The third report from the Scottish Broadcasting Commission (SBC) set up to investigate the state of television production and broadcasting in Scotland, was published last week. The report, titled 'Interim Report of Democratic Phase', is intended to 'define a way forward for the industry' in Scotland.

The 'independent' investigation by the SBC was set up ahead of the BBC Trust commissioned survey which is currently being undertaken and will, among other things, examine how the BBC reports news on its network in the Celtic countries. The SBC report found that less than half of the people in Alba/Scotland were "fairly or very satisfied" with how news was reported and that there was "considerable concern that issues affecting the UK are not satisfactorily reported to people in Scotland and that issues affecting Scotland specifically are not satisfactorily reported to people living in the rest of the UK."

In their response to the survey, the BBC argued that they provided viewers with a "real mix" of analysis and straight forward reporting. However one criticism of the BBC that came from SBC Commission Chairman, Blair Jenkins, suggested that the BBC's target of producing only 9% of its network programming from Scotland between 2012 to 2016 was inadequate. Praise however was singled out, among those surveyed, for BBC Scotland's Gaelic language current affairs programme, Eòrpa. The programme is watched by 190 000 people in Alba/Scotland, despite the fact that there are only 60 000 Gaelic speakers, showing that language was not a barrier to good broadcasting.

It was also reported that 54 per cent of viewers were confused about whether items in the UK news were applicable to Scotland. Moreover over half of respondents said that they now favoured replacing the UK's blanket 6 o'clock news programme, which is aired throughout the whole of the state, with a programme that mixes Scottish news with UK and international reports. This compares with a study undertaken 5 years ago that showed that the majority of viewers wanted to retain the current format.

Mr Jenkins said:

"Many of the people we heard from recorded their concerns over a lack of breadth in reporting and a lack of depth both within programmes and across the range of programming available."

It seems that Scottish viewers and listeners will not be completely satisfied until Scottish news is brought to them wholly from Scotland. After all, as one commentator said "we all want to know about the wider world, but in Scotland we have a particular perspective, which, however else one may care to describe it, is not English." At the 2007 AGM in Cymru/Wales, the Celtic League passed the following resolution:

"The Celtic League believes that the limited coverage of Cornish/Scottish/Welsh politics by the BBC in London on its network news programmes demonstrates that it is mostly interested in news items that only affect England. This AGM calls on Cornwall County Council (and its successor), the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd to campaign for the full devolution of broadcasting to Cornwall, Scotland and Wales and calls on Celtic League members to consider withdrawing their TV licence payment in protest."

The League wrote to the BBC Trust late last year to air its concerns, relating to the above resolution. In its response, Sir Michael Lyons, Chair of the Trust, said:

"Concerns about issues such as a lack of representation of the nations on network programmes, and insufficient focus on the news from the devolved nations on network news, have been regularly raised to the Trust".

In September 2008 a final report will be produced by the SBC, which will contain recommendations for the Scottish Government on the future direction of broadcasting in Scotland. It is hoped that the SBC recommendations to the Scottish Government will highlight the need for increasing the amount of TV production and broadcasting programmes from Alba/Scotland with a Scottish perspective.

To date the following reports have been produced by the SBC:

Interim Report on Economic Phase (January 2008):

(voir le site)

Interim Report on Cultural Phase (March 2008):

(voir le site)

The BBC Trust expects to receive Professor Anthony King's commissioned report, about the BBC role in reporting news on its network, in early summer 2008.

See also related articles on broadcasting on Celtic News at:

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J B Moffatt Director of Information Celtic League

03/06/08

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