AudioUK welcomes commitments by the BBC, announced by Director General Tim Davie this morning, to place more resources around the UK to enable a greater range of diverse voices, stories, perspectives and talent to come through to BBC audiences and to build further capacity in content production outside the South East.
The UK has a diverse audio production sector made up of around 200 SMEs based all around the UK. We are therefore keen to see the detail on how the new out-of-London commissioners will be as accessible as possible to all suppliers, wherever they are based.
In addition we will be discussing with the BBC the opportunities to bid for as wide a range of programmes as possible. This includes the Radio 1, Radio 2 and 1Xtra daytime strands which are being relocated.
There should also be transparency on how much is spent on in-house as opposed to indie productions.
We look forward to working with the BBC on these matters and again welcome its commitment to ensuring all of the UK’s population is in a position to be reflected in its output.