Antiques Roadshow, Songs of Praise and Young Musician of the Year will be put out to competitive tender. This forms part of our commitment to competition and requirement to contest more of the BBC’s TV programmes.

We will publish invitation to tenders for Antiques Roadshow and Songs of Praise next month, with the invitation to tender for Young Musician of the Year to follow later in the autumn.

BBC commissioning will invite pitches from producers and a full list of eligibility criteria and requirements for the shows will be openly shared with all suppliers. The BBC will retain all Intellectual Property rights for the programmes, which will continue to be shown on the BBC, but the tendering process will decide which supplier makes the programmes.

David Pembrey, Chief Operating Officer, BBC Content says: “These programmes are important brands for the BBC and valued by audiences. The three tenders form part of our commitment to competition, and alongside our rolling commissioning briefs provide a significant range of opportunities for producers to pitch for.”

The tendering of returning series forms part of the Compete or Compare strategy launched by the BBC in 2014, which underlined the BBC’s commitment to commission the best programmes for audiences, regardless of who makes them.

Songs of Praise was previously put out to tender in 2016 and was awarded to Avanti and Nine Lives who have worked in partnership for over five years delivering many successful episodes of Songs of Praise. Both companies have now agreed to bring their partnership to an end so the programme is being put out to competitive tender once again.

The requirements for each tender are communicated at the time of publication, with enough time for suppliers to do appropriate research and preparation.