The BBC is more Scottish than STV

I READ today of the Scots being dissatisfied with the content of BBC programmes (“Scots are most dissatisfied in UK with the BBC”, The Herald, October 27) and turned to the TV pages to see just with what they were dissatisfied.

I find Friday’s programmes on the BBC’S two main channels to contain Landward and The River both mainly, if not wholly, Scottish in location and content; various housebuying shows and antique programmes that contain regular Scottish venues, presenters and contestants, as well as local news programmes often repeating content from prior Uk-wide broadcasts from a Scottish angle. As I write this, Countryfile has just been referring to Bannockburn in its item on Edward I.

I look at STV: Scottish News and er, Scottish Weather. Can we expect a satisfaction survey on our “national” broadcaster?

David Hall,

6 Ardenvohr, Main Road, Cardross.

OF course we are collectively dissatisfied with the BBC. Apart from stereotyping and using other nationalities to portray Scots, they use Central Belt characters in northern settings where the accent is completely inappropriate, but where they really irritate me is the unintentional and casual regional racism: “Here we have a lovely cake from Mabel in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire and this one is from Fiona in Kirkcaldy, Scotland,” and so on. So it is never Keith from Luton, England. Or Margaret from Exeter, England. But it is almost always Peter from Leven, Scotland, or Marie from East Kilbride, Scotland.

We are told we are a valued part of an indivisible Union, but the BBC unconsciously discriminates against us in this way on a daily basis, though I am sure no insult is intended. The BBC does not view us as part of a cohesive national identity and in so doing reinforce the desire in many of us for self determination.no wonder we are viewed as prickly, I certainly am.

Ian M Forrest

Dalveen, Garvock Road, Laurencekirk.