Tomorrow's BBC - Glasgow seminar

The Trust held its final Charter Review seminar in Glasgow on 7 December. The event was chaired by Kirsty Wark with opening remarks from the BBC Chairman, Rona Fairhead and the Trust member for Scotland, Bill Matthews.

In her introduction Rona outlined some of the successes of the BBC in Scotland, but also some of the issues going forward including playing a greater role in supporting the development of the creative talent across the UK, doing more to better represent and reflect audiences and in particular a devolved Scotland in all of its output - including news.

Bill then joined a panel of Chris Young, Managing Director of Young Films; Raymond Boyle, Professor of Communication at University of Glasgow; Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian’s chief culture writer; and James Purnell, the BBC’s Director of Strategy & Digital BBC, to discuss a range of issues. The audience was then invited to take part and give their views.

Much of the discussion focussed on the BBC’s role in Scotland with a clear message coming through that the BBC needed to do more to find the programmes and stories which speak to a Scottish audience. There were many people who felt that the BBC had failed to recognise the reality of devolution or understand the impact of the independence referendum, noting that modern Scotland was very different to that from 20 years ago. Some attendees said that network news was becoming increasingly irrelevant to audiences in Scotland, and that the reporting often failed to acknowledge devolved issues, with clarification rarely being made when policy issues only concerned England and an alleged lack of reporting of issues solely relevant to Scotland. James Purnell said that the BBC Executive was carrying out a consultative exercise to look at some of these issues and whether the BBC currently has the right balance between UK-wide and dedicated Nations news coverage.

In general there was felt to be a London-centricity in most of the things which the BBC did, with comments being made about the need to change the commissioning process to make it more fleet of foot, but also to have more of the decision making and budget allocation based outside London. Some attendees said that they considered a more federal stricture was required to ensure that the BBC betters serves and reflects audiences in Scotland. There was also a belief that more money should be spent by the BBC in Scotland, to at least equal that raised by the licence fee in Scotland and that BBC Scotland should be responsible for that budget rather than London. The BBC noted that it had said that there should be greater flexibility in future in local decision-making on how budgets are spent in each of the nations.

There was also a discussion about the BBC’s role in the creative economy of Scotland, with attendees saying that it was important for the BBC to invest in programmes being made in Scotland to help build the skills base needed to maintain and grow a production base across a range of programmes and genres.

Other issues raised included:

• The BBC’s strategy for indigenous language provision – noting the differences in approach to broadcasting in Welsh and broadcasting in Gaelic
• Difficult choices and possible cuts to services which needed to be made by the BBC in light of reduced funding
• The BBC’s role as a cultural partner across the UK, and particularly in Scotland
• Universality: What this meant and whether it was possible to deliver given the changing population and changing media consumption
• Future governance models – particular to ensure that Scotland was properly represented – and whether a more federal structure was the correct way forward
• The options for funding the BBC as outlined in the Green Paper
• Using technology and data to develop a more personalised relationship between the BBC and its audience.