BBC Studios

The BBC should: a) develop a clear plan for closing the cultural gap between the production and distribution arms of BBC Studios, including milestones and indicators for measuring its progress in achieving this.

BBC Studios should improve the consistency and effectiveness of its internal performance reporting. It should ensure that it strikes the proper balance between allowing flexibility in its performance framework to respond to market developments and corresponding changes to its plans, while maintaining sufficient consistency so that it is possible to track and compare progress and trends over time.

b) review the effectiveness of recent improvements to governance over BBC Studios, including whether the September 2019 changes to relevant terms of references have successfully clarified the respective roles of the main BBC Board, BBC Commercial Holdings Board and the Commercial Group strategy sub-committee in setting BBC Studios’ strategic objectives and the BBC’s commercial strategy, and in holding the BBC and BBC Studios to account for the delivery of these.

c) finalise the performance indicators for the regular reporting to the BBC’s boards of BBC Studios’ non-financial performance in early 2020 as planned, while ensuring that this set includes adequate measures to enable board monitoring of: • BBC Studios’ performance in winning new work and creating new IP against what it expected;

• the size and strength of BBC Studios’ content delivery pipeline;

• the management of significant risks to BBC Studios achieving sustainable margins and returns; and

• BBC Studios’ management of its staff, development of organisational capacity and delivery of cultural change.

BBC Studios should review the risks associated with not meeting its targets for generating new BBC Studios? owned IP. It should consider whether it fully understands the risks to the delivery of its long-term strategy associated with its current mix of income from ?work for hire? and from the production of new content whose IP it owns, and whether any action is necessary to ensure long-term, sustainable returns to the BBC.