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Archive: scottishtv

Cricket and broadcasting

15 September 2005 20:05

Categories: Biased BBC, Current affairs, Politics, Radio, Scotland, Television

Not another post about Sky (I really can’t be bothered, although it will be a shame for cricket to be away from terrestrial television), but it’s about the BBC’s regional / national / whatever news policy.

I’ve spotted two posts on this today. The comments at Freedom and Whisky are filled with people wanting a BBC England. I always found that request a bit puzzling, as I have mentioned before on this blog. See, for instance, this post (you need to scroll a bit until I start talking about BBC England).

I just don’t see what advantage a BBC England would have over the existing BBC. The reason there isn’t a BBC England is because in England they have regions. A lot of people complain about the whole concept of regions, but I don’t know what the problem is. Frankly, I’d love for Scotland to have BBC regions because that would save us from being subjected to tokenistic non-stories about sheep in the Outer Hebrides. Then they could provide something resembling a local news service. If they were to get rid of the BBC regions to be replaced with a BBC England, the viewers in Cornwall would have to endure stories about the local news in Newcastle and vice-versa. How would that help anyone?

I happen to believe that the BBC has the balance wrong though. With devolution, the 6 O’Clock News increasingly has too many Englandandwales-specific stories. I think a ‘Scottish Six’ (but keeping the 10 as a Britain-wide broadcast) as I have described in this post would do just nicely.

Of course, there are those who would like to separate the BBC into pieces completely, and this is where the SNP come in. Alex C at Land Of The Nearly Free has a little moan about how he as a Scot in uninterested in cricket which is why we should never see this stuff on the television. Well cricket is actually very popular in Scotland — see the post below.

If some SNP supporters were in charge of the airwaves we’d probably be subjected to 24 hour caber tossing and documentaries about fishermen. Or yet more Chewin’ the Fat spin-offs. I know I’d rather have the cricket thank you very much.

Hector Maclean commenting at Land Of The Nearly Free notes the killer reason why chopping up the BBC would be terrible.

…when it comes to world news I am not confident that a Scottish broadcaster could match the resources that a UK wide one has, and consequently it would not come up to the standards I as a viewer have grown accustomed to. I would therefore not wish to lose my access to UK wide broadcasts.

Indeed, you only have to look at Scottish TV who have trouble enough covering their own ITV region, never mind world news.

I thought that ITV’s regions were a lot more offensive anyway. Take the Border region for instance. Can anybody explain that? I can’t stand regional (or national, if you must) television anyway. Apart from providing a local news service (which is fair enough, especially when we’ve got devolution), all that BBC Scotland has brought us, as far as I can tell, is River City, and the most overrated ‘comedy’ show known to man, Chewin’ the Fat. As for Scottish TV… well, the sooner it’s swalled up by ITV plc, the better.

6 comments

Scottish and Grampian opt-outs

10 June 2005 15:18

Categories: Current affairs, Edinburgh, Fife, Scotland, Television

The SMG channels are planning sub-opts in our local news bulletins.

Personally, I’ll believe it when I see it. It’s a bit of a sucker-punch — the perception is that Scottish TV and Grampian TV are now practically the same channel in every respect apart from the name (and local bulletin).

The problem Scottish TV faces is that its rival, BBC Scotland, is a truly national broadcaster — Scottish TV just has the bit in the middle. So Scottish TV’s news bulletin, erroneously called Scotland Today, should obviously technically only cover news that falls within the boundaries of Scottish TV’s ITV region. But it doesn’t.

The border isn’t that far north of where I live — on the south of Fife. Just a few miles away in Glenrothes a lot of people get Grampian TV. But it is not unusual for Scotland Today to feature news from somewhere in the Grampian region, like, say, Aberdeen or Perth.

So Scottish TV doesn’t give us a regional bulletin in what is already a reasonably large region. Now they’re going to be splitting that region into two (if I understand the article correctly).

Who knows though, it might work. Scotland’s media — especially the broadcasters — are very Glasgow-centric. Some people in the east call Scottish TV ‘Weegie TV’. I just hope the new bulletin doesn’t become too Edinburgh-centric!

Hasn’t the BBC been planning similar ‘mini-regions’ aswell?

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New BBC weather graphics

14 May 2005 17:22

Categories: Fife, Scotland, Television, Weather

When the Beeb announced that they were ditching their classic symbols and going for a “realistic” “three-dimensional” forecast I complained about it on my blog. I had images of Scottish TV’s truly awful “flythrough” weather forecast, or the ones on Sky News where you need a magnifying glass to see if it’s raining.

However, the bits and pieces of it that I’ve seen look very clear. You can see precisely where the clouds are, and exactly where the rain will fall. This could be the end of “weather blindness”, where people don’t know what the weather’s going to be like because their town falls in between two different symbols.

Incidentally, the ones on BBCi (which have already been updated with those brown maps, so presumably won’t be changing) are terrible. Before the change symbols were quite evenly spread across Scotland. Now they only show symbols for the same towns and cities — with massive gaps in between. I swear by BBCi’s forecasts for when I’m going to Edinburgh. If I lived in one of those gaps it would be a very different matter.

The style of the new television forecasts is very contemporary though. It does look a bit weird with the map being brown. A step backwards from the photo-realistic maps that we’ve become used to. Apparently it makes the clouds in the forecast clearer though. Another problem I already have is that for a UK-wide forecast, the angle of the map has the south of Britain appearing much nearer the ‘camera’ (as opposed to the more neutral angle — directly above the British Isles — that we’re all used to). It is almost impossible to see what the weather is like where I live, and I’m not even that far north.

Just wait until you see Points of View next week though — masses of 75-year-olds with nothing better to do complaining about the change just because they can’t take the change. Mind you, I’ll have to reserve judgement until I’ve seen a full weather forecast on Monday.

1 comment

Jamie Oliver and the Scottish Six

31 March 2005 15:47

Categories: Politics, Scotland, Television, UK General Election 2005

This whole Jamie Oliver thing has been interesting. That’s annoying, because it doesn’t actually affect me. It’s another one of those Englandandwales stories that becomes the top of the agenda. I get roped in, I find it very interesting and I say, “Yes, it’s good that children will finally be able to eat healthy school dinners.”

And then it strikes me that this actually isn’t going to affect Scotland at all. I forget about it, and the next time I hear a discussion about it on the radio the cycle starts again. Those of you who moan about there not being a BBC England remember this. This story affects England only, and it’s hardly been out of the national news for the past week.

In a way, being interested in school meals in England would be on a par with me being interested in school meals in, say, Holland. Why would I be interested? It may not directly affect Scotland, but it could well indirectly affect me. The situation with school dinners has become a general election issue. If it has a bearing in Westminster then it does actually affect me, on a party political level at least.

The best example of this is the vote on student tuition fees — another Englandandwales matter. It was shown live on BBC Two, which isn’t exactly a common occurance. The vote didn’t affect me, but neither did it affect the average English voter more than any other Commons vote. The story wasn’t in the issue, but it was in the politics. Blair was facing the prospect of a massive Labour rebellion and that’s what made it interesting; that’s why it was shown live on television; and that’s why I was interested even though the vote itself meant little to me.

Nevertheless we are bombarded with Englandandwales stories. “A report shows than in England and Wales this,” and, “A study shows that England and Wales has that.” Most of them are interesting, but only because they’re on the news, not because they’re important to me. I think the answer is a ‘Scottish Six’.

I used to be dead against the idea of a Scottish Six. After all, half an hour of Reporting Scotland is bad enough. But it doesn’t have to just be an hour-long edition of Reporting Scotland. Actually, it must not be allowed to be like Reporting Scotland. Any Scottish Six should run the same important international and national (UK-wide) stories. But they’d be mixed in with Scottish stories with a running order that reflects Scotland’s priorities.

Even if this wouldn’t be everybody’s cup of tea, there would still plenty of places to get a UK-wide perspective on the news. ITV News would be on the other side, or you could tune into BBC News 24 or Radio Five Live.

I heard that SMG are planning on having a Scottish Ten Thirty on Scottish TV. It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it would work. It’s probably aimed at competing against Newsnight Scotland, which is a very different programme to the exisiting News at Ten Thirty on ITV1. I think it’s safe to say that six o’clock would be the right time for a bulletin such as the Scottish Six. The Six O’Clock News is significantly less beard-strokey than the Ten O’Clock News. The Six is more tabloidy; it’s got to matter more to the people watching it. A Scottish Six would achieve that.

3 comments