BBC Scotland Channel

[BcastCornwall]

Interesting that a signed zone has appeared outside of the 'permitted hours'. A selection of signed content is now available on Monday afternoons.

[PATV Scunthorpe]

One thing I did notice yesterday, The Edit has become the first show to move away from The Nine style graphics.

The strap during the preview on The Seven and the opening headlines stayed the same, but the main name strap and source straps have changed.

Comparison between the old and the new, please note these are recreations

Used [img] tags as I couldn't find a way to display videos uploaded to Metropol, so I don't know whether it's supported, if the videos as they are don't work...
https://up.metropol247.co.uk/PATV%20Scun...raphic.mp4
https://up.metropol247.co.uk/PATV%20Scun...0Strap.mp4

I prefer The Nine style, but can see how these fit in with the branding.

[tellyblues]

Two years on and BBC Scotland is still going. IMO, it's been a waste of time and money as the negatives far outweigh the positives. The small number of programmes that have been successful could have been put on BBC1 or BBC2.

What has been noticeable recently is the amount of programmes being shown twice a week, including those from the BBC archive. There seems to be a lack of content and that surely is worrying given the archive is limited and the majority of original formats cannot conceivably be recommisioned given their poor performance first time around. Also, a huge chunk of viewers will be lost soon when the repeats of Still Game end.

Where do people see the channel in a year's time?

[Brekkie]

I wonder if the BBC hadn't launched BBC Scotland whether STV may have stuck with STV2. They pretty much sold it as soon as the channel was announced.

[Ash101]

Good point. STV2 was a pretty good attempt at the ‘local TV’, (although against That’s TV - surely not overly difficult to look decent) but of course only really made possible by the bigger financial backing of a company with resources.

BBC Scotland is an interesting can of worms & I partly feel that now they’ve opened it, it’ll be hard to close it back up again. Obviously it doesn’t rate particularly well, but do any of our viewers in Scotland have any first hand anecdotes? Do non ‘geeky’ friends even know/care about it?

[Keith]

Good point. STV2 was a pretty good attempt at the ‘local TV’, (although against That’s TV - surely not overly difficult to look decent) but of course only really made possible by the bigger financial backing of a company with resources.

BBC Scotland is an interesting can of worms & I partly feel that now they’ve opened it, it’ll be hard to close it back up again. Obviously it doesn’t rate particularly well, but do any of our viewers in Scotland have any first hand anecdotes? Do non ‘geeky’ friends even know/care about it?

I think it's existence probably has a lot to do with the Scottish independence referendum, when there there were proposals for a 'Scottish Broadcasting Corporation' (SBC) if Scotland became independent. I suspect the channel was an attempt to ensure that if there were subsequent referendums there would be no need for a SBC to be set up, which would presumably result in the BBC losing licence fee revenue.

In the last few months the BBC seems to be opting for a slightly different approach by announcing plans to relocate more parts of it's operations outside of London, with some of them moving to Scotland. This would potentially make it slightly easier to keep politicians happier should they even wish to close the channel, though I imagine they'd also need to offer a nation opt-out for BBC Two/Three. That said given the forthcoming elections and talk of another independence referendum I can't see BBC Scotland (channel) closing in the short-medium term.

[Rob]

Posts from "The BBC Scotland channel" have been merged into this topic.

[tellyblues]

Good point. STV2 was a pretty good attempt at the ‘local TV’, (although against That’s TV - surely not overly difficult to look decent) but of course only really made possible by the bigger financial backing of a company with resources.

BBC Scotland is an interesting can of worms & I partly feel that now they’ve opened it, it’ll be hard to close it back up again. Obviously it doesn’t rate particularly well, but do any of our viewers in Scotland have any first hand anecdotes? Do non ‘geeky’ friends even know/care about it?

I know people (non geeks btw 8-) ) who watch it but it's for programmes that pre-date the channel - River City, Sportscene etc.

It rates far better than STV2 ever did and there is more original programming but it will soon be the case that BBC Scotland will be similar in that, news and sport aside, there will be no new content most weeks.

I'd hate to see it go the same way as STV2 or, perhaps a better comparison, BBC Alba, but it would be entirely warranted given the bizarre commissioning decisions that have been made. From a viewer's point of view, it would be utterly disgraceful if it came to that.

[Brekkie]

How much original content is on BBC Alba BTW?

[VMPhil]

How much original content is on BBC Alba BTW?

Is that a spin-off channel I haven’t heard about?

[tellyblues]

How much original content is on BBC Alba BTW?

It's hard to tell exactly because there was a previous Gaelic channel, TeleG (1999-2011) and the remit for BBC Alba states that the 5 hours of "originated" non-news programming that must be shown every week can include programming first shown on other public services.

What is easy to establish is what is a repeat (for BBC Alba anyway) and sadly there are a lot. Some nights you get half an hour of new content if you're lucky.

[James Martin]

It's easy to say it as an Englishman but I don't see how the channel can be justified. It was a knee jerk reaction to calls for a Scottish Six. I'm not quite sure why they didn't just go down that road and then use opt outs on the main two networks. From where I'm sitting - in England, granted - it seems a terrible waste of license fee money.

I don't want to stray into political discussion but if Scotland wishes to be independent (or become an EU state) that will invariably mean some big changes. The previous white paper stated that the Scottish Broadcasting Service (SBS*) would take over the assets of BBC Scotland. It was ambiguous what would happen to STV.

Indeed, it may be that SBS and STV will have to purchase English programmes on the open market. We could well see Emmerdale on SBS One and EastEnders on STV!

* It might not be able to be called SBS as there's already the Australian one in the EBU. It's for those reasons Severiges Television in Sweden is SVT - as STV was taken!

[swaggyboi128]

How much original content is on BBC Alba BTW?

Is that a spin-off channel I haven’t heard about?

I can't tell if your talking about Alba or joking about "BBC Alba BTW" lol
I'll assume the latter.

[johnnyboy]

It's easy to say it as an Englishman but I don't see how the channel can be justified. It was a knee jerk reaction to calls for a Scottish Six. I'm not quite sure why they didn't just go down that road and then use opt outs on the main two networks. From where I'm sitting - in England, granted - it seems a terrible waste of license fee money.

I don't want to stray into political discussion but if Scotland wishes to be independent (or become an EU state) that will invariably mean some big changes. The previous white paper stated that the Scottish Broadcasting Service (SBS*) would take over the assets of BBC Scotland. It was ambiguous what would happen to STV.

Indeed, it may be that SBS and STV will have to purchase English programmes on the open market. We could well see Emmerdale on SBS One and EastEnders on STV!

* It might not be able to be called SBS as there's already the Australian one in the EBU. It's for those reasons Severiges Television in Sweden is SVT - as STV was taken!

As an Englishman, I can see perfect justification for BBC Scotland on the basis of distribution of resources equally.

The same logic applies to Wales and Northern Ireland. For the purposes of my argument, I am not including Scottish Gaelic or Welsh services because they're designed to serve linguistic communities rather than geographical communities (even though both languages are only really spoken within a small part of each country in confined geographical locations).

Scotland has one regional English radio service covering the country 5.5m people. Wales has one for 3.1m.

England has 37 radio stations for its 56 million people, a radio station for every 1.5m people. There is just as much regional diversity in Scotland and Wales as there is in England but that's not really reflected in their radio output.

The only areas better served are Northern Ireland with 2 radio stations for its 1.9m people and, wierdly, Jersey and Guernsey (not part of the UK) with 2 radio stations for 98,000 and 63,000 people respectively. If I were Manx, I'd be pretty peed off that the Channel Islands had 2 radio stations and I had none.

Likewise, England has 15 regional TV "news" programmes, one for each 3.73 million people. By rights, Scotland should then have two regional news programmes.

So, in my mind, it does make sense and, while I enjoy some of the shows on BBC Scotland, Scotland and Scottish culture would be better served by being broadcast on the main networks.

[onetrickypony]

The Nine isn't that bad of a show, but why isn't Reporting Scotland as a brand used?

You could on some days get Reporting Scotland, BBC News Scotland Special Coronavirus Briefing, Politics Scotland First Minister Questions. Id prefer keeping to one name and adding special.

I think on BBC Scotland Channel we've had BBC News Scotland specials relating to corona.

Reporting Scotland should continue at 7pm on Scotland Channel, there's one way to grab the audience from One. Partnership with Alba should be dropped and gaelic language programmes put on the channel to beef up as a one Scotland approach.