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.
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