How to save BBC Scotland

The sad thing about the BBC’s dedicated Scottish channel, which has suffered another collapse in viewing figures, is that it’s actually rather good. Their flagship news programme The Nine, broadcast from BBC Scotland’s cavernous HQ at Pacific Quay on the Clyde, is very professional. It is presented by the excellent Martin Geissler, whose name you won’t find on the Daily Mail’s plutocratic presenter list of shame. They don’t pay that kind of money up here — and what they do get paid, they have to work twice as hard for.

When I was asked to come north from Westminster to present the Holyrood Live programmes many years ago, I found the staffing was about one third of what I’d been used to in the BBC’s political HQ at Millbank. Well, how else could they produce an entire channel for £43 million a year? Launched in 2018, BBC Scotland was supposed to answer the complaints of Scottish nationalists and others that the BBC was too London-centric and quell demands for a Scottish opt out from the Six O’Clock News. It did that alright. You rarely hear demands now for a ‘Scottish Six’. 

However, the new channel hasn’t stopped SNP activists on attacking ‘Yoon’ (unionist) bias in UK network shows like Question Time or berating the BBC’s Scottish Political Editor James Cook as ‘scum’ and a ‘traitor‘ on the streets. Perhaps the only difference is that now the BBC also incurs accusations of  pro-SNP bias.  

But the fledgling channel makes quality Scottish programmes very cheaply. And not just in news and current affairs. BBC Scotland’s first big drama commission — Neil Forsyth’s comedy thriller Guilt — has been a huge success.

BBC Scotland’s countryside and heritage programmes are better than they have any right to be. It has appealingly gallus attitude to factual programming. Take the Corner Shop Cook-Off, where top chefs were required to cook gourmet meals from ingredients bought solely from the local corner shop for £15. There’s a lot of broad Scots comedy too and, of course, the footie.  

So why doesn’t anyone watch it? Sometimes audience figures are so low that they can barely be registered. Recent editions of The Nine have reportedly had fewer than 12,000 viewers. Overall viewing of BBC Scotland is down 38 per cent since 2020. 

Part of the problem is branding — a lot of people barely know of the channel’s existence. It lacks an identity. ‘BBC Scotland’ used also to refer to the handful of Scottish opt-out programmes from the UK network. There’s been precious little promotion of the new channel as a national success story. Despite this, the BBC insist that one in eight Scots do manage to watch the channel and that it has been a huge shot in the arm for Scotland’s creative sector.

But the real source of BBC Scotland’s misfortune is the same implacable force that is wrecking the BBC as a whole: competition. Nationally and regionally, the corporation is being consumed by steaming services like Netflix which scoop up the available eyeballs and leave little left for the major UK channels, let alone Scotland’s. Even the former SNP First Minister Alex Salmond is getting in on the act. This week he will launch his own digital nine o’clock show ‘Scotland Speaks’ on social media. We are yet to see how many viewers Salmond’s latest venture will rack up.

Commentators like the former BBC producer Professor Tim Luckhurst of Durham University say the BBC Scotland channel is ‘a dangerous waste of money’ and doomed in the forthcoming era of licence fee austerity. He is almost certainly wrong. BBC Scotland costs so little to produce — around  0.7 per cent of the BBC’s UK budget — that it wouldn’t be worth incurring the wrath of the SNP government by scrapping it. Scottish nationalists may not watch Scotland’s dedicated digital channel overly much, but they would transform overnight into its most dedicated and ardent supporters if anyone suggested axing it. And actually, if the BBC really wants to increase BBC Scotland’s profile and viewership, it should spread a rumour of exactly that…