[Brekkie]

Truly the programme was always doomed to fail at 9pm. The one hour of the day when TV across the schedules is at their strongest means there's no way you can expect even the most loyal audience to tune it at 9 every night like they do at 6 and 10. Arguably it's hurt BBC Scotland as a channel itself. The slot they could have used to their advantage to showcase their variety of genres to an audience flicking through the EPG was constantly lumbered with news.

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.

It being a bad slot also makes it a good slot though - there is a floating audience around at 9pm and it's a fixture there that, in theory if not in practice, potential viewers would be familar with. Also it being a competitive slot means by sticking the news there they're not wasting new programming there.

That said 9pm is nowhere near as strong as it once was - yes, the big shows can get 4-5m+ there but more and more often everything lands below 2m nowadays.


As for the channel as a whole I personally would see it axed and opts return to BBC2. Think that gives them more flexibility and personally I think BBC Wales is stronger for putting flagship content on BBC1 and using BBC2 for live sport etc. than BBC Scotland has been for having the extra chanbel.