IN THE months leading up to last night’s launch of the new BBC Scotland channel, the producers carried out audience research among groups of young Scots. The results were not encouraging. Many of the young people told the BBC what everyone already knows: they don’t watch terrestrial TV, they watch Youtube and Netflix, and they don’t get their news from a big programme broadcast from a big studio, they get their news from social media. Jack and Victor might still watch the news on a telly in the living room at nine o’clock or ten o’clock. But young people? Don’t make me laugh.

This problem with young people has been one of the biggest issues on the minds of BBC producers as they prepare for the new channel and rightly so. The fact the young ones don’t watch TV in the way their parents do poses an existential threat to broadcasters, particularly a broadcaster like the BBC that expects everyone to pay for channels even if they don’t watch them. Ironically, the people who do still watch terrestrial TV every day – the over 75s – are the only ones who don’t have to pay the licence fee.

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The BBC’s response to this problem has been to come up with ideas for the new channel that are firmly aimed at under 30s. Last night, for example, there was a show presented by Iain Stirling of Love Island. There was also a programme that had a whiff of Channel 4 reality-show about it: Getting Hitched Asian Style. The only old fogies on opening night were Jack and Victor, but even their show, Still Game, is a big hit with the under 30s.

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The big question is whether this strategy is going to work and I have my doubts. Recently, I spent a few days with my godchildren who are aged between nine and 14, and what was striking about how they spent their time was that they didn’t switch on the BBC. Not once. For someone like me, or anyone else in their 40s who grew up with Basil Brush and Blue Peter, that’s pretty extraordinary: young people aren’t watching the BBC regularly if at all. The question is: will they change their habits as they get older or is it the BBC that will have to change?

For the moment, the makers of the new channel are proceeding on the basis that they can still attract young viewers. But whether they can or not is just the first of the hurdles the channel is going to have to overcome, the second being whether they can attract an audience in the way that matters. In the old days, TV was about overnight viewing figures – bums on seats – but the director of BBC Scotland, Donalda MacKinnon, has already been managing expectations by saying the new channel will not be about the size of the audience. That’s not-very-subtle code for: the traditional viewing figures for the new channel are going to be very low.

The question is whether it matters and, in a way, it doesn’t because viewing figures are not as important as they once were - it’s just as important that a programme does well on iPlayer and social media. That means that, to prove its worth, the channel is going to have to do well online and produce programmes that are shared by a younger audience. The fact that one of the early programmes is about the make-up artist Jamie Genevieve is a clue to where we’re going here – she has more than a million Instagram followers.

Where it gets difficult is whether the BBC can rise to this challenge, which leads to the third hurdle: the balance problem. The BBC is proud of its policy on balance but, as I pointed out in my column on Question Time the other day, the BBC’s idea of balance has led it to the ludicrous position that, for every environmental scientist on TV, there has to be a climate-change denier. “Balance” can also lead to some very dull TV and that’s not going to help the new channel get its news reports shared online. People increasingly like news with attitude whereas the BBC does sensible. Sensible doesn’t go viral.

The fourth, and perhaps the biggest, hurdle for the new channel is also, in a way, the reason for its creation in the first place. For years, there was pressure from the SNP for a Scottish Six news programe and the new channel is the end result – in other words, it’s the BBC’s response to a political argument rather than audience demand. The problem for the BBC, though, is the Scottish nationalists who most loudly demanded change are also the least likely to watch the new coverage because of its perceived bias – most of the talk among this group is about the reasons they won’t watch.

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The recent row over an alleged plant in the audience of Question Time has not helped in this regard. There has also been very little evidence that the BBC is willing to seriously consider whether they’re getting it right on alleged bias. In fact, Hayley Valentine, the editor of the new Scottish Nine news programme, made the extraordinary statement that she did not know “a single journalist who brought any bias to work with them” which is anti-logic of the worst kind: BBC journalists have bias just like any other human does, which is why the BBC has rules to try to overcome it.

The allegation of bias also has serious consequences for the Scottish version of Question Time which is doomed to death by a thousand nationalist cuts before it even starts. The programme also faces the fifth and final hurdle, which is money. BBC Scotland has already admitted they cannot afford to take their Scottish Question Time around the country which will not only make the channel feel Glasgow-centric (a problem viewers outside the central belt are already aware of), it will highlight the fact that the new channel simply doesn’t have the money it needs.

Can the new channel get over these hurdles? Possibly, but remember previous experiments by the BBC. BBC Choice, which included regional variations for Scotland – axed in 2003. The Scottish version of Newsnight – axed in 2014. Scotland 2014, which had average viewing figures as low as 30,000 – axed after less than three years. Perhaps the new BBC channel will be different to all of those, but it has something of the same feel doesn’t it? An attempt to be different without any great ability to be interesting. An attempt to be Scottish when very few people are watching.