Studio Director

Job Band

Band: C

Contract type: 2 x 6-month FTC ideally starting October 2024

Location: Office base is BBC London Broadcasting House.

Salary: From £32,400 + £5,164 London Weighting depending on relevant skills, knowledge and experience. The expected salary range for this role reflects internal benchmarking and external market insights.

Our comprehensive benefits package includes:

•    An employer pension contribution of up to 10%

•    25 days’ annual leave (based on full time hours) + bank holidays and the option to buy/sell additional days

•    Contributory lifestyle benefit options including discounts at hundreds of retailers, cycle to work scheme, discounted gym memberships and healthcare schemes

•    Employee assistance and well-being programmes

•    Learning and development tailored to your role – this could include industry recognised qualifications, coaching and mentoring

•    An inclusive and diverse environment with opportunities to join staff networks including: Women’s Network, National Disability Networks and many more.

Family friendly flexible working arrangements, such as hybrid working, job sharing, flexi-time and compressed hours can be requested.

We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and especially welcome individuals from underrepresented groups.

If you require any reasonable adjustments at any time, please let us know by contacting us on [email protected] with the job reference in the subject.

Job Intro

BBC Media Operations is looking to increase its team of Studio Directors in the audio team. Are you interested in the technical and operational side of live radio? If so, this could be the role for you. Output Operations is a 24/7/365 days a year department servicing Radio 4, Radio 5 Live and World Service news programmes.

Media Operations is a highly skilled and creative team of people at the heart of BBC News, working closely with editorial teams to provide high quality output across radio, TV, and multimedia platforms. Watch what we do here!

Main Responsibilities

Operating the mixing desk and a variety of different studio equipment, the Studio Director is a vital operational role making everything you hear on the radio possible and is responsible for ensuring high quality audio ambitions are achieved by the on-air programme teams.

The role of a Studio Director encompasses the traditional role of a BBC Studio Manager – which in wider industry terms is the role of a sound engineer, operating the sound desk during live radio programmes on national and international radio networks. In addition to taking responsibility for the audio, Studio Directors technically manage on-air guests and correspondents, keeping the live programmes on track and to time whilst adding creative flair.

The Studio Director team also plays a key role in providing technical assistance to the editorial teams outside of the studio environment. There are many aspects to this element of the role, however, a Studio Director would expect to regularly help connect guests through to studios for broadcast, fault-find with technical equipment, source and edit audio as well as record and mix a variety of podcasts.

Our team is committed to recruiting people from all backgrounds, with a variety of levels of experience. It is not essential to have a degree level education. If you are passionate about audio, enthusiastic, hard-working and have a curiosity to learn then we would love to hear from you.

This opportunity offers the chance to become part of a fun, dynamic and highly supportive team, working in an exciting and evolving department.  We currently have vacancies in our London team.

Are you the right candidate?

For this role, you will need to be self-motivated, time-conscious and able to respond confidently under pressure. You will be able to constructively offer creative ideas in-line with relevant editorial priorities and be expected to help support other members of the studio and production team.

To be successful, you will also:

• have experience of working in a live sound mixing environment with responsibility for balancing and controlling audio and have a passion for producing high quality audio
• have experience of dealing with challenging and high-pressured situations, preferably in a broadcast environment
• have an interest in news and speech audio and/or have experience of working with content producers to realise their programme ideas
• demonstrate an ability to organise and prioritise, with the potential to develop into the Studio Director role
• have clear and demonstratable evidence of effective team-working

Interview process

Shortlisted candidates will be invited for an initial assessment likely to take place in the first week in September and callbacks are likely to be week beginning 16th September.  These will all take place in person at BBC London Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1A 1AA

About the BBC

The BBC is committed to redeploying employees seeking suitable alternative employment within the BBC for different reasons and they will be given priority consideration ahead of other applicants.  Priority consideration means for those employees seeking redeployment their application will be considered alongside anyone else at risk of redundancy, prior to any individuals being considered who are not at risk.

We don’t focus simply on what we do – we also care how we do it. Our values and the way we behave are important to us.  Please make sure you’ve read about our values and behaviours here.

Diversity matters at the BBC.  We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our employees to thrive and achieve their full potential.

We want to attract the broadest range of talented people to be part of the BBC – whether that’s to contribute to our programming or our wide range of non-production roles.  The more diverse our workforce, the better able we are to respond to and reflect our audiences in all their diversity.

We are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief.  We will consider flexible working requests for all roles, unless operational requirements prevent otherwise.

To find out more about Diversity and Inclusion at the BBC, please click here.