Martin Davidson, currently the commissioning editor for in-house specialist factual, and responsible for such shows as The Human Planet, Darwin's Dangerous Idea and The Genius of Photography, will take up the role of commissioning editor for history and business.
Davidson first joined the BBC in 1988 working on a number of shows including The Late Show and Reputations before becoming the executive producer on A History of Britain. He joined RDF Media in 2001 as head of history before taking up his commissioning editor role back at the corporation.
Jo Ball, currently the commissioning editor for features and formats, independents, joined the BBC three months ago from Channel 4 where she was the commissioning editor for features. Whilst at Channel 4 Ball oversaw the likes of The F-Word, Grand Designs and Gok's Fashion Fix. Before joining Channel she was creative director at Ricochet, the indie behind It's Me or the Dog.
Under the shake-up of the division all the commissioning editors will report to Emma Swain, the new head of knowledge commissioning, who was appointed last month. In turn Swain will report to the controller of knowledge commissioning George Entwistle.
Entwistle said: “I'm very pleased to announce Martin and Jo's roles as we build the factual commissioning structure. Martin is an expert in his field and will help to define a new generation of History and Business programming. Jo Ball has an instinctive flair for popular factual programming and some strong ideas about the future development of features within the Knowledge strategy.”
The restructure of the department was announced by Entwistle at the start of last month, which moved to a genre-based system from being split between indies and in-house commissioning.
Under the new system there will be eight divisions with each one overseen by a specific commissioning editor.
Adam Kemp, the BBC's in-house commissioning editor for arts, music and religion, has already decided to leave the corporation.
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