The future of television in Wales

A couple of interesting articles on Media Guardian over the last couple of days:

Can ITV Wales deliver? talks about how OFCOM are likely to allow non-news regional programming to be cut to 3 hrs a week in Wales (from 4.5 hrs) and how production for BBC / ITV / C4 / five in Wales only accounts for 1% off out-put, when Wales has 5% of the UK population!

Where does S4C fit in? looks at the position of the national Welsh language broadcaster. With higher take up of digital TV in Wales (68% compared to 55% in the UK) S4C faces more competition from 30-300 channels, and crucially, C4 - now available to Welsh viewers meaning advertisers are pulling out of C4 programmes on S4C.

It talks of their relationship with BBC Wales and a possible merger - or become a seperate Welsh PSP. S4C are said to want a cut of the licence fee, rather than a quota of programmes from BBC Wales, so they have more editorial content.


Interesting articles - especially to us Welsh.

Well non news regional programming has been around 3 hours a week on ITV Wales for a while, apart from the few weeks before Christmas when they had specials in the afternoons at around 2.30pm and 5.30pm.

Not taking the p*ss at all BTW but do they speak much Welsh in Wales & the same goes for Gaelic langauges in Scotland, Eire & Northern Ireland.

I'm not taking the p*ss BTW because "Cockney English" is mainly dead in East London, although no real Cockney's used Rhyming Slang

*radical idea* but why don't the welsh assembly or welsh tax payers pay for s4c "the welsh channel"?

wales are a "nation" after all ... or so we are told.

Not many people in my area speak Welsh, not fluent anyway. A lot of people speak it in the west though.

About 28% of people in Wales describe themselves as being able to either speak, or understand spoken, Welsh. It's estimated that the actual percentage of people with some knowledge of the language is closer to 50%. Use of the language is increasing, unlike some of the others you mentioned.

What is 'Cockney English'? and what does it have to do with Welsh and Gaelic languages?

In Ireland RTE have to provide some programming from the Irish Language station TG4, which is to be made avaliable to Terrestrial viewers in Belfast.

Murf:
"In Ireland RTE have to provide some programming from the Irish Language station TG4, which is to be made avaliable to Terrestrial viewers in Belfast."

Probably the wrong place to discuss this, but I think TG4's expansion into NI will be welcomed by those who speak, or can understand, Irish - the BBC to their credit provide a weekly TV series some months during the year and about 3 hours of radio in Irish a week, as for Teilifis Uladh...

Blatent plug coming up, but if anyone's interested in some further reading on the history of broadcasting in Wales, I can recommend Years on Air (Living with the BBC) by Teleri Bevan, published by Y Lolfa at around £9, or available through Amazon at £5.25.

I'm actually making a conscious effort to learn more Welsh now. It's amazing how much I've remembered from school!

Living in Wales, it's quite easy to constantly pick up new words as all offical correspondence, road signs etc. all carry the welsh translation!

Learning Welsh certainly isn't unfashionable, and it's rather easy to pick up and start learning it!

What, like 'twp'?

Give it a couple of months and you'll be scrawling nationalist graffiti everywhere -- it's just a slippery slope.