BBC CHIEFS ROCKED BY SCOTTISH SWITCH-OFF
Watchdog’s damning verdict on ‘failing’ broadcaster ...as audiences turn to streaming services instead
VIEWERS and listeners in Scotland are being ‘failed’ by the BBC, critics warned last night, after the release of a damning report.
Watchdog Ofcom said some satisfaction ratings with the corporation north of the Border are the lowest in the UK.
Fewer hours are spent tuning in to BBC TV and radio, while the number of hours devoted to news has slumped. The findings come after the launch of BBC Scotland’s £32million digital channel, which has been criticised over poor audience figures.
Ofcom also warned that the BBC may not survive in its current form unless it takes dramatic action to win back a ‘lost generation’ of younger audiences.
Last night, Scottish Conservative
culture spokesman Rachael Hamilton said: ‘The BBC is an important institution which provides news, entertainment and important journalism in Scotland.
‘But it has to take heed of studies like this and find out why Scots are less impressed than anyone else in the UK, which suggests the BBC is failing Scottish viewers and listeners.’
The Ofcom annual report on the BBC for 2018-19 said ‘people in Scotland continue to rate the BBC less favourably than people in the other nations’.
Only 39 per cent of respondents to an Ofcom survey in Scotland rated the BBC highly for providing a ‘good range of programmes and content that represents where I live’ – the lowest in the UK.
Just over one in three (36 per cent) gave the BBC a high rating for programming which featured an ‘authentic portrayal of the region where I live’ – again the UK’s lowest rating, down from 37 per cent the previous year.
There was a rise in people giving a high rating to the statement the BBC was producing an ‘authentic portrayal of people like me’ [rather than the region where they lived] from 39 to 42 per cent.
But Ofcom said ‘representation and portrayal of Scotland, in terms of both people and places, is considered to be a particular weakness’. The time spent per day watching BBC TV in Scotland fell from 1 hour and 20 minutes to 1 hour 13 minutes between 2017-18 and 2018-19. For BBC radio, the fall was starker in Scotland, from 2 hours 2 minutes per day to 1 hour 55 minutes.
In February, the BBC launched a controversial channel which has been criticised for low viewing figures and filling half of its output with repeats.
Ofcom said the BBC Scotland channel will ‘feature more prominently in our next report when we will report on a full year of it being broadcast’.
In August, the Mail revealed BBC Scotland viewer numbers had slumped by more than 45 per cent since its February launch to an average of just over 21,000 in July.
Viewing figures for The Nine – the news show presented by Martin Geissler and Rebecca Curran – have fallen as low as 2,700.
Last night, media commentator Professor Tim Luckhurst, a former BBC editor, said: ‘Innovations such as the new BBC Scotland channel do not appear to have won it new friends. These are tough times for the BBC.’
The report comes after Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) figures showed BBC Radio Scotland total listeners fell nearly 80,000.
The ‘audience reach’ was 776,000 between July and September – down 9 per cent from 854,000 in the same quarter last year.
Overall audience share for BBC Radio Scotland – whose presenters include news anchor Sally Magnusson, former rugby international John Beattie and Deacon Blue frontman Ricky Ross – in the third quarter of 2019 was 5.9 per cent, down from 8 per cent for the same period last year.
Meanwhile, Ofcom said justification for the licence fee could become unsustainable if young people no longer regard the BBC as an essential part of their viewing. The growth of streaming services such as Netflix has seen people desert the BBC in droves.
Ofcom has now written to BBC director general Tony Hall telling him to make clear how it will respond to its concerns. A spokesman for the BBC in Scotland said: ‘Improving the way we represent and portray the nations and regions of the UK has been a priority for the BBC.
‘As Ofcom’s report only covers until March 2019, it doesn’t include the full impact of the BBC Scotland channel, which is playing a vital role in reaching unique and younger audiences in Scotland.
‘While there’s still more to do, we are also pleased to see that Ofcom found audiences in Scotland say they are increasingly seeing themselves authentically portrayed in BBC content.’