BBC Scotland caused something of a furore in the media world earlier this week when it announced plans to end its flagship news programme, The Nine.
Read our report here 👈
The situation is today roundly condemned by one of our readers, who suggests a radical resolution.
Mary Thomas of Edinburgh writes:
"None of us is surprised that the lightweight, underfunded BBC Scotland The Nine news programme has been scrapped, as it was always designed to fail when put up against peak TV viewing audiences.
Following its coverage of the 2014 referendum campaign, BBC Scotland lost a substantial number of its natural audience and now Reporting Scotland has less than half of STV’s News at Six viewers. Of course, broadcasters must hold governments to account but BBC Scotland invariably follows a London unionist agenda on its current affairs output and you don’t witness the same politicisation of every issue on BBC London or on BBC Wales.
Sign up for our Letter of the Day newsletter
There was a call for a Scotland at Six, an international angle to Scottish news, extinguished in double-quick time by BBC London, though the pilot programme was adjudged excellent.
The only way BBC Scotland can redeem itself is to have a one-hour in-depth Scottish Six news programme and start holding opposition leaders to account. Viewers in Scotland rarely get comparisons with the performance of the Westminster Government or with Labour in Wales, and there is little information on the economic performance of Scotland’s independent near neighbours of a similar size.
It’s time for a Scottish Broadcasting Corporation. In Ireland the public broadcaster RTE has four free-to-air TV channels plus 10 radio channels. RTE only pays £22.5 million a year to get the pick of the BBC’s best TV programmes while ignoring the dross and the licence is free for over-70s."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.Â
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.Â
That is invaluable.Â
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel