Alex Salmond outlines life after BBC if Scots go independent

Some people seem to not understand the notion of Independence. All matters are subject to the legislation of the Independent state. An independent Scotland would be the subject of Westminster legislation enabling the split. In that legislation a massive list of organisations would be affected. The independence legislation passed by Westminster would become law in Scotland at separation. The new Parliament in Edinburgh would be at liberty to do whatever it wished in whatever spheres it wanted. Ofcom would be in time replaced with a new National regulator, with its own raft of legislation which would be enacted as considered appropriate.

I would imagine the SBC would be regulated by SCOFCOM so it's role and the replacement as considered appropriate of Channel 3, 4 and Five as PSBs with Scottish versions or new concepts would be performed over a number of months. It wouldn't be unreasonable (as in NI later this year for RTE1, RTE2 and TG4) for the BBC to be permitted to continue as a licenced service in Scotland, if the Scottish Government decided so.

OHBC News.

SBC progs in England etc, perhaps, but the other way round would leave SBC with no viewers !

SCOFCOM - love it!

There are some empty studios available if they are quick in West London

Yes, there would be huge implications and the actual split would be very complicated. Embassies are a good example - how would the UK embassies work with an independent Scotland? Financial aspects too for example how much of the national debt would be hived off to Scotland would/will be a big issue


One issue is frequency allocations - OFCOM allocate and license then nationally and the ITU do it internationally. Who would get what? The FM and TV networks wouldn't be much of a problem as long as the same frequencies were kept but DAB, LW and MW would be if Scotland wanted their own programming

You can look at Ireland for an example, although when we became independent broadcasting was in its infancy so most of these notions etc didn't arise. The British Broadcasting Company Limited was established just two months before the Irish Free State was and the separation was already under way.

One principle though which the Irish Free State followed in terms of law was that the law of Southern Ireland as it stood on the day the Irish Free State was established remained the law to the extent that it wasn't changed by the Constitution or later amended. (To this day there is plenty of UK (and pre-Union Ireland) legislation that still applies in Ireland, even some that has been repealed in the UK itself (the Sale of Goods Act 1893 for example). So I'm sure the same would apply in Scotland if it became independent. Legislation was passed in the Irish Free State (the first piece of legislation following the constitution) allowing the Government to establish (by statutory instrument) boards, etc to perform the duties of UK government bodies (so for example, the duties of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue were transferred to the Revenue Commissioners). That might be an example for Scotland to follow.

As for the practicalities, if we are anything to go by - there is no "life post BBC". We have access to most BBC services via satellite and cable. What might happen is that there might be no BBC Scotland any more, it might be an SBC and the BBC seen in Scotland might in future be BBC North East or even BBC Northern Ireland.

What makes you think the BBC would be ripped from their screens? After all, the Austrians have full access to German television, the Belgians get French TV, the Irish watch the BBC and ITV, etc. It's common throughout Europe for people to watch TV from neighboring countries, especially those who share their language.

This is a major principle of the EU's Television Without Frontiers Directive. The Scots would almost certainly continue be able to receive the BBC's TV services via terrestrial overspill and cable even after independence, particularly since such reception is "grandfathered" (historically established, much like the reception of British TV in Ireland).

But if the BBC remained available, how would an SBC with limited programming budgets, ever establish itself.
It may well end up having to show cheap American shows, and 20 year old movies in peak time, who's going to bother watching that crap, with BBC 1 etc still available ?

There would be minimal terrestrial overspill. Only really the Borders, and perhaps reception of Bilsdale up the east coast of Scotland as far as Aberdeen might be possible (Seeing as Durris is receivable on the N Yorks coast)

Then, of course, there's the fact that the South-West of Scotland is served by a main station in Cumbria......at the moment it does broadcast both the Scotland and North East variants of BBC as well as two ITV Border services which are identical (one used to be Border Scotland).