I spent a night watching the BBC Scotland channel - here's my verdict

Or, six years after it first aired, revisit episode two of Rip It Up, the Laura Fraser-narrated survey of Scotland’s most notable rock and pop acts. And I do actually laugh out loud during Growing Up Scottish, one of those shows where talking heads are primed to make self-deprecating comments on a pre-prepared topic. Tonight’s subjects are first loves and the outdoors. Don’t ever go camping with Sanjeev Kohli, by the way.

Steve Carson is to step down at BBC Scotland. (Image: Colin Mearns)

As for the Dougray Scott-narrated Island Crossings which precedes flagship news programme The Nine, it’s only half a repeat having first aired on August 4. A behind-the-scenes look at the working of the Caledonian MacBrayne fleet – 35 ships on 30 routes covering 26 islands – it offers a decent insight into a critical and politically sensitive piece of Scotland’s transport infrastructure. It also functions well as slow TV.

But here’s my overall takeaway: you know when you look in the cupboard and go ‘Right, it’s tinned haggis and Ainsley Harriot Moroccan-themed couscous for tea, followed by peach slices in syrup from when we cleaned out Grandma’s flat – past their use-by date but I’m sure they’re fine”? A night in with BBC Scotland feels like that.

There’s a haphazardness to the schedule. A whiff of staleness to the programmes. A creeping suspicion that this is a channel running out of ideas and luck. Given too much public money for the haters to accept, but not enough to buy character and differentiation, it ends up prey to television’s greatest modern failing: risk aversion.

The general malaise could be set to deepen when plans to axe flagship news programme The Nine are enacted in the near future. BBC Scotland announced in February that it was planning to can the show, media watchdog Ofcom said in May it was minded to approve the plan – essentially a 50% cut in weekday news programming – and this week the green light finally came, though with this caveat: we’ll be watching you.

BBC Scotland has announced a 50% cut in weekday news programming (Image: free)

“The BBC must be transparent about how it is delivering for audiences in Scotland, and we will hold it to account,” the regulator said in a statement issued on Tuesday along with the ruling. “We expect the BBC to monitor the impact of the changes it has proposed and be ready to continue to adapt as necessary to meet audience needs.”

But who else will be watching besides Ofcom? The politicians, certainly. Constitution Secretary Angus Robertson was most dis-chuffed when news of the proposed cuts was first announced. “Extremely disappointing BBC decision to downgrade news output in Scotland,” he tweeted. “Decision runs counter to growing success of screen and TV sector in Scotland.”

And what about that most important constituency, the potential viewers? On this front, the numbers aren’t good. Figures for the channel are down year on year. With another caveat in place – that much of the number-crunching has been done by newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, the BBC’s implacable foe – viewership figures for The Nine may actually have dropped as low as 1700 for one episode.

That figure was deemed reasonable enough for BBC Scotland director Steve Carson to be asked abut it when he faced MSPs earlier this year. He countered by saying you shouldn’t view figures in isolation and said The Nine actually reached over 100,000 viewers a week. However that was down from the 160,000 he quoted when quizzed by former Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross in 2021. In other words the direction of travel is clear.

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What Ofcom has now approved is the network’s request that its requirement to provide 250 hours of news a year be cut to 125. Consequently The Nine will be booted into television history and replaced with a 30 minute news programme to be aired at 7pm. The BBC also plans to extend Reporting Scotland to one hour “at multiple times throughout the year”, whatever that means, and launch a new, Scotland-focused, ‘visualised’ current affairs podcast series which will be available on BBC Sounds and the BBC iPlayer. Think Americast, or any other of those hellish mash-ups of TV and radio.

Is half an hour a night adequate to cover Scottish news and current affairs on the nation’s dedicated digital channel? It depends. The night I dip into the schedule the top item on The Nine is this year’s Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) cock-up, the sending of blank emails to pupils awaiting exam results. Over 11 minutes, it’s given a commendably thorough outing – one, I would suggest, which is unmatched across any TV network.

After interviews with pupils we hear first from Jenny Gilruth, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, then correspondent David Wallace Lockhart drops onto the sofa to give his tuppence-worth to presenter Louise Cowie. Finally it’s over to Ruth Scott from Skills Development Scotland for a non-political overview, a dose of procedural know-how and some well-aimed pastoral advice. “The results don’t define you as a person,” she says. “If you’re feeling a bit rubbish tonight, find someone who can remind you of that.” As the parent of one of those Highers students, it was good to hear.

River City is a regular repeat (Image: free)

What else? Well there’s sports correspondent Chris McLaughlin at the Paris Olympics, former US ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley on Kamala Harris’s choice of presidential running mate, a report on prison over-crowding, rock star psephologist Sir John Curtice providing insight on the English race riots and Glasgow University’s Dr Paul Reilly talking about the social media dimension of the same.

Sure it turns a little silly when nutritionist Dr Jane Tobias is wheeled out to talk about the tiny food portions on offer in the Olympic village – this based on a reel posted by a sad faced Australian athlete – but it’s not bad considering Holyrood is in recess. An hour of news might be a stretch, but 30 minutes does feel tight.

Declaration of interest: I like The Nine and will be sad to see it go.

My night’s viewing was arbitrary, so you can make up your own mind about how representative it is. It’s certainly true that BBC Scotland isn’t all about repeats. Airing for three weeks from August 8 is Edinburgh Unlocked, a 30 minute show from the Edinburgh Festival. On August 16, meanwhile, there’s a one-off documentary about Scotland’s top professional poker players, narrated by John Hannah.

On Tuesday is also half an hour of football highlights from Rangers’ Champions League qualifier against Dynamo Kyiv, and next week’s return leg will be screened live on the channel. The BBC Scotland trailers which air between virtually every programme boast that ‘Scottish football lives here’. That’s stretching things a bit, but the Friday night coverage of the Scottish Championships games is often a blast, and in football magazine A View From The Terrace BBC Scotland has one of its few bona fide success stories. That is an absolute gem of a programme, as was crime drama Guilt, which aired on BBC Scotland in its launch year of 2019.

Five years on, one or two hits do not a successful channel make, however. Drip-feeding fresh programmes sparingly into a churning cauldron of old ones, some as far beyond their use-by date as my theoretical tinned peaches, is not a recipe for survival far less growth.

Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives in Guilt (Image: Anne Binckebanck)

Yes, BBC Scotland’s forthcoming shake-up comes with a surfeit of plausible-sounding reasoning. The new news programme will be “more local and get around Scotland more”. It will provide “more opportunities to help our audiences see themselves reflected in our news coverage”.

The loss of The Nine will allow programmes scheduled for 10pm to be brought forward to 9pm, a more audience-friendly slot. But amid talk of strategic re-organisation, of responding to changes in media consumption, of teaming new programmes with ‘archive titles’ (repeats) and setting out ‘cost-neutral’ proposals which require no increase in budget, it’s hard not to hear the sound of dice being rolled. And if fingers being crossed makes a noise, that too.

Is BBC Scotland necessary? Is it too important to lose? I’d say yes to both questions. How it finds renewed purpose and regains visibility (and viewers) is harder to answer.