The democratic arguments for a “Scottish Six” television news programme are self-evident, and it is therefore to be welcomed that the UK parliament’s culture committee has endorsed the idea.
It is ludicrous that Scottish viewers must watch a half-hour programme of news from London (including health, education and other devolved issues that have little or no bearing on their own lives) before seeing a separate programme that covers those issues. If the major story of the day is about education, viewers in Scotland should see it at the top of their main bulletin, not in a regional add-on.
With the best will in the world, however, I can’t see how it can be done without Scottish viewers having to put up with a considerable loss in quality. I am astonished to hear people like Lesley Riddoch and John Nicholson (both professional broadcasters themselves) arguing that “if it can be done on radio – on Good Morning Scotland – then it can be done on TV”. That’s just not so. In fact the logistics of television make it almost impossible.
Consider how Good Morning Scotland works. The running order – quite rightly – combines Scottish, British and international news according to what the editors deem to be the interests or priorities of Scottish listeners. Some of the reports or interviews (“two-ways” in BBC parlance) are done by BBC Scotland’s own reporters, but many are done by “Newsgathering” reporters who answer first to the London news desk. As a reporter based for many years in Moscow, Brussels and elsewhere I often did two-ways on the story of the day for Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, and Radio Scotland. On radio, that’s not difficult. Good Morning Scotland can schedule its stories so that its Moscow correspondent appears at 7.15, after he or she has done the 7.10 spot on the Today Programme. Listeners don’t even notice what is going on.
With pre-recorded radio dispatches it’s even simpler. They all go into a central BBC pool, from where every BBC news programme can play them out, at any time.
But you can’t just transpose this scheme to television. If Laura Kuenssberg or Jeremy Bowen is doing a live interview at the top of the Six O’Clock News, they can’t also do it at the top of a Scottish Six. They could do it – perhaps – at 6.15, but that would mean the Scottish Six is already a poorer relation, having to adjust its running order to suit London’s priorities.
There’s a further difficulty. Unlike on radio, if Laura or Jeremy have edited a “package”, it will almost certainly be incomplete – because the grammar of modern TV news requires that they “top and tail” it with a live section, introducing and ending the report. The pre-recorded bit is not broadcastable on its own. So what would a Scottish Six put out? Again, they would have to wait until the correspondent was free (after their obligations to BBC One and BBC World) to do a live intro again on the Scottish Six.
The only way out of this impasse – and it would appear to be the only way out – would be for the Scottish Six to have its own pool of reporters for every story. Only then could it be sure of being able to put the day’s most important story at the top of the bulletin – or indeed of covering any non-Scottish story adequately. At present, that simply could not be done: BBC Scotland does not have the quantity of top-calibre correspondents that would be needed. And would it ever have the means (technical and financial) to dispatch teams of its own reporters to cover earthquakes, wars and elections all over the world?
Oh, I hear, “Iceland, or Denmark, have their own TV news. Why can’t we?” Well, Iceland and Denmark certainly do not have news programmes that match the quality of the BBC’s – and that’s what viewers in Scotland get at the moment, and would expect in the future.
Scotland has many talented journalists (some of them, like Laura Kuenssberg, Quentin Somerville, Iain Watson and James Cook, already work for BBC network news), but let’s not delude ourselves: it is a fantasy to imagine that the editor of the Scottish Six could dispatch a team of top journalists to the next world trouble-spot and provide the same standard of coverage we currently get on the Six O’Clock News.
Personally, I like to hear a Scottish voice like Kuenssberg’s reporting on Westminster politics – but make no mistake, if she’s needed on the Six O’Clock News, we won’t get her on the Scottish Six. She can’t be in two places at the same time.
I am a passionate supporter of the need for a Scottish Six. Our democracy simply demands it. But I just cannot see how it can be done. Television is not radio, and those who glibly suggest it would be easy, need to think again – and put their minds to the much more difficult question of working out where on earth the talent, the resources and the money will come from.
Tony O'Donnell says
Exactly. Cultural and political justification is there and has been for years but the resources aren’t. Perhaps the necessary budget to ensure parity of quality with London news output never will be, guaranteeing a second-best tag which must be avoided at all costs.
Mind you, if the Scottish Six is as fast off the mark as you were with this piece, it’ll be first with the news……….
Lesley Riddoch says
Angus, I dont disagree that the Scottish Six will be tough to do – I wrote about that in February http://www.thenational.scot/comment/lesley-riddoch-the-bbc-still-has-a-plethora-of-alterations-it-needs-to-make.14193
I’m writing again for the National tomorrow and will try to respond to the points you’ve made.
Paul Donaldson says
Wouldn’t some of the problems you described be quite easily solved by having an hour long news, local news, sports, current affairs etc programme starting at 6:00pm with a very short news intro lasting a couple of minutes at 6:00pm, filling with other items such as an extended feature on one of the day’s issues, interviews, debates, consumer affairs, culture items, human interest stories etc next, then perhaps a slot for local news, then sports (from all over the world / UK as well as Scotland, we certainly need more than just the “Old Firm”), weather, and then having the main national and international news coverage presented from Scotland from 6.30pm to 7.00pm?
Nobody is saying that the main part of the programme has to be on while the rest of the UK are watching their main news. Holding it as 6.30pm would mean if the studio presenter had to do a live link up with a reporter somewhere, then that reporter would be available.
All it needs is a bit of out of the box thinking (and resources), and I’m sure it could be a great success for the BBC.
Jocky Burd says
You make good points about the practicality of this but really, is it ludicrous to have national news at 6pm? As a licencepayer, I want an eye on what’s happening around the UK because it will affect me, at least in a tertiary way. It’s not as if Scots are being singled out here: everyone gets the UK bulletpoints, followed by news in their area.
More practically, most Scots aren’t back from work by that point.
There is certainly an argument to up the quality on Rep Scot; when did it ever break a story?
Joseph MELLON says
> BBC Scotland does not have the quantity of top-calibre correspondents that would be needed. …
> Scotland has many talented journalists (some of them, like Laura Kuenssberg, Quentin Somerville, Iain Watson and James Cook, already work for BBC network news),
(Not to mention Andrew Marr, Andrew Niel, …)
Isn’t that part of the problem? The talent of the Scottish media industry goes to London, where the budget is also. They tend not to come back.
> Iceland and Denmark certainly do not have news programmes that match the quality of the BBC
I lived in Dublin, Ireland for 10 years and was always impressed by the quality of RTE’s news and other programs. Some people watched the BBC, but I can’t imagine the Irish having the BBC as their main TV news source. Like the Scots they often find the BBC content irrelevant and the viewpoint offensive.
Oh and Ireland has a really vibrant media and film industry.
Joseph MELLON says
– and over lunch I reflected on the assertions in this article, and found I really didn’t want to leave the assertion about the ‘quality’ of the BBC news programmes…
I am not a media professional, and it is clear that say Kuenssberg ‘performs’ well to camera, and there is a professional team of producers, production assistants, editors, camera and sound people, all topping and tailing and doing a fine job of it.
*But* the content is (imho) woefully bad. It is what has been so brilliantly parodied by Jonathan Pie: ‘on message’ PR spin that attempts to deliberately deceive the viewer but is actually pretty lame even at that.
If Scottish Six was editorially good – well informed, fair, insightful – then *that* would be quality, even if the lack of a second camera, and a rushed edit sometimes made the packaging rough.
Jonathan Pie is the perfect commentary on the ‘quality’ of what the BBC produces.
Bill Fraser says
Mr Roxburgh – could you be guilty of ‘BBC thinking’ when you cite problems of the availability of star BBC-employed talking heads?
Surely the important point is how the programme is put together. Not involved in meejah but I’ll call it ‘editing’. If editing resources are available can delivery of the report not include bought-in contributions from respected agencies – not necessarily BBC employees – and presented from a Scottish perspective from the studio?
I hesitate to mention the Scottish press but do they not operate wth a small number of high-quality employees sourcing outside material? The term’Associate Editor’ seems in vogue at the moment
John Sharp says
If near-simultaneous availability (to UK News and Scottish News) of presenters is such a severe problem, then could we question whether the early-evening news slot needs to run concurrently in both locations? Could a Scottish Six start at 6:30pm, for example. Also, need running order necessarily always feature the most important items at/near the start. Could a key item be trailed at the start, or in rolling footer text, as “we’ll be covering that in depth at . . . [say, a time which is 30 minutes into the programme]”.
I don’t think that the BBC’s preferred London presenter is necessarily outstandingly the best reporter that we need to have. Laura Kuenssberg often seems to me to be pursuing a specious agenda rather than evidence-based information and sound analysis. Nicholas Witchell’s sycophantic presentation is perhaps well-pitched to the UK average preference, but surely is a mismatch to the average Scottish consumer of royal news. Assuming that the collation and presentation of news is a team game, we might often be well-served by non-availability of BBC London’s “top” presenter.
If it is clear that presenters’ absolute priority is availability for BBC main news, and they may contribute not at all, or on a best endeavours basis to Scottish Six, then one may question whether BBC Scotland should be paying pro rata for funding this resource – i.e. some funding should be freed up to fund relationships with reporters who do have the inclination to be available.
I’ve seen comment from London-based commentators as to how impossible it would be for a Scottish Six to report on world news without a dependence on London resources. When on holiday in Germany, Sweden, France,… I think that their news operations seem to get along fine without such a dependence (except for some parts of UK-specific stories), and I would have hoped that over time, a Scottish Six would cultivate direct relationships with foreign news sources who do not always see the world from one fixed perspective. (OK, given that we are discussing BBC, that last bit is far too optimistic.)