BBC Scotland staff are prepared to stage fresh strike action unless the corporation's new boss takes their fears over news production seriously, a union has warned.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is optimistic Tony Hall – who takes over as director general in April – will be sympathetic to concerns raised by staff who walked out across the UK yesterday. However, it is not ruling out further strikes if he presses ahead with cuts.
Paul Holleran, regional organiser for the NUJ in Scotland, said Lord Hall's track record in dealing with labour disputes suggested he would take journalists' views on board.
Mr Holleran added: "Looking at Savile and other muddles that have befallen the BBC in recent months, I would hope he would realise it isn't feasible to cut 2000 jobs. The BBC is paying exorbitant salaries to managers to mismanage, and it's eating into its ability to produce quality news programmes."
Yesterday's strike began at noon, to protest against the corporation's plan to cut 2000 jobs over the next five years.
Around 200 NUJ members and 500 backstage and technical staff from the electricians union, Bectu, based at the BBC Scotland headquarters in Glasgow, were among those taking action.
The disruption left viewers of Reporting Scotland bemused at one point as the theme tune from Doctor Who played over a report on the news programme's truncated evening bulletin. The programme, which had been cut from 30 to five minutes and was being put out by a skeleton staff while NUJ members protested, was blighted by sound and technical problems last night.
It appeared the BBC Scotland studio was simultaneously broadcasting Reporting Scotland and an episode of Doctor Who, with the theme music and characters' voices interfering with the news audio.
Viewers were quick to highlight the error on Twitter. One tweeted: "Clearly small children are in control of Reporting Scotland tonight given the sound interference."
Another added: "Strike certainly affected Reporting Scotland quality. Doctor Who music and random voices played in background throughout."
Simon Willis tweeted: "Reporting Scotland with a hint of Doctor Who audio playing behind throughout. And no-one there noticed. Shoddy!"
And viewer Jamie Armour wrote: "Just heard Doctor Who theme on Reporting Scotland. Strike + clueless managers = hilarity for me."
The walk-out also led BBC Scotland to scrap its live coverage of First Minister's Questions at the Scottish Parliament, while pre-recorded programmes replaced live news content on the BBC News channel.
A recording of reporter Tim Willcox's dispatch from Nicosia, where he was covering the opening of the banks after the EU bail-out of Cyprus, was played repeatedly on the national rolling news channel.
The BBC said it was "extremely disappointed" the unions had taken the action.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article