Persistent gossip between industry insiders suggests that Taggart could be on its way out, even though STV, the show’s creators, desperately want to keep the ageing show alive. As the hard-boiled detective series is one of the only jewels left in STV’s rusty crown and employs around a hundred people, its loss would be keenly felt.

But the intrigue is growing hourly and several senior industry insiders have told the Sunday Herald that Taggart is likely to fall victim to a plot worthy of any detective drama.

ITV is rumoured to be seeking a younger, hipper audience used to more edgy cop shops like The Wire, which makes Taggart seemed jaded.

STV has also embarked on a suspicious bout of “restructuring”, axing the show’s producer, Graeme Gordon, as well as Eric Coulter, its head of drama. To industry observers, these sackings look like the beginning of an assassination plot against the long-running show.

It has also been suggested that members of the cast have all been asked to take a pay-cut, indicating that either the show is going to be axed or that it will have a drastically reduced budget.

A former director of Taggart said: “Although STV would like to keep Taggart going – as it’s a big employer, don’t forget – there may be factors that keep it from being made. The decision to recommission has been put back this year, two important people have been sacked and there’s been no clear indication that anyone in the industry, except STV, is really keen on keeping

Taggart alive.”

There has certainly been a hiatus in production, although several episodes are already in the can and are awaiting broadcast.

Both STV and ITV are fudging the issue. The new boss of content, which includes drama, at STV, Alan Clements, said he was keen to continue showing Taggart, but warned that television drama was facing difficult times ahead.

“It is no secret that drama on the commercial channels, ITV in particular, is in difficulty, because of the cost compared to the return per viewer. That’s not unique to Taggart. ITV is going to be doing a lot less drama going forward.

“If you spoke to a group of independent drama producers in London, I think you would find a group of suicidal people. This is not a Scottish question, it’s happening all over the UK.”

Questions over the possible demise of Taggart are illustrative of a wider malaise, as commercial channels cut back on the production of drama, particularly in the regions. There are fewer regular series of programmes produced in Scotland now than five years ago, when shows such as Rebus and Monarch of the Glen kept hundreds in work. As jobbing freelance television workers rely on these series to earn a living, many people working in television have found themselves without any work at all this year.

Now angry TV workers have begun a fightback, organising themselves into a new “guild”, provisionally called the Association of Scottish Film and Television (ASFT).

The group consists of producers and other industry workers, from runners to security guards. At their first meeting last Saturday, in Govan Town Hall, an unprecedented 300 “desperate” people turned up to air their grievances.

Stephen Burt, a freelance location and production manager, organised the first meeting and gave the opening speech. He said: “Over the last ten years, we have started to feel that the walls are crumbling around us. We intended to get the views of the industry as a whole and it came out that there was a real need to do something.

“People have spent the year without working and they don’t get redundancy. We all agree that something needs to be done to prevent the death of Scottish production.”

At that first meeting of the new guild, a survey was conducted to gauge the state of the industry. The shocking results revealed that 10% of attendees had only worked between one and 10 days this year, half were considering leaving Scotland, and 41% had seen their wages plummet over the last

three years.

The figures also showed that 56% had experience of “flat-pack” production, where crews from outside Scotland are parachuted in and few, if any, locals are employed. Around eight per cent said this happened “almost always”.

Morag Fullerton, an established director who has worked on Taggart and This Life, explained: “We would like to be as vibrant and buzzing as Manchester but television programs and drama are on the decline. There’s no more Taggart at the moment, or Rebus: These are regular series that employ in our industry and their loss resulted in massive job cuts, if you consider the size of the industry.

“Now we don’t have a big returning series at the moment – like Monarch of the Glen, Rebus, Hamish Macbeth – which keep most people employed.”

“In Manchester, the centre of their engine is Corrie, which brings people into the industry and trains them. The other problem we have is that there have been a lot of imported dramas that come in like a flat pack and are made here, but don’t employ local people.”

The problems with Scottish drama have been significant enough to have been drawn to the attention of Mike Russell, minister for culture. He is concerned that too often, commissioning editors working from London ignore Scottish programming in favour of television that suits a London audience.

“The problem is that even the comparatively low level of production Scotland has been experiencing has been cut back in the past year.

“We are seeing a poverty of ambition and failure of leadership in the Scottish television industry on the part of those who are commissioning programs, which includes companies like the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 particularly, both in London and in Scotland.”

The SNP once pinned its hopes for the Scottish broadcasting industry on a dedicated Scottish channel, but cannot do anything other than beg ­Westminster for it, as the matter is reserved. Neither can they institute tax breaks for production companies to draw them up

to Scotland.

Russell added: “The British structures for broadcasting, which were meant to support a flourishing Scottish production industry, have failed. It’s obvious they’ve failed.

“What we need is Scottish structures for commissioning material. The first step is to make sure those organisations that should be commissioning, if I can use an old phrase, take a jump to themselves and start to do what they’re meant to do. They have been promising to commission Scottish programmes for several years. Now it’s time to see the colour of their money.”

Scotland used to have a vibrant television industry, but the break-up of the old ITV network, which relied on its regional offshoots, has made it an increasingly centralised, London focused broadcaster, according to

its critics.

But there are some green shoots: the BBC has committed to providing 8.6% of its production from Scotland by 2012 and ITV is also obliged, under OFCOM guidelines, to provide 35% of its programmes from outside of London.

But according to Alistair Moffat, the former director of STV Enterprises, who managed to persuade ITV to buy more series of Taggart after the death of lead actor Mark McManus in 1994, the new, centralised ITV has resulted in a short-sighted company that views Britain through “a London-centric” prism.

He said: “Look at ITV’s two continuing biggest hits: Emmerdale and Coronation Street. They both began as regional programmes from Leeds and Manchester. A central ITV now sitting in London would never commission them. And you can apply that to Taggart. Regional programming used to be a jewel in the crown and now it’s all gone.”

A source close to the STV commissioning process confirmed this. “You only need to look at ITV in its glorious past. There were 15 franchises, three or four of which were really strong. I would put Scottish in that number, but the biggest was certainly Granada followed by Yorkshire.

“The further north you went, the stronger the brands were. Which makes it ironic that ITV is becoming one of the most centralised brands in the UK, considering its strong regional roots.”

John Byrne, the celebrated writer of Tutti Frutti, that has just been rereleased on DVD more than two decades after it was made, has observed the downturn in Scottish drama’s fortunes. Since Tutti Frutti, he has only been asked to write on one series, Your Cheatin’ Heart.

He said: “I’ve noticed [the decline] for 20 years. I wrote two series for the television and have not been asked to do it again since 1990. It probably is the unfortunate truth that television doesn’t want any more Scottish people writing for them. We’re dominated by American culture and they have teams of wonderful writers, who write long-running and extensive series that we all buy into.

“Have a look at River City. That’s our answer to The Sopranos or The Wire.”