[Stooky Bill]

Historically, there were some local opt-outs for mainland Scotland too (i.e. Radio Highland, Radio Aberdeen, Radio Tweed) which around the early 90s were parred back to just local news bulletins - there were six regions, IIRC - at breakfast, lunch and Drivetime.

I'm not whether those regions still do news opts - but Radio Orkney and Radio Shetland do at least three opts a day (a half-hour news programme, an hour-long evening show and a shared lunchtime bulletin)

Yes they still do news bulletin opt outs during breakfast and drivetime. Only Orkney and Shetland appear as seperate streams on Sounds I think the others are clipped and put on the BBC website somewhere

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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 imagine it's partly because it's easier to do it at 9. 7pm is a quick turnaround from Reporting Scotland, 8pm clashes with An La (comes from Inverness not Glasgow but still not ideal) and 10pm clashes with the network news

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.

You've seen the set.... There's not much set! The set itself costs nothing once it's bought and installed, same with the studio equipment until it needs renewing.

Nice location that, a shame that they didn't move Reporting Scotland to it permanently. I imagine they'll keep it for now due to the quick turnaround at 7pm and Sundays and there's an election coming up