Channel is great for Scotland
IT’S great news that the BBC will create a new channel for Scotland.
It’s almost 10 years since such a thing was demanded by the Broadcasting Commission for Scotland.
A country with its own languages, law, parliament, rich culture and history should have its own TV channel alongside the other BBC offerings. We have our own newspapers, after all.
Ireland is able to fund RTE with roughly the equivalent of the licence fee that’s raised in Scotland. And they get radio stations for that as well.
Catalonia in Spain also has its own TV channels, again costing much the same as the licence fee raised in Scotland.
In Scotland we only get to keep 55 per cent of the licence fee gathered here to spend on programmes north of the border. In Northern Ireland they keep 75 per cent and in Wales it’s 95 per cent.
The new channel means more of Scotland’s £320million will stay here, creating good quality jobs, including 80 for journalists.
It will cost £30million a year to run in the evenings. However, the BBC spends twice that amount buying rights to Match of the Day.
Nothing wrong with Match of the Day but if you want quality, you must pay for it.
The BBC say their new Scottish channel will have roughly the same amount to spend as BBC4. It relies on the Beeb’s excellent archive to make documentaries, which is cheap but also produces some great programmes – the one on Johnny’s Cash’s prison gigs the other night was fantastic.
But a Scottish channel cannot survive on news and repeats alone. We also need fresh programmes that reflect our country at the most important point in our history.
Tomorrow in parliament I will welcome the new channel but argue that it is just the start – something I was pleased to hear BBC director-general Tony Hall accept when he appeared before my committee last week.
Finally, the channel should be easy to find. The BBC have asked politicians to ensure that the Digital Economy Bill – currently in the House of Lords – ensures that public service channels are prominent in Electronic Programme Guides.
They should be on page one of the on-screen guide, in my view. You shouldn’t have to wade past shopping channels to find the new BBC Scotland languishing around number 129.
There’s no point in a great new channel if no one can find it.