Deputy Director – Radio and Live Events

BFBS has an exciting opportunity for a talented leader with strong operational skills, demonstrable strategic thinking and significant career experience within the radio industry to join us in an important senior role.

Supporting our Director of Broadcasting and Entertainment, you’ll be a seasoned manager able to provide clear direction and take day-to-day responsibility for a strong radio management team, 70 + staff and additional freelance suppliers.  You’ll head the operational delivery of our national radio brand, our second service BFBS Radio 2, BFBS Gurkha Radio and more than 20 local stations across the UK and in British military bases overseas, driving the vision to continue to serve existing audiences and reach new listeners.

You’ll be used to dealing with complex problems, tight budgets & timescales and competing priorities, so analytical thinking and confident judgement are essential skills.  You’ll be an excellent communicator with real world experience in multiple stakeholder relations management, with a positive approach and a passion for your craft and our audiences.  Looking after our people, developing their on-air performance, managing remote teams, and taking responsibility for their careers and moves around the world will also form significant elements of the role.

You’ll also be a key collaborator in designing future strategy, motivating your teams to align and evolve operations against a rapidly changing landscape.

We’ll expect you to understand audience habit and trends as well as the technical developments available to support future digital and linear audio programme making.

You’ll have a strong editorial background, be used to developing creative content ideas, commissioning where necessary and able to feed back to staff and suppliers on their performance and content.

We want you to innovate, streamline and be a champion of new ways of working.  You’ll also understand the regulatory landscape, be a confident negotiator and ideally, familiar with third party rights agreements.

You’ll also use your management experience to support a small team who provide live shows and experiential events to the British military and to BFBS’s radio stations, to raise morale and have fun with audiences.

We’re a charity, so it’s important you share our common values in going above and beyond every day to make a difference to those we serve, recognising the value of public service broadcasting, connecting communities and supporting the morale and wellbeing of the armed forces and their families.

If you have extensive experience in a management role leading multiple radio stations simultaneously, have delivered a broad editorial brief focussed on music, entertainment & speech and can show us you have a wealth of audio industry experience & advanced people skills, we’d love to hear from you.

The role is hybrid, based at our network centre near Gerrard’s Cross in Buckinghamshire with some home-working.  The successful candidate will also be willing to undertake short term, regular travel in the UK and overseas.

The salary will reflect the seniority and complexity of the role.

For an informal conversation and more information, please contact Nicky Ness, Director of Broadcasting & Entertainment at nicky.ness@bfbs.com.

Closing date: Friday 17th March 2023

Interview dates: Monday 27th March and Tuesday 28th March,  in person at BFBS, Chalfont Grove, Narcot Lane, Chalfont St Peter, Bucks, SL9 8TN.

Why work for us?

BFBS is an exciting and rewarding place to work. We are committed to looking after our people, helping them to develop their skills and build successful careers.

For further detail and to apply, please go to https://about.bfbs.com/deputy-director-bfbs-radio-live-events

What we offer

We offer a competitive employee benefits package that has been designed to support your health and well-being, and care for you financially. This includes a generous holiday entitlement, flexible/hybrid working, family friendly policies and an employee assistance programme.

We are a modern, vibrant and forward-thinking organisation and attract talented people to join and develop at BFBS, where we strive to create a diverse and collaborative working environment where everyone can contribute, learn and be themselves. We have a number of networks run by our community of colleagues, including Wellbeing, and Diversity and Inclusion.

All applicants must be able to demonstrate current eligibility to work in the UK.