BBC Audience Council Scotland Report

Engaging with the audience in Scotland

The Council held a wide variety of audience engagement events during the year. They included events for members of specifi c stakeholder groups such as business, sport and the arts, to focus groups on particular topics and general audience events. In addition the Council website was used to invite opinion on the service review of bbc.co.uk. Other ways of engaging with licence payers included attendance at events on broadcasting topics held by other organisations, meetings with industry bodies such as Digital UK, and systematic monitoring of logs of audience comments made to the BBC.

A significant proportion of engagement activity was related to the BBC Trust's public value test on the Gaelic Digital Service proposal. Members of the Council attended a number of stakeholder meetings, reviewed submissions to the Trust's consultation, held a focus group consultation of Gaelic speakers, and organised a public meeting on Skye.

Much of the feedback received from licence payers has related to one or another of the Trust's consultations. A focus group was held in Glasgow on the BBC iPlayer proposal and in Edinburgh on the Trust's service review of bbc.co.uk. The feedback received from members of the audience was reflected in the Council's submissions to the Trust on the topic under consultation.

Other events, such as those held in Inverness and St Andrews, focussed on general issues. Among the themes to emerge from these and other events were sports rights, a range of issues around digital switchover and transmission issues relating to DAB radio, Freeview and radio reception on the A9. These issues are reflected in the Council's priorities for 2008/09.

In the year ahead the Council will seek to engage with a wider range of audience groups and encourage greater use of its website as a means of engaging with audiences across Scotland.

During the year the Council submitted responses to the Trust's consultation on Audience Engagement, the public value test on HD television, the service review of bbc.co.uk, the BBC/ Gaelic Media Service proposal for a Gaelic Digital Service, and the consultation on the BBC Complaints Framework. In April 2008 the Council submitted an annual report to the Trust, the content of which is broadly reflected in the present document.

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