BBC to trial Scottish Six

Okay, so the results are in...

Omagh Bombing (UK)
Migrant Crisis (UK/International)
Barclays (UK)
Pensions Review (UK)
Super Tuesday (International)
Teenager Stabbed in Aberdeen School (UK or Scotland?)
Home Office Monitoring Legislation (UK)
NHS Planning Ten New Towns in England (England)

Other News (really short 'round up' stories)
Fire at storage shed near M25 (UK, England or local?)
Winter wettest in Scotland since records began. More warnings for Scotland over next few days. (Scotland)
Tm Peake St David’s Day message (Wales)

3 British Researchers won Brain Prize (UK)
Meteor Shower in North East Scotland (Scotland or is it UK?)

Virtually all the stories are UK or international. Even then, it's not always clear what's UK interest and what's just England or Scotland interest. Is the Aberdeen school boy who was stabbed to death a Scotland story or a UK one? Clearly, the BBC think it's of much interest to people from Doncaster as it is to those from Dundee. What about the meteor shower in North East Scotland?

The only out and out English (for the cross of St George!) item was the one about the healthy new towns the NHS was planning. I'm sure there will have been many Scottish people who have an interest in public health who found that story interesting. I found the meteor shower item interesting as well. The Aberdeen school boy murder case is as relevant to me as an equivalent case taking place in London or Bristol. The very brief Tim Peake St David's day item was a bit of fluff but charming and inoffensive, despite presumably only directly relevant to Wales.

Maybe tonight's news was unusual. Perhaps most nights there are far more England only stories than that. I doubt it though. I reckon on a bad day there may be two 'England' items out of more than ten. For anyone who thinks the Scottish Six is a practical proposal primarily concerned with delivering relevant news in an effective way rather than a Scottish nationalist sop, ask yourself what a Scottish Six would've done differently tonight. Dropped the new towns item maybe? What would they have replaced it with? The ScotRail paperless ticket plan? Presumably that appeared in Reporting Scotland anyway. So, is it really worth the duplication and the costs that come with it? I'm even more convinced now than I was previously that it isn't.

Whether or not a story is interesting isn't relevant. There are plenty of US domestic stories that are interesting but don't warrant coverage in the UK.

The full list of devolved matters:
agriculture, forestry and fisheries
education and training
environment
health and social services
housing
law and order (including the licensing of air weapons)
local government
sport and the arts
tourism and economic development
many aspects of transport

Plenty of topics to cover there in a Scottish Six.

And that's only the currently devolved powers - there's the story today of the new agency to deliver social security payments in Scotland. And there's the story of MSPs being urged to pass the Scotland Bill. And the pavement parking ban. And the discrepancy between Edinburgh's and Glasgow's colleges. And 5 pieces of Scottish Business News. All this will be added to with the further devolution.

By removing the English stories, and moving some less important ones to the round-up, a Scottish Six would seem to be entirely viable to me, even on a news day like this where the matters are more non-devolved than devolved.

I'm still waiting for an apology for patronising me and accusing me of being contrarian, when there's no mainstream opinion to be contrary to, and you've provided no evidence of me being contrarian on here in the past.

You're the most patronising forumer on here. So you can stick your apology.

I've made my case. I think it's a good one. A list of devolved matters the Scottish parliament doesn't change anything. You don't agree for whatever reason. Let's leave it at that.

It is amazing how viewers who would not be affected by any change in the service north of the border are getting so worked up about what is, at the moment, just an unbroadcast trial period. The BBC has a duty to serve all its audiences across the UK, and if BBC Scotland feel that a Scottish Six will benefit their audience then that is fine and will make no difference to viewers in England.

Aside from arguing about the merits of the idea, the run up to the Scottish election would actually be a great time to trial it given it is only 1 of 6 notable election races taking place on 5th May, but is more important to Scottish viewers than the General Election last May.

It affects us all in many ways. For a start, we all pay for the corporation and all have an interest in its operations and whether various ventures are a good return for our buck. Secondly, the BBC is a British institution; one of the big headline things that underline this country and by extension, the union between Scotland & England. It's a culturally significant aspect of British life. The SNP knows this too well and wants to undermine it. Like the UK itself, the plan is to break it up little by little. The Six will be first. Then the Ten, then the One. Then we'll have Breakfast Scotland. And if the SNP ever manage to get broadcasting devolved to Holyrood (a bad idea but that's a whole other debate) there'll be different scheduling, eventually dropping of programmes or shifted to graveyard slots, even if people like them and eventually they'll argue that the BBC doesn't need to exist at all, considering how little the BBC Scotland operation will have with the rest of the corporation at this stage and there will be calls that BBC Scotland should be hived off and renamed something else. You can also replace 'BBC' with 'UK government'.

You may think I'm paranoid but come back in a few short years once the Scottish Six is a fact of life and the debate's moved onto the Ten and tell me that.

It didn't used to be. Please could we return to the topic?

I agree, let's return to the topic. However I have to say that after reading this forum, and bring a member, for over 10 years the quality of debate has nose dived in the past 6 months. The vast majority of members continue to contribute a high standard of comment and thoughtful debate. However an influx of recent members, mostly juvenile and with no apparent worldliness, has seen a spike in ill informed comments and pure nastiness. Whilst healthy debate is to be encouraged what we are increasingly seeing here is not healthy and there's simply no reason to try and engage in many of the conversations here anymore. And that's a pity because so many members are top class people!

Sorry, but this screams of a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy.

And so what if Scotland gets its own Breakfast, One, Six and Ten? If they want to agree to pay a higher license fee for the ability for more localised programming, they can and they can thus reap the rewards.

(I'm not someone who has a vested interest in either side, my reasoning here is that there's nothing wrong with what you seem to fear).

I think the "if they agree to pay for it" part is the sticking point.

The interesting thing here is that we're all arguing about a dying medium - terrestrial television. The BBC mooted the idea of an online Scottish channel and it was largely dismissed as being something that would be ignored and under-funded. I tend to believe it would have worked quite well with the right support. It may pain a lot of people on the TVForum, but television as we know it is over. It's not if but when.

The thing is though it isn't - linear television will still exist for decades to come. This happens all the time with new mediums - people say that the thing it improves on will be dead in 10 years and lo and behold it still exists a century on. Newspaper's were opposed to news on the BBC in 1922 because it would kill them off and the medium (though dying) still exists today. Radio supporters were worried that TV would kill off radio within years and yet radio still exists today. And it's been the end of linear television umpteen times anyway - in the late 70s it was VCR recorders that would kill it off, today it's supposedly on demand viewing. The figures for the big 5 channels are only marginally lower than they were a decade ago when on demand started.

An online BBC Scotland would get substantially less viewers than a service akin to a reformed BBC Scotland on TV. The BBC could go along the lines of BBC 2W and have a service that is better at serving viewers in Scotland by having a slightly different schedule to the rest of the UK. For the majority of the time Scottish viewers want what viewers anywhere else want so a dedicated BBC Scotland channel online would just be filler for most of the day - it's just programming like News and some Sports that BBC Scotland should be able to opt out on and maybe the odd comedy or entertainment programme for audiences north of the border. With the BBC 2W model the BBC could even place Gaelic programming back on say BBC Scotland Two during the daytime and parts of the evening and save money on a separate channel. It's feasible it's just costly - in the long run we'll probably end up with a service like that but at the moment a single devolved programme is hardly an issue and if that leads to Scotland having their own version of all BBC News bulletins or even a semi-independent schedule then that is fine - the BBC's supposed to serve their audiences as best as possible. At the end of the day the BBC is catching up with devolution that started 20 years ago and given they are the British Broadcasting Corporation and Scotland can't actually leave Britain, maybe they're just preparing for the independence that is inevitable anyway - if there's an semi-autonomous BBC Scotland then it'll be much more likely to be kept in an independent Scotland.

Oh good grief, do I have to bust this myth one more time?

When cinema arrived, they called live theatre a dying medium. When television arrived, they called cinema a dying medium. As recently as the 1980s, radio was described as a dying medium. And now, on-demand and online is going to kill off broadcast linear television???

OH HELL NO!

Like the other mediums before them, broadcast television will adapt to the new reality, and become a mostly if not exclusively live medium again, as it used to be back in the old days when pre-recording of shows wasn't possible. It will also mean that live concerts, sports events, variety shows and other live event style programmes will become mainstays of primetime. In fact, we're already seeing that start to happen. We will probably in time lose most of the channels we have now, as the pre-recorded programme will become the staple of on-demand services, whilst live programming will be right at home on broadcast television, and terrestrial transmitters are still the most reliable and controllable delivery system which require only an unobtrusive aerial, rather than a satellite dish or a connection to an underground cable system, a system that by the way doesn't even cover 45% of the country.