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Pitches wanted from writers outside the audio world (documentary) (worldwide) | ~$2,000 to $15,000 per piece
🕑 Added 2025-07-22 21:00:27 +0000 UTCCOMPANY/PUBLICATION: BBC WORLD SERVICE
Deadline: 21 August 2025
Dennis Funk, Founder/Director of Written in Air, is looking for pitches:
A new window for pitching audio documentaries is now open! Read more about this opportunity and find out how to pitch below. This year I’m interested in getting more pitches from writers and journalists outside the audio world. So please share with your network of freelance friends!
PITCH CALLOUT Nº 4
I’m going to try to keep it short this week because there are many emails coming soon and I don’t want you to feel spammed.
First though, a massive thanks to everyone who has already subscribed to the paid version of Written In Air — or bought a cassette or paper magazine or the digital album! The stories aren’t even available yet and that trust and confidence in this idea means the world to me and all the people involved in making this first issue a reality. Your support is greatly appreciated and it is paving the way for more to come. I cannot wait to start getting stories in your ears later this month.
If you haven’t moved to the paid version, don’t worry, you’ll still be getting emails every Thursday during the release of Issue 1. Those newsletters will have behind-the-scenes write-ups about that week’s featured audio and listenable previews to tease your ossicles.
Also, I’ll be doing a special giveaway for annual subscribers and donors starting later this month. I’ll shout about it through Substack, but will probably be more vocal about this raffle (yes, a raffle!) on the Written In Air Instagram account. Give it a follow if you’re over there and want to learn more or just wanna see my mug in some silly videos when the time comes.
Oh… and if you are new here and just want to listen and not to pitch stories, you can unsubscribe to this section of Pitch Callout emails. That’s done where you manage your subscriptions.
All right, on to the main event for this here newsletter — pitch opportunities!
PITCH IDEAS TO BBC WORLD SERVICE
BBC World Service’s annual commissioning round is now open! There are a bunch of different strands to submit story ideas into via Written In Air, and I will do my best to break them all down here. As always, you can find more info about each of these in the commissioning brief for this round.
The Documentary
(30 & 60 minute programmes)
This is the home for, you guessed it, documentaries. These one-off, reported docs have a global focus, featuring people and stories from all over the world. These generally feature reporters telling stories with tape from the location. There’s a lot of serious, news-focused topics covered on this series, but there’s also room for quirky ideas (like this one we did about dogs last year), science and tech. Stories about the natural world do well here. There is, however, a very specific ask that pitches do not focus on UK or USA news. Ideas from those two countries are not totally ignored, but in my experience those pitches need to either have an international perspective or unprecedented access to sources in order to be successful. For examples, there’s a doc from the studio coming out in a few weeks that is mostly set in New Jersey, but talks about a global scientific issue.
Documentary pitches can be for 30 or 60 minute pieces, but will only be one episode. If you think you have a two- or three-part concept, consider how it might work within a single hour.
Aside from the general documentary category, there’s a sub-strand specifically for solutions journalism (23 minutes). If your idea involves saving or fixing the world, that’s your spot.
In the Studio
(30 minute programmes)
In the Studio goes behind the scenes with a notable artists in the process of making something. These can be designers, visual artists, architects, directors, writers, musicians and more. The idea behind this show is to learn about these artists and find what inspires them while they do what they do. I really love this episode about poet Ada Limón writing a poem for NASA.
Heart & Soul
(30 minute programmes)
A weekly documentary series that looks at the personal experiences through faith and spirituality. These can be about shifts in religious communities, an individual experience or how faith is affecting a community or region. Generally, they are reported and cover a range of topics, like how guns were dividing a church after a mass shooting or another about the impacts of ayahuasca tourism.
Witness History
(9 minute programmes)
These are fun little programmes to make! The show features a voice (or voices) who witnessed something historical and tell the story of that event from their perspective. It’s not strictly political history (see this one about the original script for Back to the Future), so you can think outside the box when it comes to the past. But more traditional episodes (like this one Written In Air collaborated on last year) feature a voice who was there the day something big happened. Often these are tied to anniversaries of events, like the 10th, 25th, 50th and other numbers divisible by five. Now that we’re doing maths, there’s a 10 year cutoff for what counts as history. So the central event should be 2016/17 or earlier, depending on when the episode gets published. Also, there is a subcategory here called Sporting Witness for, right again, moments in sport.
That’s the lot of the categories for this round.
Still not sure where your pitch fits? Send me a note.
HOW DOES-ETH ONE PITCH-ETH?
To pitch to the World Service through Written In Air, use this form over on the website or click that little button below to get there. [hello, little button]
On that page there’s info about word and paragraph limits and all that jazz so you can get as close to the final submission as possible. Maybe the most important detail on there is the deadline — 21 AUGUST 2025 — which gives you a bit more than a month to ponder and draft, ponder and draft, pon…. don’t ponder too long or you’ll miss the deadline.
After the 21st everything is reviewed and you should get an update about your pitch by the 29th. The selected ideas are then edited over a few weeks before their final submission to the network.
If you have any questions about the process or want to gut check a potential pitch first, please feel free to reach out.
A FINAL THOUGHT BUBBLE
This year, I’d really love to get more ideas from arts writers and other journalists who have not quite dabbled in audio. That’s because 1) I don’t usually get many pitches for In the Studio, which is a space with so much creative potential, and 2) category aside, I think it’s a great way to pair writers with some of the many talented audio producers out there. Tell your freelance friends about this open door, or better still — collaborate with them on pitches.
And a kind reminder not be discouraged if your idea gets rejected at some point in this process. I am incredibly proud that more than 50% of the pieces in the first issue of Written In Air are rejections from previous pitch rounds. Some more than once. A ‘no’ does not mean ‘not good’, it sometimes means ‘not now’ or ‘not here’. Even if they don’t get through I save all these great ideas because rainy days do come eventually. I just wish those days rained money so we could make ‘em all for the magazine! But if you subscribe…
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CONTACT INFORMATION:
Submissions: Via the webform
Website: https://www.writteninair.com/pitch
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