Limited pool of television talent

Sir, - Your correspondent Bryan Auchterlonie (March 6) expresses his dilemma about BBC Scotland very well, but fails to understand it.

He thinks a “Scottish Six” would be a good idea, yet recognises correctly that a sweepout of the existing personnel would be a pre-requisite for it to work satisfactorily.

The problem is that we must allow talented individuals to pursue their own careers. Such is the dearth of true talent in broadcasting generally that anyone showing any real flair is gobbled up by the networks.

The reality is that broadcasting to five million people will never be able to justify the sort of salary that broadcasting to 60-plus million can attract, so it is to recognise this and not to cast a slur on Scotland, far less Scots people, to accept that BBC Scotland will never be up to the mark.

If BBC Scotland is to build a solid news-oriented base, it needs to identify issues where there is a genuinely specific Scottish angle and create current affairs (rather than news) programmes to cover them, not the vapid Timeline nor the thankfully ditched Scotland 2016.

They could begin by not simply re-running items which have already been dealt with adequately by the network news. If they want to be taken seriously they need to ditch their red-top thinking.