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General Council Officers and one branch of the League have so far responded to a call by the Assistant General Secretary (AGS) of the Celtic League to campaign for the

Par Cathal Ó Luain pour Celtic League le 26/12/09 7:48

General Council Officers and one branch of the League have so far responded to a call by the Assistant General Secretary (AGS) of the Celtic League to campaign for the BBC to ensure that more people in Alba/Scotland are given the opportunity to view the new BBC Alba channel, by making the channel available on the Freeview network.

The AGS, Seanán Ó Coistín, wrote to all the Branch Secretaries of the League asking that their branches take up the campaign "to ensure that more Gaelic speakers in Alba receive BBC Alba." He added in his memo, "It only takes a few minutes to send a message to the BBC and it is important for us to spread the word in support of this idea."

Currently, the BBC is in the middle of a public consultation, which closes on 18th January 2010, to find out what the public want. In a letter response to Mr Ó Coistín's enquiry about the possibility of making BBC Alba available on Freeview, Kirstie Anderson, from GASD (Gaelic Arts Strategic Development), said:

"BBC ALBA is a digital TV channel broadcasting Gaelic programmes daily and programming includes news, Scottish sport, music, factual, children's and entertainment programmes.

"BBC ALBA is available on digital satellite. It will be available on digital cable in due course but Freeview carriage isn't coming, and the BBC Trust have promised to review the situation in 2010.

"While large portions of the outlying Scottish islands still can't get Freeview those who can and have invested in Freeview are being told they need to make alternative arrangements to see BBC Alba.

"And the BBC think this is acceptable."

In addition to participating in the BBC's own consultation, Mr Ó Coistín suggested that members and supporters also write to the BBC to "help get this story known... to make the BBC see that not providing BBC Alba on the Freeview network isn't an acceptable situation."

In his letter to the BBC, Kernow Branch Secretary, Michael Chappel, drew parallels with the poor BBC service that speakers of Gaelic are receiving with speakers of the Cornish language in Cornwall. Mr Chappell said in his letter to the BBC:

"The Cornish Branch of the Celtic League (An Kesunyans Keltek Scoren Kernewek) have written to the BBC on countless occasions regarding poor coverage of the Cornish (Kernewek) language in its programming schedule and despite the dramatic resurgence of the language following official recognition with even more speakers, the appointment of Language Officers within Cornwall Council, the teaching of the language within Cornish schools and a vast amount of material being available including many, many films being made in Cornish, the BBC confines Kernewek to a few programmes on BBC Radio Cornwall.

"Now we learn that a similar discriminatory situation has arisen in Scotland where once again, the policies of the BBC conflict with the requirements of licence payers who speak an indigenous language.

"Broadcasting BBC Alba on Freeview would enrich the diversity of programming available on Freeview and make the channel far more available to many more viewers.

"Accordingly, we of the Cornish Branch of the Celtic League call on the BBC Trust to support BBC ALBA by transmitting the Channel on Freeview."

Mr Ó Coistín, who is active in the Irish language movement in Ireland, said in his letter to the BBC:

"I call on the BBC Trust to support BBC ALBA by transmitting the Channel on Freeview. As a fluent Irish Gaelic speaker, I know how important it is to have vibrant and easily accessible media in Gaelic. The Irish language got a huge irreversible boost when the Irish Gaelic television station TG4 began broadcasting. Almost single-handedly, it changed many people's opinions of the Irish language in Ireland. It is absolutely essential for any language to have modern, cutting-edge television services. There is no way around it.

"I call on you to ensure that BBC Alba is freely available across Alba/Scotland as soon as possible. The Channel is vital to the future of the Gaelic language and BBC ALBA has met all the conditions set out by the BBC Trust since it first started broadcasting in September 2008. This is despite Gaelic speaking license payers being compelled to pay an expensive additional charge to access their indigenous British language on the British Broadcasting Corporation.

"The Celtic League fully supports the demand of Scottish Gaelic speakers to have a television service in their own native language. We will campaign to ensure this happens.

"I hope you realise the importance of BBC Alba to Gaelic speakers and guarantee that BBC Alba will be part of the Freeview service." The Celtic League has been a long term campaigner of first setting up a Gaelic language cannel in Alba and also on rolling the channel out on Freeview. If you type FREEVIEW into the search engine on Yahoo CL Newsgroup ( (voir le site) a number of news items on these very issues can be found.

In response to the call from Mr Ó Coistín, the League's own Director of Information, Bernard Moffatt, wrote to branch secretaries and officers of the League to make some interesting observations. Mr Moffatt said in his email:

"The situation for BBC Alba on the Digital Terrestrial Transmission network (DTT) Freeview in Scotland is two-fold:

1) To get the channel carried on the full Scottish Freeview network and:

2) To get it carried on relays in remote areas

The roll-out of Freeview across the UK has been attended by problems over capacity and bandwidth which will only get worse as Freeview bandwidth has limited capacity and High Definition channels due to start roll-out shortly will eat into this.

UK Freeview channels are grouped on six multiplexes (muxes).

Only those who receive their signal from a main transmitter get the full six muxes. Those served by transmitter relays only get three muxes (the so called public broadcast services - PBS). The UK government are emphatic that they will not fund the upgrade of relays as it is to costly.

For example on the Isle of Man which is served by several small relays from a UK transmitter in Cumbria only three muxes are broadcast - However if you live on the west coast and get your TV signal from Divis in N Ireland you get the full service. Viewers in the north and west of the Island who access a signal from a main UK transmitter also can get a full service.

BBC Alba would have to be part of the PBS system if it is to be guaranteed a transmission place across Scotland.

We need to look at the bigger picture across the Celtic countries and those who were there will recall that we discussed this when we looked at the issue of TV in the Celtic countries at the AGM on Skye some years ago.

In Wales S4C ix carried on both Freeview and satellite (Freesat) and indeed via Freesat is available across the Britain and Ireland. Similarly via Freesat BBC Alba is available across Britain and Ireland.

In Ireland TG4 (and indeed probably RTE1) should be available as part of the Good Friday agreement across the country. However it has not (yet) been given a slot on Freeview on the N Ireland transmission system and although available on analogue the signal strength is very weak.

This leads to the nonsensical situation that in parts of Belfast (Irish speakers) cannot access the analogue service, although again (via the Divis transmitter) you can get it on the west coast of the Isle of Man.

TG4 is also of course available on satellite (the Irish Sky service) throughout Ireland but is encrypted so you need a Sky box and card.

I would suggest that we need to `beef up' our campaign so that BBC Alba and TG4 are available on the same basis as S4C ie.

1) Freeview (including transmitter relays) in Scotland and Ireland respectively.

2) Freesat so that they can be accessed openly (unencrypted) by those who choose the satellite option.

As if things weren't confusing enough, its worth flagging up that many in N Ireland who currently access Irish TV terrestrial services (particularly the Nationalist community in border areas) via the overspill from terrestrial transmitters in the 26 counties will have this option limited (when Irish DTT comes on stream) as the Irish Digital Service will use a different broadcast standard (Mpeg 4).

They will need a TV or set top box compatible with the Irish DTT broadcast standard

They will of course still be able to access satellite signals via a Sky box but again these are not Freesat they are encrypted.

In addition we need to consider the Breton perspective. Although TV Breizh has extremely limited Breton language content it has a national identity focus. However it also was refused a slot on the French DTT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre) network although it is available on satellite.

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