10/08/2007

Alex Salmond has a fair point. We all, he insists, are more interested in what is happening in our own backyards more than the goings on in Norwich, Nuneaton or Knightsbridge. In his announcement that a commission is to be set up to address the issue of broadcasting, and the creative industries, the First Minister argued that programmes made north of the border serve a greater purpose  due to "the continued desire of people in Scotland for substantial and quality analysis of the issues which affect their lives".

Spot on, Big Eck. Bring it on. There is a genuine irritation when one turns on the Six O'Clock News and you get a wonderfully packaged report about the travails of the NHS, education or policing which neglects to mention that it matters not on the opposite side of Hadrian's Wall.

Salmond is right to pipe up when the license fee payers - or for that matter, those who watch the adverts which fund commercial stations - are not given their due.

However, when he calls for a full devolution of broadcasting, he is barking up the wrong antenna. And, in particular, in attempting to guide through the Trojan Horse that is the ‘Scottish Six’, his satellite dish is pointed at the incorrect star.

Frankly, if you want to make broadcasting, and especially news, more relevant, I don't want it brought to a Scottish level. I want more local than that. On those rare occasions when my mind is numb enough to sit through an entire Reporting Scotland or Scotland Today, I find myself watching a far greater amount of irrelevance than anything beamed from White City.

Hospital problems in Kelvinside? Yawn. Flooding on Deeside? Wake me up when it's over. Job cuts on Tayside? Forgive my lack of sympathy but I couldn't give a fig. Glasgow is as much a foreign land to me as The Gambia, whatever Alex might decry.

At least, I can credit stv with trying to deliver something which reflects the action on my doorstep (with their east-west news split mid-way through Scotland Today). Down south, the BBC is experimenting with online local TV bulletins (as are certain ITV franchises). This fine idea is not designed to create the Southampton Six or Norwich Nine but to fulfil a demand. Which is, after all, why broadcasting exists in the first instance.

Only commercial radio, at present, manages to target its local audience effectively with what truly matters while ditching what does not. My former employer, talk107 in Edinburgh, was perhaps the best example in Britain, probing effectively at its environs to reflect the city in which it was based. Eschewing what was happening elsewhere was risky, if not debatable, but it was journalism of a hugely effective nature.

Salmond himself acknowledges that there will be no Scottish Broadcasting Corporation without independence but the logistics of creating a separately administered and regulated system are impossibly huge. A new layer of managerial bureaucracy? More money down the drain. The loss of nationally-adored institutions? Prepare for the backlash from EastEnders devotees. And if it means jobs for the boys, or to be precise, those well-kent tartan Z-listers who are so talented that they fail to get hired by anyone south of Gretna, then never mind the quality, feel the laughter lines fade away…

It is true that London commissioners should make more of an effort to reach beyond the M25 and utilise a talent pool which stretches as far away as John O'Groats. But to do it by Executive decree is a recipe for less, not more. Think of the next time George Aligiah is presenting at Six from Darfur, flagging up a crisis of global interest. Do we really need Jackie Bird there as well on a separate feed? Or will she be anchoring live from Easterhouse instead that evening, highlighting the lack of road signs? If so, I'll either be watching News 24 or have fallen fast asleep.

Mark Woods