BBC Scotland caused something of a furore in the media world earlier this week when it announced plans to end its flagship news programme, The Nine.
The situation is today roundly condemned by one of our readers, who suggests a radical resolution.
Mary Thomas of Edinburgh writes:
"None of us is surprised that the lightweight, underfunded BBC Scotland The Nine news programme has been scrapped, as it was always designed to fail when put up against peak TV viewing audiences.
Following its coverage of the 2014 referendum campaign, BBC Scotland lost a substantial number of its natural audience and now Reporting Scotland has less than half of STV’s News at Six viewers. Of course, broadcasters must hold governments to account but BBC Scotland invariably follows a London unionist agenda on its current affairs output and you don’t witness the same politicisation of every issue on BBC London or on BBC Wales.
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There was a call for a Scotland at Six, an international angle to Scottish news, extinguished in double-quick time by BBC London, though the pilot programme was adjudged excellent.
The only way BBC Scotland can redeem itself is to have a one-hour in-depth Scottish Six news programme and start holding opposition leaders to account. Viewers in Scotland rarely get comparisons with the performance of the Westminster Government or with Labour in Wales, and there is little information on the economic performance of Scotland’s independent near neighbours of a similar size.
It’s time for a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation. In Ireland the public broadcaster RTE has four free-to-air TV channels plus 10 radio channels. RTE only pays £22.5 million a year to get the pick of the BBC’s best TV programmes while ignoring the dross and the licence is free for over-70s."
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