WS_Invitation_to_Bid_2022-23v1 Commissioning Round for 2022-23 Timetable and Guidelines to making programmes for BBC World Service The Commissioning Timetable 2021 Thursday 15th July 2021 Guidelines will be published here Proteus opens - at this stage Commissioning Editors only require THREE LINE DESCRIPTIONS. Please use the SHORT SYNOPSIS box only. Thursday 2nd September 2021 (12 noon) Deadline for submissions for initial proposals into Proteus. At this stage Commissioning Editors only require THREE LINE DESCRIPTIONS. Please use the SHORT SYNOPSIS box only Monday 13th September 2021 Pre-offers results published in Proteus. Thursday 30th September 2021 (12 noon) Deadline to submit your final proposals into Proteus. Mid October Results will be published in Proteus. ***NB: Please ensure that you have access to Proteus early in the process.*** We do not accept proposals from individuals – submissions MUST come through an in-house supplier or registered independent production company. For independent suppliers: details of how to register your company for the database can be found at https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/radio 1 Contacts Mary Hockaday, Controller [email protected] Stephen Titherington, Senior Head of Content [email protected] Simon Pitts, Commissioning Editor [email protected] Jon Manel, Podcast Commissioning Editor [email protected] Murray Holgate, Network Manager [email protected] Anna Doble, Digital Editor [email protected] Vanessa Morris & Karen Howe, Commissioning Coordinators vanessamorris&[email protected] 2 Guide Prices The Documentary 20 22’59” and 26’29” £6.6K The Hour Documentary 10 Clocked hour £11.2K The Compass 8-10 22’59” and 26’29” £6.6K Witness 10 9’00” £1.3K Heart and Soul 12 26’29” £6K The Cultural Frontline 5 22’59” and 26’29” £6.6K In the Studio 10 26’29” £6.6K Podcasts – see individual brief The Proteus system is used for the submission of offers. All proposals must be delivered in Proteus. We do not require hard copies of any proposals. BBC departments access PROTEUS via http://proteuslive.radio.bbc.co.uk/proteus-web/login.action Independent companies access PROTEUS via a portal: https://ext-proteus.external.bbc.co.uk/proteus-web/login.action Enter in: World Service Commissioning Round 2022/2023 Commissioning Year: 2022/2023 Commissioning Round: 1 3 World Service English What an extraordinary time it has been. I want to thank all of you for rising to the challenge of making programmes in the most difficult of circumstances and - quite simply - keeping World Service going. Our audiences are grateful. We have kept them informed, we have helped them make sense of the pandemic, provided trusted information and helped make the science accessible. We have held the powerful to account. We have also given our audiences a voice, shared their stories and connected people across the world, building a community of voices in the way that only radio can. We have comforted and guided. We have enriched audiences with stories well beyond the pandemic, capturing 2020 and 2021 as they unfolded. Finally in dark times we offered entertainment and delight, culture and music and comedy and performance, which has been much appreciated. Our audiences have told us how grateful they are for everything we - you - have done, and I and they look forward to what you will offer through this commissioning round. We might have hoped to be through the pandemic, but we are not. It should not dominate your thinking, but nor can you ignore it. Variety and creativity as ever will enrich the network. Finally, a personal note. I am stepping down as Controller later this year. It has been a privilege to work with you all. My successor Jon Zilkha and I will both oversee this commissioning round and I know he is looking forward to your submissions just as much as I am. Mary Hockaday Controller, BBC World Service 4 The BBC World Service is a 24-7 network of news, current affairs and rich audio which reaches audiences as radio and digital audio and via partners. News programmes include Newshour, The Newsroom, Outside Source and Newsday. Alongside this spine of News content we have programmes specializing in sport, business, science, culture, debate, human interest and analysis. In recent years we have been able to add to the range and depth of programmes on the network and related digital content. We have a massive global audience (and an important audience in the UK) who all share a sense of curiosity about the world and a desire to connect with that world. Our audience is everywhere. Our surveys show the biggest single audiences are in the United States and Africa, but listeners find us on their phones, radios, smart speakers and partner stations in just about every country. That audience is increasing and we now reach more than 97 million people. Our audience is both discerning and demanding, whether college-educated or - in many cases -not. In most places there is increasingly vibrant local media and access to other global media, so we have to be appealing and relevant. The World Service schedule is flexible so we can adapt to breaking news, but we always try to ensure there’s a broad range of topics and styles on the Network. Five minute news bulletins sit at the top of every hour and a two minute summary of world news at the bottom of every hour, so News is an ever present part of the Network. But we want to take people on a journey that offers much more in terms of a portrait of the world and how we live. We want programmes that stimulate thought, provoke discussion and offer solutions as well as show problems. We want to be a place where people who care about the world can connect and understand it better – in all aspects of life. All our programmes take a contemporary and global approach, and are rigorous with high production standards. Radio and Digital Increasingly, we reach audiences via digital and social platforms. This document includes notes on how to make sure your content will thrive in this arena. Not only is there a specific podcast brief (and we may want a separate podcast version of your broadcast programme), we need engaging online feature material, clips, quotes, facts and short form visuals, and we’ll discuss with you how to promote your programme as a podcast. Remember the audience may first encounter your programme online or on social media. We need high quality visuals of the places and people that feature in your programme – more on the format below. This is all designed to bring more audiences to your content. What we are looking for in 2022-23? Our programmes are clever, conversational and inclusive. They should be effortlessly global and stand up to scrutiny from the people or country being discussed in the programme as well as being resonant for the widest audiences. We aim to capture the big themes and talking points of the time, as well as offering the unexpected and unfamiliar. Our mission is to connect, explain, inform and also to celebrate great listening and fantastic stories. We need to be funny as well as serious, to challenge preconceptions, and reveal a world which is exciting as well as sometimes frightening. We create a space for deeply personal views and experiences to be expressed freely. We will put all the resources necessary to make what we do together the very best it can be. We want great story-tellers to speak to the world. We love rich 5 sound and a sense of place; being where our audience is (pandemic creativity allowing). We seek engaging, challenging ideas led by the brightest narrators and production. And we welcome collaboration, bringing in fresh talent and simply trying something new. Be ambitious. The Compass The Compass is our space for ideas and stories which are too big for single documentaries. Series are generally 3-6 episodes and must deserve the descriptor ‘flagship series’. The audience will be rewarded with a real take-away – new insight and understanding, awe and perhaps delight. Think laterally. What has been knocked off the agenda by CV-19 and must come back? What is in front of us but must be dived into deeper, what is as yet unknown and must be told? What are the big ideas we need to bring to life? Your story-telling must be compelling and high quality to carry the narrative arc across the series. Be realistic and innovative about delivery from Spring 2022 onwards. Documentaries (30 minutes & 60 minutes) The ways of making programmes, the subjects we cover and who tells these stories, all need shaking up! “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” as Abraham Lincoln once put it. Something is changing in the world, and changing what people want to listen to. So it’s time to think boldly and imaginatively about stories which resonate with everyone, which tell us something about this new world. And we want to think of new ways of actually compiling them. We want to fly less, partner more; share and support fellow news organisations around the world. We want to think how best to relate to the BBC World Service Language services around the world, and we want to be so truly global in our appeal, that our audiences are excited by the prospect of each and every documentary we create. We are championing new talent on air, new ways of telling stories and making difficult global issues accessible to all. These are challenging times, but what else can we do? We want ideas for documentaries that change the lives of those who listen.