[Brekkie]

They could always introduce a streaming channel which basically simulcast BBC1/2 Scotland content on a dedicated BBC Scotland stream then plugged in the evening gaps.

[interestednovice]

I'll never understand why they persisted with 9pm and didn't try another slot much sooner.

I wonder if this will be the end of its separate studio and they'll do an ITV London on the Reporting Scotland set? That separate set must be a substantial cost when they've got an unused standing set in the same building.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the set is mothballed or ends up being used only for Newsnight’s occasional visits to Scotland!

The 9pm start was purely for resource-related reasons. It was the time of the day when the BBC had the least demand on reporters, as network news was not on air and the 9pm hour has long been a simulcast between BBC World News & the BBC News Channel (even prior to the new channel). It’s also always been part of either Outside Source or The Context. Both of those programmes are not reporter-led, so the idea was that flagship editors and reporters would/could appear on The Nine. This was because, other than BBC World News’ aforementioned non-reporter heavy programming, no other BBC output was live at the time.

In the beginning, they made a lot of effort with this and people like the North America Editor used to appear live. Later on, the BBC appeared to effectively give up on the Nine and this happened less and less. The same sort of resourcing issues and difficulties with scheduling and sharing live feeds etc would be massive issues for a would-be “Scottish Six” to overcome.

[GraemeT88]

The set will still be in use for ‘the Sunday show’ I’d imagine on Sunday mornings bbc1? So would make sense to continue to use for the new ‘seven’

[Globaltraffic24]

At the end of the day Scotland is part of the UK (and certainly has more in common with the rest of us than Northern Ireland) so the flagship UK bulletin should be broadcast there. The fact that the BBC aren’t willing to stand up to the SNP and tell them that Scottish licence payers are paying for exactly the same service as the rest of us and therefore will receive exactly the same amount of local content is the only reason for BBC Scotland existing.

OK. Let’s calm down a little and avoid getting overly political here. This a TV pres forum, not a political space. However, it’s worth clearing up a few of your inaccurate points (with a side note that I’m not an SNP supporter or spokesperson. I just can’t stand lazy attacks on anyone or anything).

1 - The SNP was never a big advocate for the BBC Scotland channel. It reluctantly supported it, but with a massive health warning that it suspected the BBC was launching the whole thing in the hope it would fail, and the argument for ‘more Scottish programming’ could be rubbished by saying “we tried that before and look what happened”.

2 - As others have said, there is a strong case for more devolution of domestic news programming. It’s fine when the news is more globally focused but ‘tea time’ news often has a UK skew, which regularly means irrelevant coverage of England-only stories. It happens a lot and must actually frustrate the reporters most as they now endlessly need to book end their reports by effectively saying “please note this only applies to England”.

3 - The Scottish license fee payer doesn’t receive local radio, so has in fact been under served. Obviously this is less of an issue now with BBC local radio in England facing cuts, but you can’t compare apples with oranges when it comes to service provision.


Hope that’s cleared a few things up. Personally, my frustration boiled over when this channel originally launched. As others have said, the presentation of the news is pretty good, but the closure of BBC 2 Scotland for this channel made no sense to me. Additional Scottish programming on BBC 2 was always the answer. We’ll almost certainly see the return of BBC 2 Scotland and closure of the Scotland channel, making this entire project a waste of time.

In terms of news provision, let’s get shows like Debate Night and perhaps a new more in depth late night news programme on BBC 2 Scotland and be done with it.

[interestednovice]

I don’t want to stray beyond pres discussion more than necessary. But I will say that I believe the SNP’s official position in the past, certainly in one of their “position papers”, was that they wanted the BBC to voluntarily give up their BBC Scotland assets to assist in the formation of a new “SBC” (working title) which would replace the BBC in Scotland.

The BBC cast doubt over the feasibility of the plan and the idea to launch the BBC Scotland channel was floated not long after. The BBC said it was part of their commitment to Scottish audiences, to bring them more localised content. However, it was widely suspected to be a way of attempting to placate calls for an “SBC”.

Those are just some of the factors that were up for discussion at the time. I’ll leave any political comments there though as I don’t want to get into the rights and wrongs of any particular political argument.

I also want to add that, for many Scottish people, “England only stories” are not irrelevant as all parts of the U.K. are heavily connected and many people will have at least a passing interest in what is happening elsewhere, due to family and friends perhaps living there, so whether those stories are actually still quite relevant is up for debate. Just as the national bulletins reported on the strikes in Northern Ireland, for example, as a major U.K. story.

The Scottish audience do additionally have more than one Scottish-specific radio station and more investment in their news and current affairs than an English region would, with some extra opt-out programmes which English regions don’t get, and BBC Alba, so the local radio argument more than balances out.

[BN88]

They gave it a good shot - but as has been said, it was never going to set the heather alight. It's been interesting over the past couple of years how the likes of Martin Geisler and others who were the 'faces' of the The Nine have moved on to other (higher rating) BBC Scotland output.

No doubt we'll see some politicians wail about it and call again for a Scottish Six. Plus, I really doubt you're going to have an audience hungry to watch an hour long Scotland-based programme 6-7; the current set up might not be perfect, but it works.

I'd be far more interested in getting BBC Two Scotland back, and a regular political programme - the early days of devolution (when the powers of Holyrood were fewer) had a far better choice of political programmes from Scotland. Yes, Newsnight Scotland wasn't my first choice back in the day - but looking back, it was better to have that than any of the imitations (Scotland 2014 anyone?) we had since then. There was the original Politics Scotland with Iain Macwhirter (Thursday evenings??), Politics Show Scotland, and of course Holyrood Live.

The new TV/radio podcast mentioned could be quite interesting though. I'm a big fan of BBC Podlitical, so hope they do something along those lines; perhaps a Scottish version of Newscast?

[Globaltraffic24]

They gave it a good shot - but as has been said, it was never going to set the heather alight. It's been interesting over the past couple of years how the likes of Martin Geisler and others who were the 'faces' of the The Nine have moved on to other (higher rating) BBC Scotland output.

No doubt we'll see some politicians wail about it and call again for a Scottish Six. Plus, I really doubt you're going to have an audience hungry to watch an hour long Scotland-based programme 6-7; the current set up might not be perfect, but it works.

I'd be far more interested in getting BBC Two Scotland back, and a regular political programme - the early days of devolution (when the powers of Holyrood were fewer) had a far better choice of political programmes from Scotland. Yes, Newsnight Scotland wasn't my first choice back in the day - but looking back, it was better to have that than any of the imitations (Scotland 2014 anyone?) we had since then. There was the original Politics Scotland with Iain Macwhirter (Thursday evenings??), Politics Show Scotland, and of course Holyrood Live.

The new TV/radio podcast mentioned could be quite interesting though. I'm a big fan of BBC Podlitical, so hope they do something along those lines; perhaps a Scottish version of Newscast?

I think you’re spot on. We definitely got better shows for Scotland before this channel was launched. The one saving grace has definitely been the opportunity it’s given to new presenters or under used hosts to get better exposure. It’s also benefited Radio Scotland with many of the BBC Scotland presenters now hosting there too.


To the other poster, Im not claiming English only stories are irrelevant, far from it. It’s just more challenging to deliver news that is truly relevant when you have devolution. It also starves English viewers of more probing, local stories, but that’s a bigger debate for another time.

What we can probably all agree is that the BBC needs to get more strategic in its thinking. We seem to now constantly lurch from one reactive impulse decision to the next. It must be exhausting for BBC staffers and takes away from the good things the BBC does. All a bit of a shame really.

[interestednovice]

To the other poster, Im not claiming English only stories are irrelevant, far from it. It’s just more challenging to deliver news that is truly relevant when you have devolution. It also starves English viewers of more probing, local stories, but that’s a bigger debate for another time.

What we can probably all agree is that the BBC needs to get more strategic in its thinking. We seem to now constantly lurch from one reactive impulse decision to the next. It must be exhausting for BBC staffers and takes away from the good things the BBC does. All a bit of a shame really.

Globaltraffic24, sorry if you thought I meant that! What I was trying to say really was that much of the pro Scottish Six argument has been, in the past, that potentially a large number of stories from the network Six wouldn’t necessarily even air in Scotland. Whereas, on a practical level, I tend to think that most people in Scotland would still be interested in most of them - so to do a whole separate programme, when most of the reports would either be similar of the same, would seem like it wasn’t adding much. Far better to spend the resources, as others have said, on more Scottish-specific discussion programmes elsewhere in the schedule instead.

I do think that how you cover news across the U.K. could be, like you say, up for debate. It’s especially more challenging now that all parts of the U.K. can have slightly different arrangements which there wouldn’t be time to fully explain. Your point about English viewers is also a fair one now that Inside Out and We Are England have been axed.

Australia, for example, has several networks which only air one integrated news programme which covers local, regional, national Australian and world news all in one with the same hosts. Of course, many reports are shared across the network for national & international stories. I do wonder if that would work better or worse than the status quo?

Some strategy is needed and, when it comes to news in particular, the BBC hasn’t necessarily had it lately. The merged news channel taking so long to find its feet is another example of this.

But after all of that, I do want to add that I found the Nine a genuinely compelling programme and I am sad for those involved that it didn’t work out better. Well done to the BBC for really trying to give it a proper go!

[all new phil]

Out of interest why doesn’t Scotland (or Wales and Northern Ireland for that matter) have local BBC radio?

[Technologist]

Because the nations have national radio ….. in English everywhere, Welsh and Gaelic .
In Scotland there were about 6 transmitters which had the ability to take a local source