BBC Studios Kids & Family announces new senior appointments

BBC Studios Kids & Family has announced the appointments of Katharina Pietzsch as VP Content Sales, BBC Studios Kids & Family; and Kelly Wood in the newly created role of Head of Content Strategy, BBC Studios Kids & Family.

These senior appointments at the heart of Kids & Family complete the new division’s senior management restructure designed to support its ambitious growth plans.

Pietzsch’s role will see her lead the sales and co-production strategy for the BBC Studios Kids & Family portfolio. Working closely with the content and production teams in this senior client facing role she will manage priority accounts with responsibility for enhancing sales revenue and profit targets across co-productions, commissions and tape sale activity globally.

Leading the high-performing content strategy team, Wood will work closely with other BBC Studios Kids & Family leads to define global and local content strategies and roll-out plans for its brands on BBC Studios global channels, third party services and digital platforms to ensure each Kids & Family show achieves maximum reach with young audiences.

Pietzsch joins the division from ZDF Studios where she was a Director in its Junior department and brings extensive experience of international sales, co-productions and co-commissions of kids and family programmes. At ZDFS she was responsible for negotiating pre-sales, co-productions and commissions for all key-account, pan-national, Scandinavian and global clients and deals and also developed custom made projects with selected producers worldwide. Pietzsch originally joined ZDF Studios as a management trainee and has worked as Acquisitions Manager for ZDF and KiKA and Sales and Coproduction Director for ZDF S’s kids & family content.

Wood brings a wealth of knowledge to BBC Studios Kids & Family. Her previous role as editorial lead at Paramount Kids and Family UK and Ireland, saw her overseeing content and programming strategy for the Nickelodeon brand across linear and non-linear platforms in the region. There she was responsible for communicating priorities and developing and executing content strategies to drive the performance and brand health of Nickelodeon and core franchises across all touchpoints. Prior to this, Wood worked at Channel 4 and media agency OMD.

Announcing the appointments, Cecilia Persson, Managing Director, BBC Studios Kids & Family, says: “I am delighted that Katharina and Kelly are bringing their considerable experience and insight to help up us deliver our ambition to create high quality content and build globally appealing brands that leave a lasting impression and have the power to make a difference to the lives of kids and their families everywhere.”

Katharina Pietzsch said: “I’m really excited to join BBC Studios Kids & Family at a key period of growth for the business. I greatly admire the BBC’s globally-renowned, distinctive content and can’t wait to start supporting the division’s brands and helping them grow and develop internationally.”

Kelly Wood added: “I’m passionate about young audiences and developing new and innovative ways to reach them. I am so excited to be working with this incredibly creative team to help develop strategies which will create tomorrow’s ground-breaking, impactful and cherished content.”