Wales Broadcasting Committee report

From BBCi:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7497905.stm

Not sure if the suggestions made in the article, as interesting and common-sense as they appear, will be taken on board by the broadcasters, but there are some radical calls made in this article.

Mind you, surely with the Doctor Who portfolio, has it not upped the quota of the BBC's network production from Wales to a higher level? Are there any stats that can prove this?

And if the committee feel that ITV Wales should get more ITV network commissions, shouldn't there be similar calls for more contributions from STV, UTV (ha!) or what's left of production facilities outside of London, Manchester and Leeds on the ITV network?

Comes across as a fairly ill informed report to me just asking for more more more.

I think with Doctor Who especially, plus Torchwood and Gavin and Stacey, Wales has a more prominent presence on the BBC at least than it has done for years.

I agree it's lacking on ITV - the last thing I recall being set in Wales was Mine all Mine, which was axed quite swiftly after poor ratings.

A demand for 5% of C4's output to be from Wales by 2012 seems very unrealistic, especially considering up until recently C4 technically wasn't a PSB in Wales - I'm not even sure if it is now, even though it's available via digital of course.

Gavin and Stacy, The Charlotte Church Show (although made in London very Welsh centric) both spring to mind.

You could also say that areas of the England are under-represented such as the West Midlands or the South West (Anywhere out of London or Manchester for that matter).

I don't think broadcasters should go out of their way to commission programmes, just to tick boxes, I just want to see good programmes on my screen.

I would say that Northern Ireland is the "invisible nation" - From BBC Wales I could name Doctor Who, and "Welsh" programmes like Gavin & Stacey... Scotland gets a fair bit of coverage in the news, etc... but where's NI?

Bozz

Surely it wasn't axed, it was a single story series which was wound up in the last episode. I don't think they intended any more than that

IIRC it was wound up early and the last couple of episodes merged into one. I don't think it was intended as a one-off series at all.