BBC News Scotland | News at Nine

Where there are different languages involved you would expect some duplication, though saying they'd each send a 'team' each is pushing it.


A lot of newsgathering is multi media these days, the radio TV and online news outlets will all share material. If a seperate radio reporter is needed then that's one person with a phone these days.

The Gaelic services I doubt send anyone to a story. There's no money so it's mainly all repackaged stories from network and Glasgow. Though I've seen a Gaelic speaking reporter at the Scottish Parliament doing an as-live on before the English speaking one does his live into the 6:30.

Remember though that Reporting Scotland is the only news they do that is just Scottish news. A lot of the content on the other news outlets is from the main BBC News machine, not generated locally

Yes and that's the point. The license fee is going up in order to fund this vanity project.

I am a free-market thinker, always have been, and I make no apologies for that. This ludicrous idea just solidifies the case for the privatisation of the Corporation, and what there truly is market demand for, survives thanks to advertising. What there is not, is either funded by premium subscription or axed as there is not the demand.

Commercial broadcasting is great for serving the mass audience, but minorities (of taste, interest, language, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic class, or what have you) need public broadcasting, and ultimately, we are all minorities in one respect or another. That's why publicly funded broadcasting exists in every developed country I can think of.

After all, commercial radio and television, for all their innovation, are ultimately a method of delivering audiences to advertisers, so they reflect the needs of the advertisers. We -- the audience -- are essentially the product that they are selling. Only public broadcasting can reflect the full range of the human experience, free from the constraint of ratings.

It's precisely minority projects like this one that underscore the need for the BBC. Anyone can produce mass-audience entertainment like Strictly Come Dancing, but only the BBC can provide comprehensive services for minority audiences.

I'd say more but I don't want to drag this into the political field as I imagine such discussion is off limits.

It's your choice, but I don't think broadcasting policy is off-limits in this forum (although it may be somewhat off-topic in this thread).

Yes, but I'm also aware of what a divisive time we currently live in and have already fallen on my sword enough times when it comes to Scottish Independence and Brexit. My views on Scotland being a special case for broadcasting as opposed to other home nations is rather tangled up with those two political matters!

It's not, it's going up regardless at the rate of inflation as it was planned to do. Before that it was frozen for 7 years so went down in real terms


What BBC Scotland do with the money they get is up to them, not having this channel wouldn't make the license fee smaller it would just be spent on something else north of the border

If there was an increase in the licence fee to fund one of your vanity projects, say the Eurovision Song Contest selection shows, I’m sure you wouldn’t complain!

Sadly, though, the BBC is actually pretty poor at serving minority audiences. In the 90s it started to shine in this respect. We're now left the remains of that. Other than BBC Asian Network and BBC Alba, there isn't much there that would tick a true 'minority' box.

And, as for all democracies providing license fee funding PSBs. This isn't the case anymore. The debate is raging in most nations, with many now stripping back the fee. In Luxembourg, RTL is the PSB and has been private for around 20 years. I'd argue it super-serves the minority - being largely responsible for the resurgence in the Luxembourgish language.

No - the licence fee is going up in an attempt to keep up with broadcast inflation and help mitigate the massive real-world cuts to funding the BBC has experienced since the fee was frozen for a lengthy period and the BBC took on responsibility for funding S4C, World Service Radio, Rural Broadband and Local TV...

If the BBC also has to take on responsibility for fully funding licences for the Over-75s there will be huge cuts...

AFAIK, the only Western countries that don't have public service television are Mexico and New Zealand. I don't know much about Mexican TV, but I do know about TV in New Zealand, having lived there.

TVNZ, whilst owned by the government, is funded entirely from commercial revenue. That being said, some programmes do get government funding through the agency NZ On Air; however, said funding is not exclusive to TVNZ - NZ On Air can, and do, also fund programmes on other channels.

I can say that the quality of TV in NZ isn't especially high - there tends to be a lot of lowest common denominator type stuff - think of it as having two ITVs competing against each other, as opposed to the BBC and ITV. Yes, the BBC do make a lot of mainstream stuff, as they should; however, they also do a fair bit of highbrow stuff to counterbalance that - something which doesn't really exist on New Zealand TV. Ironically, there is an arts channel there, but it's locked behind a subscription on Sky!

The thing about TVNZ is that very few people there particularly like the current system of state ownership but commercial funding. The NZ Labour party (who are, of course, currently in power) would prefer to have a public broadcaster akin to the BBC - indeed, there were plans (which seem to have been scrapped since the Broadcasting Minister resigned in disgrace) to increase funding for the public radio broadcaster, Radio New Zealand, and to give it a television station. The National Party (centre-right), on the other hand, would prefer to sell TVNZ, in line with their pro-free market views. However, for various reasons, neither outcome has so far come to fruition. Indeed, there's been talk as recently as today of TVNZ possibly merging with Radio New Zealand, or even buying a stake in online newspaper Stuff - two vastly disparate outcomes, which I think gives you an idea of the state of limbo TVNZ is in.

It is worth noting that TVNZ has had varying public service commitments over the years, depending on which party has been in power. When Labour were in power during the 2000s, they gave TVNZ a public service charter, assisted by government funding. As part of this, two commercial-free, public service channels were set up - one focusing on news and documentaries, and the other a mixture of children's and arts programmes. However, after National were voted into government in 2008, the public service charter was abolished, with the two PSB channels I mentioned being closed down at the end of their funding cycles, ostensibly due to low ratings. Now that Labour are back in power, they do seem to be upping their game with PSB output (much of it funded, as I touched upon earlier, by NZ On Air).

So that's that little history lesson over - I could go into a lot more detail, but will perhaps save that for another time. This may or may not be completely relevant to BBC Scotland, but it does, I think, show you what the broadcasting environment is like in a country without public service television.

The BBC also now funds S4C - that's also a service aimed at a minority audience...



Though countries like Germany and Sweden have replaced their licence fees with an equivalent revenue generation system of either a household tax or a personal public service tax to fund public service broadcasting, in recognition that ownership of a TV is no longer required to consume public service video broadcasts.