STV, the Scottish broadcaster, has tried to outflank the BBC by launching a new UK and global news bulletin before the corporation finally decides on its own “Scottish Six” programme.
STV said a nightly half-hourly news bulletin combining Scottish, UK and international news would be rolled out early next year across its growing network of city-based local channels and streamed live on its STV Player.
That network, currently focused on Edinburgh and Glasgow, is to be expanded to include Dundee, Aberdeen and Ayr early next year and rebranded as STV2, broadcast on Freeview channel 8 in Scotland.
The audience for the STV show, to be produced using UK and international footage from ITV News, is likely to be small. STV says the two existing city channels have a “weekly reach of 300,000” and a monthly aggregate audience of 700,000.
In contrast, the BBC 1 regional programme Reporting Scotland has more than half a million viewers each night, about a third of the overall audience. But STV’s move will win political support within Scotland and is likely to boost advertising income.
Gordon Macmillan, STV’s head of news, said he saw this as an answer to the decades-long call for a “Scottish Six”, which has been championed since the 1990s by the former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond.
“This is a programme whose merits have been long-debated in Scotland,” he said. “I’m delighted that it is STV that will bring this landmark new programme to Scotland’s screens.
“Viewers can look forward to yet another TV first: the best of Scottish, UK and international news in a single programme and presented in the way that solely meets the needs of a Scottish audience.”
The BBC is still wrestling with the technical and journalistic challenges of screening a full hour-long domestic, UK and international news programme on BBC 1 Scotland to replace the Six O’Clock News, in response to the increased devolution of government across the UK.
With a final decision on a Scottish Six now not due until later this year or early next, the BBC is still testing formats and technology. Three pilot programmes are being made this week at its Pacific Quay headquarters in Glasgow.
STV has already defeated BBC in one ratings battle after BBC Scotland announced it was scrapping its nightly BBC2 current affairs programme Scotland 2016, which is shown head-to-head against STV’s Scotland Tonight at 10.30pm.
The BBC said Scotland 2016 has failed to win a substantial audience; the show has struggled to produce original content. Scotland Tonight has a simpler studio-based format, promoted heavily on Twitter.
The BBC Scottish Six is also encountering open hostility from Scottish Tories and internal opposition from senior BBC executives, who are wrestling with substantial spending cuts.
NUJ officials say James Harding, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, is a particular critic. In an unusual move, BBC Scotland news executives are now openly championing the Scottish Six proposal.
David Mundell, the Scottish secretary, said earlier this month that the commitment placed on the BBC in the new draft charter to promote the cohesion and wellbeing of the UK and to produce UK-wide news meant a Scottish Six was now dead.
He said the charter’s stress on the cohesion of the UK meant replacing the Six O’Clock News in favour of a bulletin made specifically for Scottish viewers was a policy decision rather than an editorial one. However, Karen Bradley, the UK culture secretary, disputed that, insisting the charter had no impact on the BBC’s operational independence.
Gary Smith, head of the BBC’s Scottish news and current affairs, went on BBC Radio Scotland on Saturday to insist the idea “is very much not dead on the water” but it would cost “considerable amounts of money”. That was a challenge given the spending cuts.
Several hours after STV announced its plans on Wednesday, Andrew Brown, the producer of Reporting Scotland and editor of the Scottish Six pilots, was on BBC Radio Scotland to say his team “were really keen” to have a Scottish Six commissioned. “It’s for people much higher up in the BBC to decide that is the direction we need to go in,” he said.
