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BBC Scotland to launch new channel

(February 2017)

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DO
dosxuk
m7891 posted:
As an example, Match of the Day is paid for out of the BBC Sport budget; Sportscene is paid for out of the BBC Scotland budget.


Good luck seeing anything from the eastern counties on match of the day.
PC
p_c_u_k
On the logic that we don't know the presentation or programming yet ... fair, though that's never held us back in the past. My issue is with comments which degenerate into comments about gerrymandering or anti-Scottishness, or rants about political parties. I know this is potentially a heated issue but this forum is better than that.
M7
m7891
m7891 posted:
As an example, Match of the Day is paid for out of the BBC Sport budget; Sportscene is paid for out of the BBC Scotland budget.


Good luck seeing anything from the eastern counties on match of the day.


So none of those teams enter the FA Cup?

The point is, that English football rights are paid for from a "national" BBC Sport budget, while Scottish football rights are paid for from the BBC Scotland budget. That means comparing the budget of an English region with that of BBC Scotland is like comparing apples with oranges.
UK
ukpetey
m7891 posted:
m7891 posted:
As an example, Match of the Day is paid for out of the BBC Sport budget; Sportscene is paid for out of the BBC Scotland budget.


Good luck seeing anything from the eastern counties on match of the day.


So none of those teams enter the FA Cup?

The point is, that English football rights are paid for from a "national" BBC Sport budget, while Scottish football rights are paid for from the BBC Scotland budget. That means comparing the budget of an English region with that of BBC Scotland is like comparing apples with oranges.

Ok, I may be a bit thick here, but I have a couple of questions. I realise I may just be oversimplifying things, but it all looks pretty straightforward to me. Why couldn't the BBC:

1. Pay for all sport from the BBC Sport budget? It does seem odd how things are currently funded. It's only 'pots' of money, it all comes from the same source overall. Surely sport is sport, no matter how large the audience?

2. Introduce a 'Scottish Six'? Is the lack of a SS down to politics, facilities, capacity, staffing or something else? I fail to see how it could be difficult!
NG
noggin Founding member
m7891 posted:

Good luck seeing anything from the eastern counties on match of the day.


So none of those teams enter the FA Cup?

The point is, that English football rights are paid for from a "national" BBC Sport budget, while Scottish football rights are paid for from the BBC Scotland budget. That means comparing the budget of an English region with that of BBC Scotland is like comparing apples with oranges.

Ok, I may be a bit thick here, but I have a couple of questions. I realise I may just be oversimplifying things, but it all looks pretty straightforward to me. Why couldn't the BBC:

1. Pay for all sport from the BBC Sport budget? It does seem odd how things are currently funded. It's only 'pots' of money, it all comes from the same source overall. Surely sport is sport, no matter how large the audience?


I think the argument for the current situation isn't based on audience side, but content availability.

The FA Cup and Premiership highlights are broadcast to the whole of the UK. It therefore makes sense that they are funded from a central pot.

The Scottish football stuff shown on Sportscene is only broadcast, I believe, on BBC services within Scotland. (Sure, if you have satellite, you can currently watch out-of-region and out-of-nation services - but if you are on Freeview, and possibly Cable?, you can't. ) As such I can see the logic in funding it from BBC Scotland's budget, as it is for Scottish audiences only. AIUI BBC Scotland itself has decided to purchase those rights for Scottish viewers, not a UK-wide audience. As such surely the funding should come from moneys allocated to Scottish audiences?

If the Scottish football was networked - I could see the argument for the national BBC Sport department funding it. In the current situation I can totally understand the reasoning behind it.

Of course you could re-allocate the money from BBC Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, give it to the nationwide, network, BBC Sport department and let them fund it instead, but what would the point be? It would simply remove some autonomy from the nations sport departments?
NG
noggin Founding member
Something that's needed is an assessment as to where on Freeview this is going to go. The only place I can think is space vacated in the evening by removing the broadcast red button service during the BBC Scotland broadcast hours.

It looks to be mainly PSB1 for that matter - but bandwidth has been constrained. In Scotland - you have the usual 7 BBC streams, plus BBC Alba which eats on BBC Radio service airtime in Scotland (Radio 1, 2, 3, World Service, Radio Nan Gaidheal).

I'm suspecting that it could be another cutback to the BBC Radio roster - though in recent years they've made better use of compression techniques to fit in the other stations including Radio 4 and 1Xtra. However I'm suspicious. Their mux capacity is full, and it may be a serviceable move to either reduce bitrates or reduce hours on the other stations.


Converting PSB 1 to DVB-T2 would work technically, just not politically !


I wonder if they'll do something 'clever' in advance of DVB-T2 switch over, like making one of the existing DVB-T SD and DVB-T2 HD services HD-only to make space for BBC Scotland on PSB1, or whether they will make it a T2-only service (a bit like RTE in Northern Ireland?) and put it in the 6Mbs spare capacity on PSB3 in Scotland only?

I think making PSB1 T2 in Scotland sooner rather than later would have 'issues'...

Alternatively they could look at how they use post-2100 CBBC SD, and Red Button SD capacity creatively? (Though post-2100 CBBC HD capacity has been advertised ISTR - so that makes things more complicated)
IS
Inspector Sands
Some Welsh AMs have been calling the announcement an insult to Wales. Clearly forgetting that the BBC already funds a Welsh television channel with more than four times the budget.

And there was this the other day: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-39040455
PC
p_c_u_k
Scottish football is a tricky one. Because it's such a huge deal in Scotland and doesn't register in any way shape or form in any of the other parts of the UK. So we end up with a between two stools situation where when it's mentioned in the UK news most people don't care, and the people who do care don't think it's prominent enough.

In terms of rights - I've never bought the idea that, because the BBC pays an amount for Premiership rights the BBC should automatically hand the SFA a higher amount of cash for what they're currently getting. That would be a complete waste of money. BBC Scotland will also inevitably have problems bidding for other rights because Sky and BT are in there, and have UK-wide subscription bases and a lot of channels to fill, whereas ITV can justify picking up England games as they've got 50 million people to aim commercials at.

However, BBC Scotland would be absolutely mad if they didn't try to pick up football rights for this new channel, even if it's the relative scraps, in the same way as BBC Alba picks up an audience that would never go anywhere near it otherwise. I certainly think they should be left in charge of what they bid for. If anything the BBC is too centralised, the last thing we need is to take more powers away from devolved nations.
M7
m7891
I think the point I was making when I mentioned the football has been lost.

It was in response to a post that was trying to compare the budget for the the English regions to that of BBC Scotland. The general point is that in certain areas the regions are already catered for by the network. BBC Scotland on the other hand needs to produce/buy the equivalent content for a Scottish audience. And the best example of that is football.

I'm not advocating that BBC Scotland has its budget reduced and the rights are instead bought by BBC sport.

Although there is a slight disparity in that rights paid for from by BBC Scotland are viewable UK-wide on DSAT and online.
BR
Brekkie
Pretty much all sport shown in the nations can be watched via the connected red button now. I guess as assumed here the BBC Sport Scotland budget comes from BBC Scotland rather than BBC Sport, but it's probably the opposite for BBC News.

To be honest I don't see why a "Scottish Nine" requires 80 new journalists considering it should largely be a repackaged Reporting Scotland with further reports pulled from the network to cover UK and International News, while some UK reports may need repackaging to be more Scottish focused.
:-(
A former member
The folk in the Metro believe there is some link between the so called Second Indy ref and this draft idea.
GL
globaltraffic24
Pretty much all sport shown in the nations can be watched via the connected red button now. I guess as assumed here the BBC Sport Scotland budget comes from BBC Scotland rather than BBC Sport, but it's probably the opposite for BBC News.

To be honest I don't see why a "Scottish Nine" requires 80 new journalists considering it should largely be a repackaged Reporting Scotland with further reports pulled from the network to cover UK and International News, while some UK reports may need repackaging to be more Scottish focused.


I'm thinking the 80 journos wont just be working on the 9. They'll probably be involved in other shows, such as Timeline - currently just launched weekly on BBC2, but almost definitely in-line for a wider run on this new channel. Donalda Mackinnon also told MSPs this week that she's working behind the scenes to split Radio Scotland into two stations - one news/talk and one music. A full time news station will need to take some of those journalist resources.

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