20,000 viewers tune in to BBC news... but 130,000 watch STV
THE BBC Scotland channel’s flagship TV news programme is attracting less than a fifth of the audience of STV rival Scotland Tonight.
Corporation chiefs told MPs yesterday the BBC Scotland channel is doing ‘fantastically well’ after launching in February 2019 and has ‘exceeded expectations and targets set for it’.
But they were forced to admit that the news programme The Nine, presented by Rebecca Curran, pulls in only 20,000 viewers a night compared with the 130,000 who watch Scotland Tonight on STV.
Gary Smith, head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland, said average audience figures for the show are ‘about 20,000’, adding that this is ‘very good for a news programme on a digital channel’.
Speaking to MPs on Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee, he said: ‘We have a weekly reach for The Nine of 160,000 people, which we’re very pleased with. That means, across the week, 160,000 people dip in to part of a programme at least once.’
But Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross asked him if the programme has ‘achieved what you want to achieve?’.
STV confirmed last night the number of viewers for their news programme was 130,000. Mr Ross told the BBC Scotland bosses: ‘You said you’re really happy with the numbers so someone at STV must be delighted by the numbers they get.’
Mr Ross went on to say that ‘an awful lot of resources go into The Nine’, asking if this is matched by the audience numbers.
Mr Smith told him: ‘The fact that we have an hour to get properly under the skin of stories and to do interviews around stories to make it more current affairs than news. I think it does a very good job there.’
He added that the programme has allowed the broadcaster to combine experienced staff with new talent, and said it has also allowed the BBC to ‘take risks with our journalism, to tell stories in different ways and to do different kinds of stories that in a more limited output we weren’t able to do’. He insisted: ‘For all these reasons I would say it was a success.’
Scottish Conservative Chief Whip Stephen Kerr said: ‘BBC Scotland enjoys a huge budget but it is clear from this admission that people are largely not tuning into The Nine.The bosses at the BBC seemed at pains to try to defend these figures which have continued to slump. Licence fee payers will be rightly questioning why so much money is being spent.’
It was also revealed around a quarter of a million Scots had tuned in to watch Nicola Sturgeon’s briefings at the height of the pandemic.
While opposition MSPs criticised BBC Scotland over its broadcasting of the briefings, Mr Smith said the corporation had ‘decided it is right to put these briefings on because they contained important public health information’.
‘I would say it was a success’