Calls for Scottish Broadcasting Corporation

Actually I think the problem is that the people behind Reporting Scotland treat it too much like a regional magazine show. Features on local idiots achieving 'milestones' and highly tedious BBC versions of 'And Finallys' are mainstays of the English regional shows I've seen. BBC Scotland needs to ignore the UTV Live style and concentrate on hard news for half an hour.

Reporting Scotland's a disgrace to the whole of Scotland. In a bid to try and keep the people of the north happy, they do farcically patronising stories about Mull Theatre and birds' eggs and the likes. It's irrelevant to the rest of the country, and people in the Grampian region see it for what it is.

As for the Scotland Today v Reporting Scotland debate - no question, despite being on a millionth of the budget and with bosses who are trying to sell them down the river, Scotland Today is better. Their reporters seem more hungry, there's no irrelevant nonsense and it just seems far fresher and more accessible. My one objection is that it insists on covering stories outwith its patch, and in the Grampian and Border areas. But in comparison to Reporting "The Scottish Executive has announced" Scotland it's far better.

And south.

Yes, but it's name is 'Scotland Today'. So as well as covering the main stories in it's ' core ' region it has a obligation to cover the rest of Scotlands main stories. But I must also add some parts of Dumfries and Galloway (Sanquhar in the 70's which my mother let me know) are not actually covered by Border TV, and receive STV instead, so I think there may be point to covering stories outwith the ' core ' STV region. I don't know if that is the case in Sanquhar anymore, but my mother complained that she didn't get to watch Lookaround, and instead had to watch Scotland Today. (I hate to think what Lookaround was like in the 70's ! ).

I actually believe that the Scottish Borders and D&G would benefit from being covered fully by STV. At the moment Border TV in Carlisle are very good at covering Scottish stories, and politics from Holyrood etc. that affect S. Scotland. But I feel 30 minutes is simply not long enough to cover Scottish stories that affect S. Scotland from Edinburgh, as well as the local news, plus Cumbria and the IOM. It would not only be a benefit to S. Scotland being covered by STV, but also to the rest of the Border TV region which is not affected by politics from Edinburgh.

hear hear .

Point taken but i fail to see why STV have to keep pinching and sometimes lead with Grampian stories from the Aberdeen area.

Well Reporting Scotland is especially bad for the south of Scotland. South of Scotland stories are like buses - you wait months for one and two come along at once, presumably because the camera crew thought they'd try and kill two birds with one stone.

Don't agree STV has an obligation to cover the whole of Scotland - I also don't think it should be called Scotland Today, but the name should be changed to reflect the fact it's for central Scotland only. But I suppose we're in different circumstances up here as, because we're so different, we need an alternative national news to that provided by ITN.

I agree that RS is quite poor for s. scotland (and the n. too), but I hope this much-talked about opt for the south of Scotland will take place. It would be interesting to see how it works in conjunction with the current presentation of RS.

When I watched, on Wednesday, the two programmes covered a lot of the same stories - the effect of defence cuts on Scotland (especially at Kinloss and the Black Watch); the closure of the Eni offices in Aberdeen; and the dip in sales figues for last month. NT pretty much skimmed over the facts, and not in a particularly interesting way, whereas RPS actually thought to add a little bit of depth to the stories and made the programme fairly interesting to watch.

Although, NT did win in terms of comedy value - with the vox pop of the person who thought that it's important we have a strong infantry force. In case our country gets invaded.

[quote="p_c_u_k"]The first one - hard to justify as long as Scotland remains part of the UK. While BBC Scotland should be given more powers, and in my opinion a Scottish Six (as long as they learn not to fill it with the same crap that inhabits Reporting Scotland), I don't think you can justify a separate channel for a nation of five million versus 50 million, no matter how different it is. If people want Scotland to have a completely different identity, TV channels, and everything else, they should vote for independence.

quote]

If the Republic of Ireland can support 4 tv stations on a population of 4 million then scotland can surely have one.
And if a gaelic language channel can work in Ireland theres no reason the same cant happen in Scotland.

TG4 works because unlike Scots Gaelic, Irish is alive and well in much of the west side of the country. In much of rural Galway, Kerry, Clare and Donegal it is the primary tongue and in these Gaeltacht areas there are Irish speaking summer schools which are very popular and encourage complete use of Irish by banning English from being spoken by the students whilst on site. Irish is alive and well in the west, and TG4 fills a gap in a market by offering news, current affairs, it's own soap opera and childrens programmes in Irish, as well as certain other general programmes subtitled in Irish.

It's not a matter of being able to provide the service in Scotland, the BBC could do it, it depends on the whether or not it is a viable service: will it encourage uptake of Gaelic, will it be used by the people it is destined for, etc.

(And the Republic can support 4 television stations because three take a cut of the license fee and all four use advertising)