Matt Forde Takes On New Role in BBC Studios Restructure

Matt Forde has been tapped as president of global production at BBC Studios Productions under a new structure unveiled by CEO Zai Bennett.

The stand-alone global production business under Forde will scale the company’s production activities outside of the U.S. on the heels of the acquisitions of STV in the Nordics, Brutal in Spain and Werner in Australia and the success of formats like The 1% Club and Ghosts.

“I couldn’t be more excited to deepen our production presence globally with our local offices,” said Forde. “We’ve seen rapid growth over the last three years internationally and increasing the number of markets BBC Studios operates in is vital if we’re to leverage a truly global creative network and produce even more format hits—as well as creating original content for local audiences across the world.”

Kate Ward, as managing director of unscripted productions, leads factual, U.K. entertainment and entertainment development. Suzy Lamb, managing director of entertainment for the U.K., and Karl Warner, executive VP of U.K. entertainment and digital development, will continue to lead the creation and evolution of formats.

Bennett, CEO of BBC Studios Productions and chief creative officer, noted, “There’s been an increased demand for unscripted programming in our customers’ content strategies, so a single unscripted business gives us an incredibly potent offering for the market—and it’s the right moment to significantly increase our international production footprint. I’m thrilled that the collective creative and commercial expertise and experience of Kate, Matt, Suzy and Karl will be leading this charge, and I couldn’t ask for better leaders to empower our amazing teams to deliver even greater success.”

Ward said, “BBC Studios Unscripted Productions brings together an extraordinary creative portfolio, led by a world class group of creatives with unrivaled expertise across the breadth of the unscripted genre: from entertainment to natural history, science to factual entertainment, live events to documentary. It’s an honor to be taking on this new role, and I’ll strive to support all of our units, labels and invested indies to even greater success, producing genre defining new shows, whilst continuing to deliver our existing slate of some of the UK’s most loved, successful and impactful programs.”