Sustaining Citizenship And Civil Society

Against a backdrop of severe economic turbulence, BBC Scotland’s news, current affairs and politics programming, across broadcast platforms, brought in-depth analysis and informed comment on the most significant story in Scotland for a generation.

Special editions of Newsnight Scotland, a network Panorama on the Royal Bank of Scotland and the introduction of new radio series, such as Cracking the Crunch and The Business, brought fresh perspectives and insights on the financial crisis and its impact on Scotland.

The Investigation strand, on radio and television, has served to raise the profile of investigative journalism from BBC Scotland and Edi Stark’s Never Too Old To Care won a gold Sony Radio Academy award. On BBC Radio Scotland First Minister’s Questions is now broadcast every Thursday (on MW and DAB) and Brian Taylor’s blog has proved popular with pundits and public alike.

For Gaelic audiences, An Là, on the recently launched BBC ALBA digital service and broadcast from Inverness, offers a comprehensive mix of local, national and international perspectives on the stories of the day.

The six-part series Primetime, a joint project between the BIG Lottery Fund and BBC Scotland, made £3million available for group projects to help improve life for Scotland’s over-50s.

Promoting Education And Learning

In 2008/09 we made particular efforts to extend learning beyond the formal curriculum, in English and Gaelic, into areas such as entertainment programming for adults and children.

The hugely popular Bitesize revision website was relaunched and traffic to it grew by around 12% compared to the previous year. We also introduced the Learning Zone Scotland, a broadband clips library for teachers and learners which offers free access to a wide variety of BBC programme excerpts. Soundtown entered its sixth year – supported by BBC Radio Scotland, pupils from Alva Academy contributed to a range of programming. And, on network television, younger audiences were well served with series as varied as Nina and the Neurons Go Eco (shown here), Ed and Oucho’s Excellent Inventions and Lazytown Extra, which promoted health and well-being for pre-school to early years children.

Also on network, Britain’s Lost World: St Kilda offered a fascinating insight to a long forgotten world; Jimmy’s Farming Heroes drew in hugely appreciative UK audiences and the 10 Things You Didn’t Know About… strand saw the programme on earthquakes, on BBC Four, attract an audience of almost four times its transmission slot average.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra also played its part by supporting Sistema Scotland in the Raploch in Stirling, performing alongside the children taking part in this transformational music programme.