THE announcements that Richard Findlay was stepping down from chairman roles at STV and the National Theatre of Scotland led to some chatter the media veteran was planning to retire.

However the trained actor turned board room veteran insists this is far from his final act.

Indeed, he is quick to point out he remains chairman of Edinburgh financial services company Innovate and London education business Youth Media Group.

Mr Findlay, who turns 70 later this year, said: "I don't intend to be entirely inactive. Stepping down from two reasonably time consuming positions does leave a bit of a gap but hopefully something will float by which will look appealing.

"I still want to be involved in public life. Some people do enjoy retirement and there is nothing wrong with that.

"On the other hand as long as the brain is still working then I enjoy helping people do things."

Certainly he leaves STV and the NTS with a sense of mission accomplished in both cases, but he is quick to praise executives and senior staff at both bodies.

At STV, non-core activities have been sold off, the balance sheet rebuilt, online offerings improved and its programming revitalised to take in a wider range of formats and customers.

Mr Findlay said: "STV was a tough challenge. Until I actually arrived with a new chief executive we didn't really know the full extent of the problems of the company, particularly the financial problems.

"The first phone call I got from when it was announced I became chairman was from the bank consortium the company owed money to. It was really an unsustainable level of debt.

"The company is now in really good heart with a superb chief executive and senior management team. There comes a time in anyone's life when you think the company needs to move on.

"I have done six years and that is probably the right time for me to move on."

Mr Findlay talks without a hint of insincerity about feeling obligated to try and help fix STV but expresses regret that some people lost their jobs along the way.

He said: "I grew up with STV and I was distraught to think the company was in such a dangerous situation and not doing the kind of local programmes it should be doing and not having the resources to provide a decent news service that could compete with the BBC.

"When I was asked to take on the chairmanship I thought 'oh wow can I do this?' but at the same time I thought I have to do this as STV is far too important to Scotland."

Alongside the STV turnaround the NTS has gone from an unproven start-up into an award winning and increasingly globally respected producer of critically acclaimed and commercially popular work.

As founding chairman and someone who has had a lifelong interest in the arts Mr Findlay is proud of what has been done at the NTS.

He said: "Standing in a lonely, dirty little office in Glasgow on my own with a blank sheet of paper was a bit frightening at the time [when it started].

"Then I cast my mind back to James Bridie over 100 years ago, the playwright who founded the Citizens Theatre, and he was arguing for [a national theatre] then, and there have been various attempts since.

"Here we were, the government had agreed to provide sensible funding and it had cross party support which I thought was terribly important. I got the chief exec appointment [of Vicky Featherstone] absolutely right and everything flowed from that."

While Taggart may not be coming back to Scottish screens any time soon Mr Findlay insists STV would love to do more major dramas to add to its roster of shows including Antiques Road Trip, Catchphrase and Fake Reaction.

He said: "Six years ago we only made Taggart and all our eggs were in one basket.

"Now we have a whole range of baskets and that is a lot healthier and at any given time we have 30 to 40 projects on the go. Certainly we would love to do another major drama and we are looking at ways we can work on that."

The long gestating idea to build a Scottish film studio to attract large-scale productions from around the world is something Mr Findlay would support.

He said: "For filmmakers anything that helps them make their movies or television shows here in Scotland needs to be encouraged. The technology now is so much more sophisticated and equally so much less expensive than it used to be that I think what we will call a soundstage or film studio is probably more economically possible than it was 10 or 15 years ago when the idea was first mooted.

"Obviously you can't have a film studio and wait for the business to come and we have to be absolutely proactive in attracting filmmakers into Scotland."

Having run Scottish Radio Holdings for a decade – building it up into having 22 radio services including Clyde and Forth in Scotland plus 45 regional newspapers - and sat on a number of private, public sector and charity boards Mr Findlay's recipe for business success is relatively simple.

He said: "There are basic things we would all agree on. You have to have the right product or service aimed at the right market.

"Then you have to have the right people delivering, selling and managing it. You also need the right people assisting behind the scenes and giving the right advice and the right kind of financial support.

"It is the people who make companies work whether it is manufacturing or services and [you have to] treat people with respect and understand the problems they have in doing their jobs. Once you get underneath the fingernails of what is going on things become fairly obvious."

While Mr Findlay acknowledges the challenges in the media sector with new technology and more competition for advertising revenues he says careers in the sector are "more exciting" than they have ever been.

He is a firm believer in news as a pivotal driver for audiences in print, online or broadcast.

Although he remains politically neutral on the independence debate, he believes both sides need to start providing more concrete data on their plans.

He added: "I think the debate has not yet got to the point where people are going to get excited. We are just seeing flashes of shots being fired from afar. I think the lack of solid information and the contradictory information needs to be resolved.

"It may be too early for that being [more than a] year away but people have a right if they are being asked to vote what they are voting for and what the consequences will be. Equally, if we stay in the Union people have a right to know exactly what that involves."

CV

Richard Findlay trained as an actor and his early media career included stints setting up and English language radio service in Saudi Arabia and a spell at the BBC.

He later moved to Capital Radio and in 1991 was one of the original team which set up Radio Forth in Edinburgh.

In 1996 he becaome chief executive of Scottish Radio Holdings and stayed there for a decade.

It was in 2003 when he became the founding chairman of the National Theatre of Scotland have already built up a substantial body of non-executive work in places such as Lothian Health Board, the Loyal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Royal Observatory Trust and law firm McGrigor Donald.

He has also been rector of Heriot-Watt University and governor of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.

In February 2007 he was appointed chairman at STV.

Outside of the arts Mr Findlay enjoys golf and boating.