BBC THREE versus BBC SCOTLAND

I have no desire to engage in these discussions any more, its one of the reasons I quit the forum in 2014.

The Six O'Clock news has a global brief and a national one. A Scottish Six would naturally take the same approach. Its not some silly notion to add a "hoots mon" to a story about polar ice caps.

Minimally 50% of the main evening news is a domestic agenda, and while there is plenty of crossover with pan-UK relevant items, there is a slew of political stories, health, education and legal items that do not relate to a Scots audience, being as we have our own governments, systems and results. Reporting Scotland should be a magazine programme. I expect to see the main items of the day for Scotland in the main news of the day.

'Nationalism and tribalism' is trolling, sir, and its not appreciated.

Hello there. Long time no see.

The BBC Scotland channel was set up to fail, and its achieving it's ambition. For many years there were demands in Scotland from both the public and cross-party politicians that BBC Scotland should produce a "Scottish Six", distinct from the Network programme, to better reflect the editorial differences in this country.

Sometimes that would be as subtle as a change in the running order, sometimes it would mean not broadcasting items about education, heath or other devolved matters, where we currently have them presented as if they apply to us, usually with no caveat.

I don't know whether I'm allowed to reveal this, but there was a six week pilot of a BBC Scotland Six O'Clock News, which was produced live but not broadcast. It allowed them to try to juggle with correspondents doing two-ways into their packages within minutes of having presented them to network. It was a triumph of modern news production: that all the outside sources, VTs and scripts are there to be edited and restacked to better fit the audience.

BUT - London didn't want to rubber stamp the project, presumably under pressure from the Westminster government that it might be seen as the thin end of the wedge and encourage the breakup of the UK. So it was quietly dumped and never spoken of.

Even so, the demand was still there from outwith the BBC, and so, to quell the storm, one day we are told we are getting a shortbread tin channel of "Scottish interest" which, at best, will be used to premiere continuing drama and comedy ahead of a BBC 1 Scotland airing. And it will be on channel twelvty-nine-hundred on the digibox where you will never see it on an EPG.

Literally nobody asked for this, and nobody wanted it. I did send an audition reel to get the continuity announcer job, but you can't blame me for having childhood ambitions.

Its creation ripped budgets away from other production at Pacific Quay, but it wasn't enough money to make anything decent with, so everyone suffered. It was created to fail so that the chiefs in London can say, "why are you demanding a news programme, we gave you a whole channel and you didn't watch it". Its as calculated as that.

Get rid of it and reinstate BBC 2 Scotland. And BBC Three if you like - whatever - I cut my cable years ago.

One final point - and thanks for reading if indeed you have - there's some suggestion that money spent by the BBC in Scotland would be poorly spent if we managed to gain independence. Scottish BBC licence payers contributed £324 million last year but only £223 million of that was spent here - so you could certainly make the argument that Pacific Quay is bought and paid for by the Scottish fee payer. But lets not bother.

See you in another 3 years. x

After I posted I discovered and read many of yours which very eloquently laid out some similar conclusions.

Very good to meet you.

Continuing drama River City has had increasing pressure to turn around more scenes in a production week. For a very long time they worked weekends, so shooting blocs of 16 weeks took a massive toll on cast and crew alike. In fact it took pressure from Equity to push back and give the cast their weekends to recover.

COVID has changed things of course, but it might disappoint you to learn that of the slate of BBC Studios continuing dramas (including Doctors), River City were initially the only show not offered furlough, or at least a financial emolument to retain the cast whose contracts were terminated overnight. More representations to Equity from their union rep (a member of the regular cast) was successful in getting a token payment to some very worried actors.

When you cut money from a drama series you're talking about no supporting artistes in the background of shots or in the cafe. No taxi driving up the street at the back of frame. It genuinely is all up there on the screen - or not.

The BBC Scotland channel cash could be better spent.

I’m really not trying to be petty here but viewers in England had to sit and listen to the main story of the Scottish exams cock up. Because of us not getting our results at the same time it means they can both be covered effectively.