[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!