How to save BBC Scotland

The sad thing about the BBC’s dedicated Scottish channel, which has suffered another collapse in viewing figures, is that it’s actually rather good. Their flagship news programme The Nine, broadcast from BBC Scotland’s cavernous HQ at Pacific Quay on the Clyde, is very professional. It is presented by the excellent Martin Geissler, whose name you won’t find on the Daily Mail’s plutocratic presenter list of shame. They don’t pay that kind of money up here — and what they do get paid, they have to work twice as hard for.

When I was asked to come north from Westminster to present the Holyrood Live programmes many years ago, I found the staffing was about one third of what I’d been used to in the BBC’s political HQ at Millbank. Well, how else could they produce an entire channel for £43 million a year? Launched in 2018, BBC Scotland was supposed to answer the complaints of Scottish nationalists and others that the BBC was too London-centric and quell demands for a Scottish opt out from the Six O’Clock News.