of the top 20 on- demand shows in 2020 in BBC Sounds were documentaries, dramas, comedies and podcasts commissioned by Radio 4, made by you. If you genuinely want a new audience, listening digitally, to hear what you do, we are the station to make that happen.
Please help us build this bridge between truth and wonder so that the audience have a vantage point from which to make sense of the turbulent world we live in. I cannot think of a time when they’ve needed us more.
Mohit Bakaya Controller, BBC Radio 4 & Radio 4 Extra
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Factual programmes on Radio 4
Richard Knight and Dan Clarke, Factual Commissioning Editors
Your programmes need to be heard over the din of entertainment and information competing for our listeners’ attention.
That - and the fact that we are going through the biggest period of shock and uncertainty in our lifetimes, the ripples of which will resonate for years to come - means we need big, daring and ambitious ideas to meet the moment.
We need to find clarity in complexity, help people connect and understand one another with empathy, provide useful tools to equip our audiences to navigate their futures and create programmes which are so profound, or beautiful, or gripping, or essential that listeners simply have to make space for them in their all-you-can-eat media diets.
Our job is to decide which of the stories you offer us to tell. Your job is to figure out how to tell them. Your job is harder. It isn’t enough to pump quite interesting things into the ether.. You need to reassure us that you don’t only want to create spellbinding, irresistible radio, but that you know what it takes to do so.
The bar is going ever upwards. Our medium is in a golden period. We don’t want to keep pace with the best audio in the world. We want you to set the pace.
Radio 4 will cover most of the important territory somewhere in its regular output. So identifying an area of interest won’t usually be enough, on its own, to win a commission. You need to show us that you plan to do something extraordinary with the airtime you’re asking for.
You need to tell us why your programme should be made. We want clarity of purpose. Who is it for? What makes you think they want or need it? What is your evidence? In other words: what’s the deal you’re making with our listeners? What are you giving them - or making them feel, or helping them to understand - in return for spending time with us?
We want our factual programming to be highly responsive. That means leaving space to commission on the fly as we progress through 2021/2022. Ideas submitted in this round need to be either so timeless they can wait or so ambitious that they require a long run up.
Our journalism does need to aim at big targets: daring, difficult stories that others might shrink from telling. We will back original investigations when the potential prize is big enough and the public interest is clear enough - particularly when they contribute to our essential work of separating fact from fiction.
We need more joy, warmth and pleasure in our factual output: programmes that make you feel - perhaps even feel good! - as well as think.
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Some of our best and most successful factual series have wit and humour running right through them (from the mischief of More or Less to the comedy of The Infinite Monkey Cage).
The broader podcast landscape has reinforced the fact that we are way beyond a world where intelligence and fun are uneasy bedfellows. Finding new ways to bring deep listening pleasure - to truly welcome listeners in - is central to broadening our factual audience. It’s also how we will develop more habit-forming series, no matter how specialised or challenging the topic.
We also want more programmes that can build optimism and hope; programmes which don’t only diagnose problems but offer solutions too, like 39 Ways to Save the Planet or Positive Thinking.
We need your help to make Radio 4's factual community as open, accessible, representative and creative as it can possibly be. Central to this is new talent, both behind the mic and in front of it.
We would love to see more factual series with high-profile talent at the helm; figures who can bring new audiences with them and make impact, or shift perceptions about who we’re for.
And we have to work harder to find and develop the next generation of Radio 4 voices and thinkers - the stars of the future. We are on a mission to diversify in every way the presenting and reporting talent on the network.
But, as former producers, we know as well as anyone that the presenter’s voice is only as strong as the producer looking on through the glass. Bring us the best of the next generation of producers. Find people who were led to audio through podcasting but who could help us reach further and deeper into new audiences through finding stories we might otherwise miss and telling them in ways we might not otherwise have considered.
The need to reflect the whole of the UK, and every part of society, has never been more acute. At Radio 4 we’re determined to start more stories in different places.
We have each written some guidance, below, relating to the genres we look after. You will find slot-specific guidance later in the document. Please be assured, however, that we know some ideas do not fit neatly into any one genre.
In fact, we welcome genre mash-ups – including ideas which straddle the factual slate and comedy, or drama. If you are unsure where to offer your idea, because it’s unclear which commissioning editor you should be talking to, don’t worry. Please submit it whichever way you think makes most sense, make clear in the proposal that you see it as cross-genre and leave us to worry about which of us should consider it.
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Genre-specific guidance from Dan Clarke, Commissioning Editor with responsibility for arts, poetry, science, technology, environment, food, farming and religion.
Note: Special guidance for arts and poetry is further down this document, on p.36 with the arts and poetry briefs.
The world of SCIENCE and TECHNOLOGY is changing faster than we can comprehend. We are going through the fourth industrial revolution, together with a period of rapid scientific and medical innovation. From the consequences of AI and the ways technology is shaping our lives, to new understandings of human origins, the brain, space, quantum biology and innumerable other disciplines, it can appear complex, forbidding, and visible only to specialists.
The job of Radio 4 - your job - is to bring all of this extraordinary change into the light, in ways that are relatable; ways that create connections with listeners. To prioritise what people need to know, and to interpret and explore it in the most robust, compelling, and welcoming ways across the network, from single documentaries, to landmark series and gripping narrative history.
The world was slow to grasp the consequences of social media and the rise of the tech giants. So across all our science and technology output, let’s aim to make Radio 4 an ‘early warning system’ for developments that are continuing to shape the future.
In addition, have we done enough to map out the culture and values that underpin and surround all of this pioneering work? To understand both the businesses and individuals behind the innovation, and the factors that motivate them? To explore the ethical and philosophical questions raised? To see it all from a truly global perspective?
You’ll know better than me precisely what needs exploring, and how to do it. But here are some thoughts:
• start with questions that listeners are asking but don’t have clear answers to • root treatments in human experience, gripping narratives and personal stories • don’t neglect history and ‘origin stories’ as ways of illuminating the present • surprise us! What don’t we do yet in this genre and could steal from another? • think about what would help people to navigate the world – what would be useful?
It’s important to remember the work done by Radio 4’s regular science series: analytical ones like BBC Inside Science, Inside Health, The Digital Human, Analysis, The Briefing Room; interviews like The Life Scientific; formats like The Infinite Monkey Cage and The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry. Your proposals must do something that can’t be done there.
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Climate change and the threat to biodiversity are two of the biggest challenges of our lifetimes, affecting every aspect of our ENVIRONMENT, global FARMING and the FOOD that sustains us.
Climate change itself – and the battle to combat it - can feel like a slow-moving war on infinite fronts. Finding ways to bring specificity and focus to this huge and sprawling story is our top priority.
In many ways it is a gloomy picture, out of our control. So, whilst we would never shrink from reality, we also want to build on constructive approaches like 39 Ways to Save the Planet. What more could we do with a solutions-based approach that engages seriously with some of the other big challenges?
The pandemic has given us a new set of perspectives on the natural world, our interconnectedness and our capacity to behave differently when we need to – perspectives that should spur new questions and new ways into these subjects. What are they?
The politics around food and farming are ever-changing – at dinner table level, as well as at a global one. Is a meat-free diet the future, or still just a fad of the urban middle classes? What are the other big questions that we are not yet asking?
I’d love to find new ways to explore how farming and the rural economy works in Britain. James Rebanks’s books give a glimpse into the ways great writing and personal history can combine with a bracing analysis of the way we farm to produce something that speaks to a big audience. What are the (many) parts of rural life in the UK that are under-examined? How could we explore them in ways that really connect with people?
Food – both growing it, and eating it – can give us routes into history, culture and pleasure that aren’t currently explored with prominence on Radio 4 outside of the strands. There could be opportunities to appeal to new audiences here.
NATURAL HISTORY also falls under my remit. Formats like NatureBang have worked brilliantly on Radio 4 – asking smart questions that explore the natural world in a way that helps understand human behaviour better. I love the cleverness and mind-expanding nature of it, combined with its informality of tone. The Extinction Tapes takes a character and story-led approach to the biodiversity crisis, bringing into crisp focus a process that can be too diffuse to track. Can we bring character, specificity, and story to the fore in other parts of this territory that can sometimes feel incremental and remote?
Natural History on television relies on technical innovation. Are there ways that new technology can help us get different perspectives on the natural world in audio, too?
Remember: Costing the Earth, Farming Today, The Food Programme, The Kitchen Cabinet and other regular programmes cover much here so your idea needs to be something that can’t be done in any of those.
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When so much of the public conversation is dominated by science, technology, and climate change, it’s vital to remember the centrality of faith and RELIGION in shaping how we live.
One thing I’d like to see more prominently addressed on Radio 4 is the question of how religion shapes and informs history, politics, and culture. As well as single docs and shorter series we’re looking for big narrative treatments here, like the ten-part Fatwa, from 2019. I’d welcome more ideas with that kind of journalistic and storytelling heft which tell a specific story but also tell us something vital about modern Britain or the world.
The ways that religion interacts with the other forces that shape the modern world, like art and science, are important territory for us, too. Recent examples include The Secret History of Science and Religion, and Faith in Music. They need to be told by a really compelling, authoritative or surprising presenter. What could we do that is more personal, that really gets into the inner life?
We’d also like to find ways to discuss the big questions around belief and ethics. Where do we get our values from? How do we navigate the big ethical questions facing us as we move into a future that feels at best uncertain and, at worst, dystopian?
How can we explore the broader territory of ‘spirituality’ in a meaningful way? Is there a great podcast-friendly format out there that could help us have a different set of conversations, or something we could borrow from another genre to connect with a different set of listeners? Is there a You’re Dead to Me for religion?
Your proposals need to be ideas that can’t be covered in Radio 4’s regular output, Sunday, Sunday Worship, Beyond Belief and The Moral Maze.
One final, crucial point: none of this is meant to be in any way definitive, or excluding. We want you to bring us the stories and ideas that you think we ought to be doing; the ideas that get you excited, those that you passionately want to make.
Genre-specific guidance from Richard Knight, Commissioning Editor with responsibility for current affairs, politics, foreign affairs, business, economics, history, law and media.
You could argue that programmes conceived now for transmission after April 2022 are not, by definition, CURRENT AFFAIRS. That’s why I am leaving plenty of space in the schedule for reactive commissioning. If your idea springs from a recent news event or a current anxiety, ask yourself if it will still feel urgent and original next year.
What we’re looking for in this round is: • programmes which expose the as-yet-unreported forces shaping our future; • dynamic, untold stories – action, not analysis – which help us understand our world but also keep us thoroughly gripped;
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• and clear thinking which picks up contemporary threads and pulls them forwards to show where decisions made now might lead us in the future.
We need to understand what’s driving POLITICS in the UK and elsewhere. Are we thinking deeply enough about where power really lies? Could we do more to understand the human and emotional forces which shape our individual political convictions (and which, in the end, are absorbed by our politicians)?
The pandemic and its aftermath will define politics for a generation. Perhaps longer. How do we start to understand what that might mean? There are big questions we could ask of leadership and accountability.
In a period when the permanence of the Union looks highly uncertain, we need to reflect the opinions and hopes of people – and the motivations of their representatives – right across the UK. I want fewer political stories to start (or end) in Westminster. I’m particularly keen to hear from programme-makers beyond the South East who can help us understand the communities they live in. There is a trap for us here. Those who wish to end the Union may see the BBC as part of the glue which binds it together.
As a national broadcaster, we need to make intelligent, rigorous and impartial programmes which are useful and illuminating for everyone. Please challenge yourself about the assumptions that sit behind all the ideas you pitch. I am concerned that the offers I receive do not always reflect a wide enough diversity of political (not just party political) opinion.
We are living through perhaps the most profound shift in British FOREIGN AFFAIRS since Suez. We need to understand what our changed place in the world will mean for us, and our neighbours, in the long-term; these are slippery, elusive ideas but they are important.
I want Radio 4 to be more global than perhaps it has been over the last year. It was entirely understandable, and probably correct, that as a story about a virus from China became the biggest British story of our lifetimes, we looked inwards. But, of course, what the virus has shown us (if we needed to be reminded) is that the world is deeply inter-connected and its borders mean less and less. Our audience wants to understand how the world is changing: the astonishing transfer of power from West to East; the hidden tectonics of demographic change; and the receding shared history which once bound now-fraying alliances.
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I am keen to collaborate more with our brilliant colleagues at World Service English. But I don’t want Radio 4 listeners to have to change the dial in order to hear stories from well beyond our shores and to understand the world.
We know that beyond government the great repository of power is BUSINESS. We live in a world where many companies are far more powerful than some nations. Our daily lives are shaped by decisions of innovators and CEOs sitting a continent away.
They are also shaped by the kinds of businesses – often far, far smaller ones – we work for, own and use. Do we give business enough attention? I suspect not.
I am interested in business as story; the biography of a business is often at least as dramatic as the story of an individual. I would like our business coverage to have more teeth. We are good at exploring business culture and reporting quarterly results. But are we holding business to account?
Should we recruit real specialists to help us understand ‘black box’ businesses, by which I mean potentially important activity (particularly in the financial sector) which most of us simply do not understand?
We need to make sure we are equipped to interrogate ECONOMICS too. Economics flows through our news programmes every day. But economic decisions are based on imperfect models and incomplete data. The results of those decisions (and economic forces beyond the control of any decision-maker) affect all of us in profound ways. We need to make sure our audiences understand what’s really going on under the bonnet of our economy by finding a way to make economic complexity easily understandable, without any loss of accuracy.
It’s not necessary to write a great deal in this document about HISTORY. Radio 4 - thanks to you, our producers - has regularly excelled here. Just remember to have a very clear reason for revisiting a certain period of history; a new resonance which helps us understand the present, for example, or new evidence that suggests the way we remember our past is wrong or incomplete.
We want intelligence, wit and rigour in roughly equal measure (that’s a handy ratio for all output, in fact) but we also want stylish, accessible and contemporary treatments.
Think about who is taking us back in time. Do we really want to be stuck in the past with them? There are great opportunities here to help us reach new audiences. But the audiences we seek have some great alternatives available to them. Think about who we’re competing with in this space (clue: it isn’t only other Radio 4 output).
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Radio 4 will be a marketplace for new IDEAS and thinking as long as the current administration remains in place (and, I’m sure, long after). We recently launched a new ideas series called Sideways and there are, of course, many other homes for ideas within our regular programmes.
You need to be aware of our existing ideas programmes when developing proposals in this territory. If what you’re suggesting would fit neatly into our regular output, we are unlikely to commission it.
There is, however, at least one way for you to find a competitive edge: we still have a lot of work to do bringing new thinkers to the network. We still rely on familiar names a little more than I would like. (I accept that fixing this requires us to make brave commissioning decisions as much as it requires you to bring such people to us.)
I would like you to behave more like sharp-elbowed agents (casting me as the dissolute publisher) by acting as a filter; sifting the very brightest and most interesting (and meticulous) thinkers into your offers. Identifying and recruiting the people who will dominate our thinking in the future is an ongoing project for all of us.
Finally: I have oversight of two other genres which are often neglected in commissioning rounds: LAW and MEDIA. Both have regular series devoted to them on Radio 4: Law in Action and The Media Show.
Both genres, however, are too important – cutting too deeply across the culture and reaching too far into our lives – to leave it at that (however useful those series are). Think about what else we could or should be doing. I would love to see some smart ideas in these areas which complement our existing commitments. Think, too, about who your offers in these areas are aimed at. Both Law in Action and The Media Show are unmissable for professionals in their respective fields (even if both are aimed at a general audience). Where else might we get to if we were to approach these subjects from a completely different and wholly unexpected direction?
Finally, I am often asked by exasperated producers, “what do you want?”. More often than not, and certainly on the eve of a commissioning round, I avoid answering that question with any specificity, resorting instead to platitudinous ambiguity. I know how frustrating that is. (Trust me, I do. I was outside the tent pitching in, as it were, only a year and a bit ago.)
But our canvas is far too big for one fairly ordinary bloke to fill it in with his own ideas. Despite the near-omniscience I share with my fellow Radio 4 commissioners, I am prepared to entertain the possibility that I can’t on my own predict all the most important themes which will emerge over the next few years. Seriously: you are our
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eyes and ears on the world. I need you to tell me what’s important – and what we’re missing – in each of these areas.
Be daring, mischievous, ambitious and passionate. You have an extraordinary opportunity to whisper in the ear of the nation. Suggest programmes you whole- heartedly believe in and which would fill you with pride.
FAQS APPLYING TO ALL FACTUAL SLOTS
How should we write short and full proposals?
Short proposals:
We have to read thousands of proposals. So it's a good idea to grab us in the first line. If yours is badly written, dull or unclear we will probably assume the programme you're pitching will be too. What we need to know, in 250 carefully-chosen words, is:
• Subject – what’s the story? • Relevance – why does it matter? • Treatment – how are you going to tell it? • Voice – who will we hear (and why them)?
Full proposals:
If you're invited to write a full proposal you've hit on territory we agree is worth exploring and convinced us your approach could work. We will hopefully have discussed it at a meeting. So what we really need to know now is this:
• Have you addressed any questions we've raised? • Treatment - in detail. What will we hear? • Who is the voice of this programme (and why should we listen to them)? • Who is the programme for and why do you think they want or need it? • Are you in a position to deliver what you're promising (be ambitious, of course, but realistic)? • Who are the key production personnel (producer, exec and their relevant experience or expertise)?
So what's the deal with digital?
We want to encourage bold digital ambition. If you have an idea for a project which you think could achieve strong impact in the digital space - either as a podcast or in some other way - we would love to hear about it. We need ideas which are digital by nature rather than digital afterthoughts. Our digital commissioning editor and factual commissioning editors will work together to identify any such projects they want to support. Note that we can only get behind a limited number of big digital projects in any one year. Projects this year have included Intrigue: Mayday, Sideways with Matthew Syed, How to Vaccinate the World and Two Minutes Past Nine.
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Is there a batch system this time?
No. We awarded factual batches in the last round which run for two years. You will be able to compete for a batch again next year.
Can you give us some helpful tips?
• Tell us original, compelling factual stories - things that have actually happened or are happening.
• Challenge the audience’s view of the world; ask questions no one else is asking.
• Inform our audience with clarity but without sacrificing rigour.
• Find the people at the heart of the story you want to tell so you can talk to them, not just about them.
• Help us represent the whole of the UK, in every sense, by introducing us to people and places we might otherwise miss.
• Tell us why your idea is best told as a story in sound. Are you sure it’s not just a great idea for a newspaper column?
• Be the first to explain fascinating new thinking and trends to our audience.
• Build bridges between people, find solutions and promote understanding and empathy.
• Hold the powerful to account – taking a broad view of where power lies. Reveal in the public interest what others would prefer to hide.
• Take risks with storytelling as well as subject matter. Please don’t simply describe a general area of concern or interest, or make an observation anyone else might make. Find the counter-intuitive or illuminating angle and treatment.
• Avoid ideas which would fit neatly into our regular Radio 4 programmes.
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SECTION B: COMMISSIONING OPPORTUNITIES
Who is eligible to offer proposals?
We invite proposals from all BBC departments and from independent companies who can demonstrate considerable experience in radio/audio or TV factual production at both producer and executive producer level.
We are eager to welcome new production talent into the world of Radio 4. If a producer has not made programmes for us before, please include their track record in the full synopsis field of your full proposal.
How do I submit an idea?
We hope this document answers all your questions. The commissioning process is all explained in Section D. The Commissioning Co-ordinators, Jacqueline Clarke jacqueline.clarke@bbc.co.uk and Sharon Terry [email protected], can answer any further queries. But read Section D first!
Which slots are open in this round?
Brief no. 47209 Long Form Documentary – General Factual
Brief no. 47051 Long Form Documentary – Science, Technology & Environment
Brief no. 47194 Multi-part Documentary Series
Brief no. 47006 14’ Feature
Brief no. 47088 Archive on 4
Brief no. 47169 Narrative History
Brief no. 47040 Wednesday Interviews
Brief no. 47144 New Saturday Show
Brief no. 47165 Arts
Brief no. 47114 Poetry
Brief no. 47132 Outside the Box
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Commissioning Brief no. 47209 Long Form Documentary – General Factual
Duration (including 28’ and 37’ announcements)
Schedule slot Various days, 16.00, 13.30, 11.00, 20.00
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £9,300 for a 28’ programme £12,000 for 37’
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
CAP: No more than 12 ideas per supplier, please
Editorial Opportunity
We will primarily take single documentary ideas here, although some series may be included. Most multi-part documentaries should be submitted under Brief 47194.
The genres we intend to cover here include:
CURRENT AFFAIRS INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND BUSINESS AFFAIRS POLITICS, MEDIA AND LAW HISTORY RELIGION FOOD
We welcome ideas which sit somewhere in the overlap between these genres.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
• Radio 4 is and will continue to be a champion of outstanding single documentaries. We want your very best ideas for programmes which will inform
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and delight our audience. These slots are an opportunity to create a moment of perfect radio.
• Highlights this year have included The Wedding Detectives, Packing Up the Family Home, Happy Little Trees, Surviving Unemployment, Your Call Is Important to Us, A Short History of Solitude, Walks Like A Duck and Life on Lockdown. There are many others.
• Ask yourself: is a long-form documentary the best expression of your idea, rather than some other treatment? Is it the kind of thing you won't hear on a regular programme such as Crossing Continents or Analysis? The answer to both questions needs to be ‘yes’.
• The subject needs to be original and rigorous and it needs to matter to a national audience. But identifying such an area will never be enough. There's a good chance someone else will have spotted the same gap.
• So you need to explain how you will tell your story in a way which will pull the listener in from the start, and leave them unable to turn away until the end.
• What are you offering the listener in return for their time? It could be understanding, clarity, delight, escape, news they can use or one of a number of other things. In other words: please work out who your programme is for – its purpose – and why you think it is needed.
• If your programme requires a presenter (most will) please tell us who you think that should be, whether they have been approached and whether they have been involved in the formulation of the idea.
• Although these slots are principally a place for journalism, there is also room for programmes which bring joy, humour or hope. And remember: not all serious journalistic inquiries have to illuminate darkness. We need some happy endings too.
• Check the political assumptions underlying your idea or thesis and the world- view from which they have emerged. Be honest with yourself and your teams. We need wide diversity of opinion on our network; we need ideas which challenge the audience and ourselves. It would probably be a good sign if you passionately disagree with the positions some of your ideas might lead us to.
• Consider, too, the geographic assumptions your idea makes. We are a national station broadcasting from and to the whole of the UK. We need you to help us represent every corner of these islands. We sometimes hear programmes which sound as if they are trying to explain one part of the UK to another. All our programmes need to work for and serve the entire audience. We are perceived to have a South-East England bias. Please help us change that perception through your programmes. We particularly welcome ideas from programme-makers who are based well beyond the M25.
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• Authored, thesis-driven programmes are welcome.
• Please indicate whether you are pitching for a 28’ or 37’ slot. However, be aware there are fewer 37’ slots available (the slot is occupied for some of the year by File on 4) and we will use them primarily to run investigative documentaries and more complex stories which require the space. Recent examples of programmes we have run here include The Homeless Hotel, Scotland’s Uncivil War, Iran’s Long Game and Living with the Dragon.
• Radio 4 reserves the right to commission individual ideas and to schedule them alongside work from other suppliers.
Batches
Note that some suppliers were awarded long form batches in the last commissioning round. The slots reserved for those suppliers will mostly be used for more reactive commissioning, reflecting our fast-changing world. In the current round, however, we are not commissioning in batches.
09.02 Formats
We are also interested in brilliant new format ideas - with the potential to become future fixtures in the schedule - that could run at 09.02, our highest-profile commissioned slot. These ideas should be put into Proteus under the Long Form Documentary brief, but please make clear in your offer if you think it has 09.02 potential. We are particularly interested in uplifting, entertaining ideas which have a serious underlying purpose and the power to become habit-forming ongoing series with podcast potential. We are probably looking for a big name presenter, perhaps one who at first glance looks like a surprising choice for Radio 4 but who, on closer inspection, has all the attributes we need. This is a tough nut to crack. We don’t expect to commission many of these. We would suggest developing only one idea with this opportunity in mind.
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World Service co-commissioning
We hope to commission some long-form documentaries in collaboration with our colleagues at BBC World Service. These programmes may be funded above slot price, particularly if extensive travel or higher editorial ambition is required and feasible. Winning ideas here will clearly need to serve both domestic and international audiences and - stylistically - feel at home on both stations (while offering something new and exciting to both). They will also need to be supplied at two durations. Please make it clear in your proposal if you think your idea might work as a Radio 4/World Service co-commission.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47051 Long Form Documentary Science, Technology & Environment
Duration 28' (including announcements)
Schedule slot Various days, 16.00, 13.30, 11.00, 20.00
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £9,300
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial Opportunity
We will primarily take single documentary ideas here, though some series may be included. Most multi-part documentary series should be submitted separately under Brief 47194.
The genres we intend to cover here include:
SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY NATURAL HISTORY and the ENVIRONMENT HEALTH and PSYCHOLOGY
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15 along with the further guidance for the general Long Form Documentary brief, p.18. It all applies here, too.
Further guidance
• Please read the genre-specific guidance for Science, Technology, Natural History and Environment, on p.9.
• Please pay particular attention to:
o How will you tell your story in a way that grips listeners right to the end?
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o What are you offering the listener in return for their time? Is it understanding, clarity, delight, escape, news they need to know, useful information for navigating life, or something else?
• Remember that we have a number of regular series within these genres (among them: BBC Inside Science, Inside Health, The Digital Human, All in the Mind, Ramblings, Costing the Earth). Your idea will need to be something that we couldn’t do justice to within these programmes, and one that is best told over 28’, 37’, or as a series, when merited.
• This brief is only for Long-Form Documentaries. If you have science, technology, natural history, health, and psychology ideas that will work better as a 14’ Feature, Narrative History or Multi-Part Documentary, please submit them in those briefs.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47194 Multi-part Documentary Series
Duration 28’ (including announcements)
Schedule slot 11.00
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £7,200
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Cap: No more than FIVE series per supplier, please
Editorial Opportunity
This is the place for detailed analytical projects. Tell us about the forces shaping our world before they reach the news agenda. Tell us in a manner which is compelling, digestible and definitive. Recent examples of programmes we have run here include The New Deal, The Corrections and The Crisis of American Democracy.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
We are looking for original - but not necessarily investigative - journalism. This is an opportunity to explore a deep question. It could be about something that pops up in the news every day - but goes unexamined in depth - or a theme which is hidden just below the surface.
We welcome original thinking here - not just in terms of analysis but in how you present that analysis. We are looking for intellectual and creative ambition. The best of these programmes will be surprising, unexpected and counter-intuitive. They will change the way listeners see the world.
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They do not all have to tackle geopolitics or social ills (although we can't ignore them). You might choose instead to focus on more subtle (even benign) forces at work in the world.
Stories can be local or global, big picture or close-up and forensic. But we will always want stylish production and clarity.
Your contributors should probably be leaders in their fields. Your presenter might have specific expertise but they must have a talent for simplifying complexity for a general audience and a broadcast voice which is easy to absorb and hard to ignore.
Where the series is big enough we may want to explore the possibility of a book spin- off. Where a pre-existing book deal is involved, or if your offer rests on soon-to-be- published work, this MUST be flagged in the proposal.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47006 14’ Feature
Duration 14’ (including announcements)
Schedule slot Various days, 09.30, 13.45, 20.45
Transmission period April 2022- March 2023
Guide price range per episode £3,600
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial Opportunity
The 13.45 slot has become important to Radio 4 as a place for high-impact episodic storytelling such as Girl Taken, The Great Post Office Trial, Two Minutes Past Nine and Intrigue: Mayday.
We will preserve the 13.45 slots primarily for serialised storytelling stripped across one or two weeks.
Some but not all of these serialised stories will also be released as podcasts. The bar here is very high. You will need to bring us an extraordinary untold story, with all the key ingredients in place. And you will also need to demonstrate that you know how to make serials work.
The guide price will apply to most of what we do here. But we might offer more for a small number of higher ambition projects.
Remember that we also run some series at 14’ – in various schedule slots - which feel right at this duration and work in short runs of five or more, with each individual episode standing alone. Please don’t neglect this area of the brief. The often witty and joyful series we run in these slots (a good example is NatureBang) are hugely valuable to us and to our listeners.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
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Further guidance
• Most programmes commissioned here will be five-part series. All will have clear reasons for why they are best told episodically and at this duration.
• We will commission some series which use the serialised short-form format to pursue analysis or argument in a clever and original way.
• But much of what we commission here will be compelling episodic factual storytelling.
• You will need to be able to demonstrate that you understand how to structure a great story and that your offer has the components required to deliver one.
• Please think really hard about the voice in which your story will be told. What tone, style or personality will pull listeners in? What is the role of your presenter - if you have one - and what is their relationship to the story?
• We will identify some projects with very strong podcast potential for additional funding and promotion. These projects will work both as box-sets designed for digital binge-listening and as linear programmes broadcast daily.
• We will expect to work more closely than is usual with the producers of the small number of these projects which we select as our highest priorities.
• Please do not submit big multi-part Narrative History ideas here. They are being commissioned separately under Brief 47169.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47088 Archive on 4
Duration 57’ (including announcements)
Schedule slot Sat 10.30
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £9,000
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial opportunity
Broadcast at 20.00 on a Saturday night, Archive on 4 is the only hour long documentary slot on the network and has become the place for brilliantly involving storytelling and analysis rooted in archive. Programmes in this slot have spanned an almost limitless range of subjects and approaches, from politics to entertainment. They include:
• Programmes centred on first person material such as Bowie: Verbatim or Andrea Levy: In Her Own Words • Cleverly argued and lateral theses like Poetry and Advertising or The End of the Thirty Year Itch • Funny, lively, multi-layered takes on concepts from great presenting talent like A Brief History of Anger with Joe Queenan. • Dramatic, engaging retellings of historical events like Apollo 13: The Rescue or Riot Remembered • Explorations of big figures by people with a unique relationship with them, like Self on Ballard • Reappraisals of influential works such as Akenfield Now or All Things Must Pass at 50 • Experimental storytelling like Brexit: Backwards
This is by no means a definitive list of Archive on 4 ‘types’ - and is intended solely as an illustration of the breadth of what can work. If you’re not familiar with the full potential of this slot, and the way the strand has become so much more than archive and links, please explore the Archive on 4 website.
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Three qualities are usually central to a great Archive on 4: story, original thesis, and presenter.
Archive on 4 can be a challenge to sustain over the entire hour so it’s crucial to demonstrate how your idea will do that. We want more programmes where the story is simply gripping from start to finish. Think hard, too, about how your idea demonstrates a strong, timely, carefully developed thesis.
We are looking to broaden the agenda in this slot still further - with the thought, in some cases, to tilt towards more sumptuous ‘Saturday night’ listening pleasure.
And we plan to focus on a number of episodes over the year to be real events that we can promote. These landmark Archive on 4’s will reveal something truly news- making, or find a strikingly original way into a big subject or figure, or be led by big- name or surprising presenters. This is a unique, high profile place for people to tell stories they are passionate about.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
• Proposals should set out clearly how the idea justifies a 57’ origination, with a clear sense that there are enough layers to the story, and the twists and turns to keep listeners engaged until the end.
• The authority, charisma and energy of the presenter are all vital to the success of programmes in this slot. Be ambitious (but do indicate in your proposal whether your presenter is confirmed or indicative, and whether they have been involved in developing the idea.)
• Many of the best Archive on 4’s challenge the preconceived understanding of an idea, person or historical event, or pick an unexpected path through a subject. It’s vital to carefully consider the perspective from which you’re planning to tell your story, and whether it is the most interesting, least well-trodden one. Is there a different place it could start from, politically or geographically?
• Consider carefully how the archive will work. Too many offers come in where the bulk of the archive available is written, rather than broadcast archive, or without a clear sense of what the archive is. New archive coming to light is rarely, in itself, sufficient reason to make a programme.
• There will always be a place for simpler programmes that just make use of fantastic archive without much else besides, but the archive needs to be just that – fantastic – and to tell a compelling story.
• We have had too many anniversary pegged programmes that move gently, but rather predictably, through their story, offering few new insights. If you are submitting an anniversary pegged proposal, tell us how you might introduce surprise, reframe the subject, or challenge expectations.
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• Be mindful of the cumulative effect of an hour of very old archive. It can make listening hard work.
• Think innovatively about how we can really push the boundaries in this slot. Given the breadth of subject matter, there will sometimes be real scope to experiment. We welcome this.
Where the programme is composed of clips of archive recordings or pre-recorded material, details of ownership and availability of rights should (if possible) be provided. If no preliminary enquiries have been made, this should be stated.
As far as entire or complete programmes are concerned (where we would normally expect to take a licence to broadcast), details of availability of broadcast rights, ownership and price per broadcast must be provided.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47169 Narrative History
Duration 14’ (including announcements)
Schedule slot Mon – Fri 13.45
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £3,600
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial Opportunity
Narrative History has established itself as a high-impact slot on Radio 4. It is where we explore some of our most ambitious history ideas such as A Big Disease with a Little Name, From The Mayflower to the Moon and The New Anatomy of Melancholy.
We are only inviting BIG Narrative History ideas here; ideas with enough ambition to justify scale.
Other 14’ programmes will be considered under Brief 47006.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
• Narrative History is one of the key ways the station defines its ambition for the year. So ideas need to be big, bold, imaginative and agenda-setting.
• Narrative History ideas will be at least 10 episodes long and tackle big subjects demanding a high level of exploration and exposition. This is an opportunity to construct chronological, thematic or other narratives at scale. We aspire to high- end radio here, not high-fibre radio. The ideas need to be big and the production glossy but that doesn’t mean dense or didactic story-telling.
• These series require a truly great presenter; someone with the authority and charm to compel listeners to spend a great deal of time with them. Voice, in other words, really matters here. We need presenters who know how to pull listeners
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gently into the narrative with them. We know it when we hear it. And we need to hear it here.
• We also need rigour, so we need to be confident that you are bringing genuine expertise to the project. Let us know if you are using an adviser or consultant.
• We would expect an indicative outline of how the series might work across a number of weeks. Please also state digital ambitions, where appropriate.
• With long lead-ins, ideas must stand the test of time and not date too quickly.
• Please indicate whether the presenter has been approached. If they are high profile it might be sensible to wait until we express interest in them and the idea.
• We may want to explore whether economies of scale mean your proposal can be made below guide price.
• Where the series is big enough we may want to explore the possibility of a book spin-off. Where a pre-existing book deal is involved, or if your offer rests on soon- to-be-published work, this MUST be flagged in the proposal.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47040 Wednesday Interviews
Duration 43' (including announcements)
Schedule slot Wed 20.00 (rpt Sat 22.15)
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £4,200
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial Opportunity
This slot is home to The Moral Maze for 26 weeks of the year and has been home to the series Across the Red Line, which deals with listening to opposing political views, and The Spark, in which Helen Lewis explores radical ideas through one forensic interview.
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
• We have a small number of opportunities for fresh formats in this slot. We are interested in presenting new thinking to our audience with clarity. We are also interesting in formats which allow emotionally-intelligent interviewing to reveal important truths about how we live now.
• Although this is a chance to develop a format which could turn into a returning series on Radio 4, please be realistic about both the constraints suggested by the price and the number of slots we have available.
• Your idea is likely to depend heavily on your clever presenter choice and on a format which is elegant in its simplicity.
• Where it is not possible to look forward to issues that may be relevant in 2022/2023, it would be useful to include an indication of the subjects that would be covered were this series to be broadcast in the next few months.
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• Think about how you can use this space to challenge deeply held opinions and narratives. To use a fashionable phrase: bring us some cognitive diversity.
• While ideas for one-off debates - which may need to be funded at a higher price - are welcome here, keep in mind that we are much more likely to commission any such debate on a reactive basis, much closer to the point of transmission.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47144 New Saturday Show
Duration 28' (including announcements)
Schedule slot Sat 10:30
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £5,500
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Cap: No more than ONE format idea per supplier please
Editorial Opportunity
Important: First read the FAQs applying to all factual slots, p.15.
Further guidance
We can guess what you’re thinking: “I can’t make the kind of factual documentary half-hour that Radio 4 expects for under £5,500”.
You’re probably right. But in this slot we want you to make something unlike anything you’ve made for us before.
We are looking for loveable, witty, clever and – yes – inexpensive formats for 10.30 on Saturday mornings. These need to serve a useful factual purpose with a heavy dose of humour. We are looking for something with the potential to run and run.
They should be talent-led. They will probably need to be simple. And they should certainly leave the audience with a smile on its face. (No misery here please.)
We have used this slot to develop some strong new series - such as Rewinder - but we may have space for one or possibly two others next year. Given the limited opportunity here, we have capped offers at ONE per supplier to avoid encouraging too much development.
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ARTS & POETRY – GENERAL GUIDANCE
Much of what we set out in the general introduction to this document also applies to arts and poetry as well:
• A focus on story, treatment, emotional range, presenter, and a wider range of voices and perspectives.
• A clear sense of purpose. Who is your programme for? What makes you think they want or need it? Why will they give it their time?
• A real appetite for going bigger and broader. As well as brilliant single documentaries and series, we want to see more big statements.
• A focus on how we can make arts and poetry programmes that welcome and draw in a broader range of listeners.
When they work, arts and poetry programmes in audio bring something unique: the power to connect people to great creative minds, and great creative work in ways that are truly electric, and that bring illumination, solace, and joy.
As society, battered by Covid-19, moves forward, the power of art to transport us from the everyday, to help us see things differently, is something we want to major on.
We want your programmes to help strengthen the signals that art sends us, to leave listeners enraptured and stimulated. And we want to do it across the broadest possible canvas: from opera to pop culture, and in every format, from perfect single documentary to landmark series.
We are looking for programmes that find accessible ways to go deep into the artists and artistic ideas that we need to understand better, no matter how apparently demanding. The recent Dante 2021 showed one way this can be done.
We are looking for programmes that unpack art and culture of all kinds and show us how it shapes us both as individuals and as a society. How can we plug listeners into their artistic and cultural passions in ways that amplify understanding, bring joy and pleasure, and get people talking about what they’ve heard?
The recent Bowie: Dancing Out in Space is a good example of this, because it was intellectually ambitious, forward looking, and brought in a broad set of fresh perspectives, but also connected with a broad audience.
Who else and what else should we be exploring, and how? Recent cultural history can be good territory. The 5 Live podcast Ecstasy: Battle of Rave is an interesting model for something that unpacked a big cultural moment at scale in a way that was truly involving for listeners.
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We are looking for programmes, too, that give us close readings: specific, under-the- bonnet insights into precisely how visual art, literature, music and all the other cultural forms actually work. How to Play – a brilliantly simple format – does this for classical music in performance. How do we do it for other art forms?
Arts and poetry on Radio 4 must always illuminate where we are now but be free to harness the whole of our global artistic legacy in order to do so. They must appeal outside any arts bubble, range across the whole of our cultural life and use all of the storytelling techniques of modern audio to welcome in listeners of all kinds.
In particular, given what we’re going through, and the challenges ahead, what are the ways the UK understands itself through the stories we tell ourselves, and the art we make about ourselves? How can we explore these stories to further illuminate our history (including recent history), and our present? My Albion – a series that took a singular look at the ways we understand our past through folk art and song – took a distinctive starting point for one such exploration.
What can we do with the power of Radio 4 that will reframe these stories we tell ourselves through art using a broader, more representative set of perspectives, generating new understandings, and new connections? It’s important to think about the whole of the UK here – and beyond the vantage points of urban, politically progressive South East England.
We should not forget the art, craft and culture that listeners are directly engaged in making themselves (often enabled by new technology). We have Sketches but it would be good to find other ways into this area.
Finally, many parts of the cultural world have been ravaged by the virus. This is undeniably a reset moment. So how can we go inside the most creative things happening right now across the artistic and cultural landscape, from theatre to gaming (or will theatre become more like gaming?), to learn what is being created, how it happens, who the innovators are? You are our eyes and ears here. Tell us what we need to be exploring.
How can we do all this in ways that throw out the rulebook, that are original, surprising, keep listeners gripped to the end and, where we can, that get into the bloodstream of the national conversation?
Proposals must take into account the regular arts and poetry programming in the schedule, week in and week out, and complement that.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47165 Arts
Duration 28' (including announcements)
Schedule slot weekdays 11:30/16:00
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £7,000
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial opportunity
We commission single arts programmes, series, and new formats here.
Arts and poetry ideas that would work better as 14’ Features and Narrative Histories should be submitted in those briefs. Read the guidance there to understand more about the kinds of treatments we are looking for.
Important: First read Arts & Poetry – General Guidance, p.36.
Further guidance
For both arts and poetry we are looking for proposals in the following categories:
• Single arts programmes • Arts series • Landmark series • Narrative box sets • Formats
Single Arts Programmes
• We will always treasure the perfect one-off arts programme. These are essential to Radio 4. But we get so many interesting proposals that, to win a commission, an interesting idea alone isn’t enough.
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• If it has a presenter (and most will), they will need to be truly compelling: someone with a distinctive relationship to the material, or who you can convince us will bring in an audience. We are looking for big talent that can bring arts and culture to a broader audience, as well as the most exciting new voices. If it’s not presenter led, you’ll need to convince us your storytelling approach is going to do something really unique, and make spellbinding radio.
• Your idea will usually need to convey a strong sense that it can resonate beyond the schedule (does it appeal to a fan community, for example, or feed into a public discussion, or have a strong peg, or come with another reason why it speaks to the moment?). Otherwise, single documentaries, even great ones, can get lost. This does not for a minute mean that all offers must appeal to a young audience.
This is not definitive but single programmes that have stood out recently include:
• Programmes that really get under the skin of the creative mind in ways that bring revelation and move listeners (Epiphanies). • Programmes that immerse the listener completely in a place or an experience (Reading the Water). • Programmes that unpack a single influential figure with an expert, high profile presenter (Dub Revolution: the Story of King Tubby). • Programmes that explore a broader question through art (Sonnets for Albert and A Plague on All Your Houses). • Authored programmes that make a provocative argument on a matter of cultural controversy (Can I Still Read Harry Potter?). • Programmes that unpack the mind of an innovator at scale, with real intellectual ambition (Bowie: Dancing Out In Space). • There’s also room for strong journalistic takes on arts and culture. What are the big issues that need exploring, whether it’s censorship/ free speech, corruption in the art world, or something else?
Arts Series
• This is the place for projects of inquiry that merit the scope and scale of multi- part exploration. How do we reframe the exploration of great artists, ideas, concepts, and movements from across the whole of the cultural landscape, past and present, in a way that feels relevant today?
• Arts series will normally be presented by an authority – we are looking for some really big names here – though they can never be ‘bolted on’ and it doesn’t always have to be authority of a traditional kind. Think big, think broadly, and out of the Radio 4 box. Who from other worlds could bring their passion and expertise to the station? Please indicate on your proposal whether your presenter is indicative, or already on board.
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• Recent examples of series that have worked well in different ways include Dante 2021, My Albion with Zakia Sewell, Faith in Music with James Macmillan, Black Music in Europe: a Hidden History with Clarke Peters, and Michael Morpurgo’s Folk Journeys. It’s a broad range – of subject, treatment and presenter – but we want to enhance and broaden it further, and continue to improve the ways stories are told. In each case, who is doing the telling is vital.
• You’ll need to be precise about the lens through which you are exploring your subject, and clear about why you’ve chosen it. From which vantage point will you tell the story and why? Is it extremely close-focus, helicopter-wide or framed through the personal perspective of the presenter? Legacy of War – in another genre – was a good example of a familiar subject reframed in a way that felt compelling and different (on that occasion, WW2 explored through the perspectives of subsequent generations of those whose ancestors were involved).
Landmark series
• Arts series are often commissioned in three parts but we want to commission a small number of landmark series across the year with a higher number of episodes and more ambition. So for the subjects that really merit it, with the right talent and treatment, think bigger than ever. What could we do that would shape the national conversation?
• Whilst landmark series will aim to be definitive, they can’t ever be a general ‘history of….’ As set out above, the subject will always need to be explored through a distinctive lens. It’s important to be clear with us about what that is, and why it will mean something to listeners.
• Could your landmark series work as a collaboration? If so, with whom?
Narrative box-sets
Please submit ideas for these into the Narrative History brief.
• We’re convinced there are great ideas out there in the arts space that could best be told as a ‘made for podcast’ episodic narrative (like Wind of Change or Transmissions, the podcast about Joy Division). What are the thrillers of the art world, with all the narrative structure – twists, cliff-hangers – of a gripping narrative serial? Art crime can work but so can other ideas. Could a gripping serial be built around a scrap of history, or the life story of an artist or musician?
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Formats
• We are always looking to commission new formats – returnable ideas that can create enduring listening habits – though never commission many. Last year saw the invention of How to Play, which ran at 0900, and we have some promising new arts and poetry formats coming up in 2021/22. It’s best to submit just one or two ideas that are well thought through rather than a scattergun approach.
• The best are often very simple. It can be useful to think about ideas that take as their starting point a different relationship to the material – that borrow from comedy, factual, entertainment or other areas. What would be entertaining? We need formats that we could build a community around and that would work in the podcast space as well as on air. What would Evil Genius, or Bad People, or The Infinite Monkey Cage look like for the arts ?
Modernism
• We are planning a season in early 2022 exploring the impact of modernism, pegged to the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s Ulysses, so there is an editorial opportunity for the right documentaries or series on this theme, which could – if commissioned – be fast-tracked.
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Commissioning Brief no. 47114 Poetry
Duration 28' (including announcements)
Schedule slot Sunday 16:30 (rpt Saturday 23:30)
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Guide price range per episode £7,000
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial opportunity
We take single poetry programmes, series, and – occasionally – new formats, here.
Important: first read Arts & Poetry – General Guidance, p36. It applies to Poetry too: a focus on story, treatment, emotional range, talent, a breadth of voices and perspectives – and the transcendent power of radio in this genre when we get it right.
Also read the guidance in the Arts brief, above, as it should give a clear sense of the treatments we are looking for in Poetry, too.
If you have a Poetry idea which would be better told as a 14’ Feature or Narrative History please submit it in those briefs, and read the guidance written there to understand more about the kinds of treatments we are looking for there.
Further guidance
• We commission the most interesting poets writing and performing today and want to do more of this. Original poetry, poetic explorations of other issues, and explorations of the world by poets can all bring unique perspectives that won’t be heard anywhere else. The only important thing is that it speaks to now.
• Poetry is booming: sales are up among younger readers, and performance poetry in particular has become a route for new voices to become the cutting edge of the cultural conversation. Take George the Poet or Michaela Coel.
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How do we amplify this on Radio 4 and ensure we’re discovering and featuring the best and most exciting new voices?
• Single poetry programmes can get lost in the schedule. How can you ensure yours won’t? Who will it speak to and how will it get noticed?
• Think precisely about the lens you’re looking through: does your programme focus on a single metaphor or poetic device, a single poem, a form, a poet, a school, a period, an epoch?! All of these can work, as long as there is clarity of purpose for the approach you take and you can convince us that it will resonate with an audience now.
• Don’t ignore the work of the greats or – and we hesitate to say this – anniversaries! If you find the right treatment it can be really rewarding to explore, reframe and reinterpret the canon at a moment when others are talking about it too. It can help us do something of scale, and find a bigger audience for poetry.
• What could we do this year that is truly ambitious, something with the power and scale to break out of the Poetry slots and to shape the national conversation? A unique response to where we are, in the league of Michael Symmons Roberts’s elegies that Radio 4 commissioned in response to 9/11? Or something else that springs from the singular capacity for poetry to help us understand and connect with the world and the big shifts going on in it.
• Poetry can at times have the raw power to speak to a moment in a way that nothing else does. Take Amanda Gorman, recently. How can we use our platforms - Radio 4 and BBC Sounds - in a unique way to create moments that allow poetry to ‘break through’ into the mass public consciousness in this way?
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Commissioning Brief no. 47132 Outside the Box
Transmission period April 2022 - March 2023
Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Round 1
Editorial Opportunity
If you have an idea for a programme, a bundle of programmes, or an event that just doesn’t fit into any of the categories above, this is the place to pitch it.
It might be a big theme that could run through a whole day, weekend or week of special programming.
It might be taken up across the schedule and Sounds, in regular live output as well as in specially commissioned programmes and digital content.
If it cuts across genres – factual, comedy, drama and news – and brings different creative teams together around an electrifying idea, we want to hear about it.
And if it involves creative partnerships with other parts of the BBC or with other public service organisations, that’s a plus.
Don’t hang back because you think it’s too wild or ambitious, or ‘they’ll never do that on Radio 4’. It may be exactly what we ought to do but have never thought of.
And don’t worry about cost. Let’s talk about the idea first. If it’s right, we’ll find a way to make it happen.
The bigger and bolder, the better.
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SECTION C: COMMISSIONING TIMETABLE
Stage Dates Activities Commissioning Mid February Publish commissioning brief documentation briefs published and open round in Proteus.
Webinar 23 February The commissioning team brief programme briefing makers by zoom.
1. Short 12:00 noon Deadline for short proposals in Proteus. proposal Late submissions cannot be accepted. Tuesday 30 March If you have questions that you need answered before submitting short proposals, send them to the commissioning co- ordinator well before the deadline. Week Commissioners shortlist proposals and notify commencing producers of outcomes. Full proposals 03 May requested from those proceeding to next stage. 2. Full proposal Week Opportunity to discuss re-requested short commencing proposals (by phone or zoom) prior to 10 May submitting full proposals. to week commencing 14 June 12:00 noon Deadline for full proposals in Proteus. Tuesday 15 Late submissions cannot be accepted. June 3. Conditional Late Factual results released. commission September Commissions offered, subject to contract. awarded Editorial specifications and price agreed.
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SECTION D: COMMISSIONING PROCESS
We hope this section explains the process clearly. If you have further questions, contact the Commissioning Co-ordinators:
Jacqueline Clarke [email protected] for Richard Knight Sharon Terry [email protected] for Daniel Clarke
But read this section first!
Everything in this commissioning round is open to competition. There is no formal eligibility questionnaire. If you are registered on the BBC supplier database it is assumed that you satisfy the basic eligibility requirements. If you are not registered but would like to be, contact [email protected].
We invite proposals from BBC departments and independent companies who can demonstrate considerable experience in radio/audio or TV factual production at both producer and executive producer level. If you have not produced programmes for Radio 4, please include your track record in the full synopsis field of your full proposal.
STAGE 1: SHORT PROPOSAL
Complete your short proposal in Proteus. Please ensure in good time that as a registered supplier you have access to Proteus. Don’t leave it until the deadline. The Proteus team can help with any issues [email protected].
Observe the cap on numbers where this is applied. If the cap says a maximum 10 proposals per supplier, we will only be able to read your first 10.
Fewer, stronger ideas are more likely to get through. In slots where each commission is for multiple episodes, the number of commissions will be far fewer than the number of individual programmes available.
We welcome proposals from suppliers who wish to group together in a partnership, as long as this is made clear in the proposal. Where there is a cap on proposals, the suppliers joining together may combine their cap allowance (e.g. if the cap is five and two companies offer in partnership, they may submit 10). Each joint proposal should be entered only once.
All proposals must be submitted by the deadline in Proteus: 2022-2023 Round 1.
The following must be entered for each short proposal:
Title (of your proposal, not the slot) NB: Titles of proposals filter down to programme titles and are public facing so please ensure you use Title Case. It is fine to use w/t for working titles.
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Commissioning Brief number This number is at the top of each commissioning brief. Enter each proposal in once only. If we consider it suitable for another slot, we will transfer it.
Delivery date Enter an estimated delivery date e.g. 01/09/2022.
Price per episode This will default to the guide price, unless you say otherwise. If you think the price will be different, enter this in the ‘Price per Episode £’ field.
We will not consider bids above the guide price unless the editorial idea clearly justifies it. Although submitting a lower price may help your chances of a commission, the editorial proposition is always paramount.
Number of episodes State the intended number of episodes.
Duration The total allotted airtime per episode, including continuity announcements and credits, for example 14’ or 28’ (not 15’ or 30’).
Short synopsis: This is where you sell your idea at this stage. Maximum 250 words.
If you prepare proposals offline to paste into Proteus, keep the format simple: bold, underline and italic only. Proteus will remove other formatting, including bulleted and numbered points, as well as converting your font to the equivalent of Arial size 11. To prevent corruption issues, use the Proteus “T” icon pasting tool located just above the text field box to paste into Proteus. Once in the synopsis field you may need to rearrange your paragraphs and subtitles.
Full synopsis: Do not enter anything in this field at this stage.
Short proposals are evaluated by the commissioning team who shortlist those which they wish to see as full proposals.
We release the results in Proteus. Proposals will show as ‘Rejected’ or ‘Re- requested’. Re-requested means the idea has been shortlisted to go to the full proposal stage. We regret that we cannot give feedback on rejected short proposals.
STAGE 2: FULL PROPOSAL
If you reach the next stage, you will be invited to discuss your shortlisted ideas with a member of the commissioning team, by phone or zoom. We will not discuss ideas that have not already been submitted as short proposals.
If a proposal is re-requested in Proteus, do not re-create it from scratch. Just edit it to reflect the requirements of the full proposal and then re-submit it.
While it is possible at this stage to submit fresh offers which have not been discussed, experience shows that few ideas that were not offered as short proposals get commissioned.
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All proposals must be submitted by the deadline in Proteus: 2022-2023 Round 1.
The following must be entered for each full proposal:
Title If your idea is commissioned you must not later change this title without the written agreement of the commissioning editor. Titles of proposals filter down to programme titles and are public facing so please ensure you use Title Case. It is fine to use w/t for working titles.
Commissioning Brief number Submit each proposal once only. If we think it suitable for another slot, we will transfer it.
Delivery Date (linked to anniversary / event dates where relevant). This information is important and will be used when scheduling a commissioned programme.
Price per episode This will default to the guide price, unless you say otherwise. If you think the price will be different, enter this in the ‘Price per Episode £’field.
We will not consider bids above the guide unless the editorial idea clearly justifies it.
Producer Include CV in full synopsis field if the producer is new to Radio 4.
Executive Producer Include CV in full synopsis field if the executive is new to us.
Number of episodes State the number of episodes.
Duration The total allotted airtime per episode, including continuity announcements and credits, for example 14’ or 28’ (not 15’ or 30’).
Short synopsis For the final proposal this must be under 50 words. Its purpose is to convey the essence of the idea and enable us to find it quickly in our records. Think of it as a fledgling Radio Times billing.
Full synopsis This is where you sell your idea. It must not exceed 2 x A4 pages of size 11 type.
If you prepare proposals offline to paste into Proteus, keep the format simple: bold, underline and italic only. Proteus will remove other formatting, including bulleted and numbered points, as well as converting your font to the equivalent of Arial size 11. To prevent corruption issues, use the Proteus “T” icon pasting tool located just above the text field box to paste into Proteus. Once in the synopsis field you may need to rearrange your paragraphs and subtitles.
Key talent Any intended writer/abridger/performer/presenter etc. should be shown in the full synopsis. You do not have to secure talent agreement before submitting an offer but you should let us know the degree to which named talent has expressed an interest in the project or has intellectual ownership of it.
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Appendices After setting out your idea, please add the following appendices in the full synopsis field (in addition to your 2 page allowance).
Appendix A Confirmation of acceptance of the key BBC contract terms: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/25pj6s2n6N9yVjxgbXThbNW/agree ments-contracts
Appendix B Risk management: identify any specific risks and the processes or systems that will be put in place to manage these.
If you have any questions that you need answered before you submit your full proposal please contact one of the commissioning co-ordinators well before the submissions deadline.
If you make a mistake
If you submit a proposal in error do not create a duplicate. Contact the commissioning co-ordinator before the deadline. They can return it to you for editing.
Digital commissioning
Beyond the standard metadata and possible clip requirements, we do not require any extra digital deliverables to be offered for these commissions.
The digital commissioning editor will look at the slate of commissions along with the genre commissioning editors and assess the potential for any additional digital content, and whether it merits additional funding. The programme maker will have the first option to offer to supply this if it is required and if they have the capacity and ability to do so.
We are open to ideas that producers think will work as digital-first or podcast, followed by broadcast in the linear schedule.
Evaluation
We evaluate all full proposals against the editorial brief and commission those which most successfully fulfil the brief and contribute to the most varied, original and balanced schedule for the Radio 4 audience.
The following people will evaluate your proposal:
Mohit Bakaya, Controller Richard Knight and Daniel Clarke, Factual Commissioning Editors
Other members of Radio 4 management (e.g. finance, scheduling, digital, editorial standards) may be consulted.
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Commissioning decisions will be communicated in Proteus. Brief feedback for rejected proposals will be given there.
At any stage of the process, we may need to come back to you to seek clarification. Your answers will be factored into the evaluation process as appropriate.
STAGE 3: CONDITIONAL COMMISSION AWARDED
Confirmation of all commissions is conditional on the issues listed below. Radio 4 is not responsible for any costs incurred prior to full agreement. There will be important information included in the feedback field in Proteus which will not be communicated through other means so it is vital that you take time to read this, make notes and share with colleagues.
Price
Each conditional commission will be made with a fixed price offer judged as value for money by the commissioning, finance and business teams. Most will be at the published guide price but we reserve the right to negotiate an alternative price if we believe it appropriate. If our price is accepted in writing by an independent company there will be no need to submit a detailed budget. Contracts will be issued immediately.
If you wish to challenge the offer made, a detailed budget in Proteus will be requested and scrutinised by our finance and business teams with the aim of reaching agreement. Conditional acceptance may be withdrawn if agreement is not reached within a reasonable period.
Rights
Radio 4 requires an appropriate set of rights dependent on the type of programme. This will vary only in exceptional circumstances. The guide price is based on buying the standard set of rights for that programme. If fewer rights are bought, the price may be reduced.
Radio 4 will welcome proposals with co-production funding.
Schedule and delivery dates
Each proposal should include your ideal delivery date although our conditional acceptance will not necessarily be able to reflect this date. We are unlikely to issue precise transmission dates for programmes not pegged to a particular anniversary or season but will give the calendar quarter in which we intend to place them. If you cannot deliver to meet the given transmission quarter, notify Amanda Benson (Schedule Planning Manager) within 14 days of results publication. Precise delivery dates will be confirmed well before the start of each calendar quarter.
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Editorial
A conditional acceptance might have specific editorial conditions attached to it, e.g. that a particular presenter or actor is available. Fulfilment of them must be confirmed before the commission is finalised and before you start work. If they turn out to be unavailable we may accept a substitute but this must be agreed with the commissioning team.
Compliance and BBC Editorial Guidelines
You will be required to deliver programmes in line with BBC Editorial Guidelines and be able to adapt to changing BBC editorial and business needs during the period of the commission.
Proposals must be submitted in accordance with instructions and information contained in this document and on the commissioning website (via links below). Proposals not complying may be rejected by Radio 4, whose decision will be final.
The BBC reserves the right at any time prior to award of a commission, and without incurring any liability to the affected suppliers, to accept or to reject any proposal, or to annul the commissioning process, rejecting all full proposals.
By submitting your proposal, you confirm acceptance of the key contract terms.
Please refer to this important information supporting your proposal. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1zfTRpfbKBQCTD7ptzDwSlz/full-proposal- submission-supporting-information
More information relating to all commissioning briefs and rounds can be found on the Pitching Ideas page of the Radio Commissioning Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4fC4NcVXqkZntJv8ZHpClD8/pitching- ideas
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