BBC Scotland - the launch

Seems to be a bit of a cop out for BBC Scotland to be simulcasting BBC One Scotland's Hogmanay show. If they were staying on air on BBC Scotland after BBC One has gone off to other programming I could understand it.

I'd have thought it was more of a cop-out for the studio bits to be prerecorded - I wonder how obvious it was to the average viewer?

[Edit] it was to the Herald's TV reviewer: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18131269.hogmanay-2019-excuse-selling-scotland-seans-scottish-hogmanay-reviews/

It was rubbish tbh. Clearly the junctions away from Des McLean weren’t live, yet they were the best bits.

This year feels likes both the BBC and STV have given up. Some friends that were at The Steamie in the afternoon said the same thing, so other people clearly feel the same way.

Dunno what’ll happen at end of this year as a result.

Looking at the BBC1 schedule last night the changes earlier in the evening seemed somewhat unnecessary to accomodate pre-recorded content, especially when some of that content could be on BBC Scotland.

They may have only been simulcasting the show off BBC1 Scotland, but the closedown at 12.30 on BBC Scotland was a little special. A long announcement talking about the channel. With an extended playout of the Powder ident, recoloured in Scottish colours...



Video

BBC Scotland celebrates it's 1st birthday today. No special programmes scheduled although i believe the announcers will mention in through the day.

Just wondering a couple of things about how well BBC Scotland is rating, specifically how it rates compared to how local content rated on BBC2 Scotland, and the axed STV2/STV Local channels.

Would also be interesting to compare The Nine versus the Scotland 2016/15/14 bulletins, plus as a reference point Reporting Scotland and STV News at 6.

I can’t speak for the channel as a whole but for news:

The Nine averages 35,000 viewers.
Scotland 2016 averaged...you guessed it...35,000 viewers!
BBC Reporting Scotland last week averaged 356,000 viewers
STV News averaged 500,000 viewers
Scotland Tonight on STV2 historically averaged around 7,000 viewers.

Crucially, The Nine’s audience figures are very inconsistent, they can jump higher but occasionally drop substantially. It highlights the need for them to do more research and figure out what the audience is looking for. The viewers are available - they just need to keep them hooked.

Or is it just more the case the 9pm is when flagship shows tend to air so the audience fluctuates accordingly. Rather than being an appointment to view it's more of a reliable choice if there is nothing else on.

There was a Broadcast article a few months ago where a load of indies had demanded that The Nine be shifted to a new timeslot as it had been rating so badly that it was having an effect on other primetime shows in the schedule. The head of the channel refuted it.

There was another article a few weeks ago that very briefly mentioned that the next head of BBC Scotland would have to oversee cuts to the channel.

I must admit I really struggle to see the point in the channel other than it ticking a few boxes. The schedule is full of shows that are just about Scotland but why would you want to watch shows about Scotland all the time? The shows that are more general and aren't explicitly about Scotland end up being too cheap to be something you'd want to watch over something on a normal channel.

‘Now on BBC Scotland, with the time at half past three, here’s The Nine.’

You’ve nailed it. I’m definitely not getting in to a political debate, but we have a real issue with political leaders and broadcasting bosses from both sides of the debate agreeing on one thing - all content should be pushing a Scotland message. The reality is that we should be creating content that travels. STV is slowly getting the hang of it, realising that it can actually make money producing shows in Scotland without being obsessively Scottish.

The best example of where we’ve gone wrong is Taggart. It should have spurred so much more in recent times here in Scotland. It was arguably the first ever Nordic Noir! Scotland should be the centre of broadcast production in the UK (I don’t mean physically or for political reasons). Manchester has proven that London isn’t necessarily the creative hub of the UK. We’ll see what happens with the whole “levelling up” rhetoric of the current government, but I think all TV forumers can agree that part of the reason for the ‘good old days’ of TV was the rich and diverse regional productions - they weren’t obsessively screaming about their regions, they were just making good TV with regional flavour and accent. It’s not rocket science.