In August 2007, The SNP government set up the Scottish Broadcasting Commission under the able chairmanship of Blair Jenkins and including members like Henry McLeish and Lord Fraser. Their final report Platform For Success was issued in September 08. It contained a series of recommendations including the headlining proposal that there be a Scottish digital channel with a possible budget of around £75 million per annum. Beyond this, what led to the establishment of the Commission and what problems was it trying to address?  Is their analysis sound?  Are the recommendations viable? Where do we go from here? Can or should Scotland have its own media policy?

Firstly, there was clear evidence that Scotland was under performing in the television production sector with the share of total UK spending by the main networks having fallen to around three per cent, out of kilter with the proportion of population which is nearer nine per cent. In addition, both the BBC - Mark Thompson and ITV - Michael Grade claimed that there was a lack of talent and ideas in Scotland. Thompson quickly reviewed and revised his position and at the opening of the new BBC Scotland headquarters at Pacific Quay both he and BBC Trust chairman Michael Lyons made commitments to an increase in production such that the nine per cent of network spend be now seen as a floor and not a ceiling for BBC Scotland’s future investment. 

Readers of SLR will be aware of proposals that Question Time be managed out of Glasgow and that other programmes/strands will be relocated from south of the border. There will also be further investment in home grown but not parochial product. -  although the BBC are referring to a deadline for completion of 2016.

So the BBC, having, they assert, begun this process before the establishment of the SBC, can now be reasonably said to have started to address issues of under production. Where they have some way to go is in the area of cultural representation and the coverage of news and current affairs where the recent BBC Trust commissioned report from Professor Anthony King provided clear evidence - none new to SLR readers - that the Corporation remained and remains deeply London centric to the dismay of the regions of England never mind the smaller nations of what should be called the United Kingdom(s) plural. In my judgement Scotland needs a Scottish Six and it is clear that the provision of news and current affairs reporting across the UK has signally failed to stay in step with devolution.

However, what is significant in debates around media policy is that it is always the BBC that is the focus of such debates. Writing in a week where the BBC has been assailed on all sides by the fall out from the Ross/Brand affair, there have been claims that the BBC should not be in this market i.e. the comedy for youth and this leads us to address the broader place and position of public service broadcasting in Scotland and the UK.  And here is the real debate to which SLR readers should address themselves and through these we can consider the proposal to set up the Scottish digital channel. Because, interesting and welcome idea though it is, the real question is the funding basis/model and the governance/ownership structure and these are questions and issues which are imperfectly addressed at present. Furthermore it is all too easy to forget that the BBC – and incidentally - Channel 4 (although C4 is shamefully poor in commissioning work from and in representing Scotland) - are both, broadly speaking, in their diverse ways outstanding examples of nationalised organisations which achieve world wide success in the production and distribution of creative content and even more importantly reporting in news and current affairs which is required to aspire to - and mostly achieves, high levels of accuracy, balance and impartiality.

At our peril do we meddle with the ecology of institutional arrangements that facilitate and produce such quality? However, Channel 4 now states that it is facing a funding gap and needs public support for which read top slicing the BBC licence fee. In this heinous and dangerous proposal, it is supported by the neo liberal economic regulator OFCOM which would like nothing better than to fully regulate the BBC no doubt by taking over the BBC Trust. The scene would then be set for the distribution of the BBC licence fee via contestable funding and this could include Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB as well as ITV/STV.

Moreover, in the interests of competition and pluralism not to say the shareholders of STV, in their submission to the SBC STV stated that it will “produce Scottish programmes on its two Scottish services only at its commercial discretion”. What does this mean? In a word, STV seeks public funding to support their continuing to provide, for example, news and current affairs. Yet the use above of the term ITV/STV should have alerted us to the fact that there are also serious questions to be asked about the extent to which STV/ITV both north and south of the border play what kind of part in the provision of high quality information and programming to enable citizens of England and Scotland to understand their evolving democracy, devolution and political debates etc. If we accept that Scotland in particular has not been well or even sufficiently served by the market or the BBC, what is clear is that the BBC is – very late in the day admittedly - making a response to the need for devolution plus inside the BBC and thus in output.

But the regulator established by New Labour, OFCOM seeks to meet its statutory duty to maintain and strengthen public service broadcasting by proposing to take money away from the BBC, reduce it to its core services –(who defines these and how) and subsidise commercial broadcasters who state that the market alone is not enough for them to meet their wider democratic, cultural and social responsibilities.

It is in this context that the SBC Scottish Digital Channel needs to be viewed. And the current PSB review by Ofcom also needs a response from SLR readers. This is because STV’s claims for public funding are being used by Ofcom, like the poll tax - as a testing ground to see if the precedent can be set. STV claim that they may not be able to sustain their current levels of investment in news and current affairs even in the run up to digital switchover. They need public funding now. And if they get it, perhaps in 2009 via decisions by Stephen Carter, former Chief Executive of OFCOM then Number ten and now junior broadcasting and technology minister in the House of Lords, then the slippery slope towards cutting the BBC down to size, so long sought by Murdoch, the Daily Mail, Gerald Kaufman et al might become irreversible.

Privatising the BBC is on the horizon. To be fair to the SBC, they do not seek this and do exhort Ofcom to ensure that STV and ITV do meet their responsibilities but the question is what policy levers does any government have faced with these intransigent market base arguments? The BBC needs to raise its game but how good is ITN news at covering Scotland and the Scottish perspective? Or even at covering serious issues and news? How good is STV and should we subsidise their shareholders in return for what?  How far could STV ensure that ITN network news was more sensitive to Scottish perspectives and issues? How do we ensure that the news is high quality? Here too would be the problem for a Scottish Digital Network. For such a channel could well deliver a Scottish six but would the programmes make the good popular and the popular good or would it be driven by commercial considerations and the political imperative to justify the expenditure via high ratings.

And what would be the governance structure of the channel, which would support real political independence. The Scottish Broadcasting Commission recommends the creation of a new Scottish Network: a digital public service television channel and an extensive and innovative online platform. The network should be funded out of the new UK settlement for PSB and plurality and should be licensed and given full regulatory support by OFCOM. The Commission recommends that the remit for the new network should include a commitment to high-quality information and entertainment, including news and current affairs covering Scottish and international issues, and innovative and ambitious cultural content.

Sounds good but powers over broadcasting remain reserved to Westminster although The Commission recommends that Scottish Ministers should have greater responsibility, within the UK framework, for those operational functions of broadcasting directly affecting Scotland role. The Commission recommends that the influence and responsibilities of OFCOM Scotland should be strengthened and there should be specific representation for Scotland on the main OFCOM Board (at UK level). This too sounds good, but given OFCOM’s existing policies and priorities, one should not expect much from such a development even if it came to pass which I strongly suspect would not be the case. The SBC investigation and report, therefore, had come at a time when the decades old settlement, structure and ecology of broadcasting in and across the UK and its nations and regions is undergoing a substantial review and reconfiguration rather like the UK and its constitution itself.

While one wishes to have more and better Scottish content production and representation and a greater voice for Scotland in the processes and formulation of media policy and implementation, the question is how far we should push this at a time when the enemies of public service broadcasting and of the BBC in particular are seeking to sue this time to promote and achieve their own commercial and ideological agendas and goals. So the issue is not just SNP versus Labour; it is not the Scottish Six; it is not investment in employment; it is not how the BBC represents Britishness beyond the home counties, it is all of these and more. It is about who we are and whose voices are enabled to be heard. It is about what kind of broadcasting/media ecology we need and would best suit our cultural and creative and democratic aspirations. Read the SBC report available at  www.scottishbroadcastingcommission.gov.uk ; take part in the debates about its recommendations  but watch out for OFCOM and Rupert Murdoch.

 Robert Beveridge is an academic at Napier University