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Committee

Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee 18 January 2024

18 Jan 2024 · S6 · Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee
Item of business
BBC Annual Report
Steve Carson Watch on SPTV
There are a few things to unpack in your question, Mr Brown. On the licence fee raised and spent, we would all agree that if every nation spent 100 per cent of the licence fee raised in nation, there would be no foreign news gathering bureaux and so on. The important thing is that the direction of travel in Scotland is that we are growing significantly year by year. That has been hard won; there has been confident investment from the wider across the UK strategy, and it also reflects the successful content that has been created with existing investment. Structurally, Wales and Northern Ireland are smaller nations than Scotland. The cost of news provision for 6.30 bulletins this year is common to all nations. It costs roughly the same to do them in Wales and Northern Ireland, but it is more expensive in Scotland, as it is a larger country. The cost is spread among a smaller licence fee base in Wales and Northern Ireland, which is why the figure has historically been higher there. Going back not too many years, Scotland’s raised spend percentage figure was in the 50s. It is now in the 80s, and it is set to go above that. Mr Brown, you also touched on coverage of the performance of our news programmes that has been in the press recently—specifically, the figure of 200 viewers of an episode of “The Seven” one Sunday evening. I think that all here would agree that we should not look at any show in isolation, whether by pulling out a single bulletin on a Sunday evening or even looking at an entire service, such as a news service on a channel or even TV news as a whole. We should not look at them in isolation from what they are, which is part of an integrated news division that operates across TV, radio, online and social media. Quoting figures such as 200 viewers in isolation does not represent the actual performance of those titles. Audiences vary from show to show, but “The Nine” reaches more than 100,000 viewers every week and “The Seven” reaches more than 20,000 every week. On their own, they put news on the BBC Scotland channel ahead of any other news provider on digital TV in Scotland. I am conscious that members have the Ofcom report “Media Nations” in their papers. That report from our regulator shows that, on its own, the channel is favoured by 10 per cent of the audience for news about Scotland. That is double the contribution of Sky News, and it is more than the main commercial radio stations put together. The channel makes a significant contribution to the news offer in Scotland on its own, but I would stress that it is not on its own. It is part of the BBC News Scotland portfolio—BBC One News, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Alba, BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and, crucially, news online—and it is included in the start of reinforcing our bases right around Scotland. The situation is not static. We are always looking at the balance of resource across all our services, and we have seen significant shifts towards moving more of our BBC News Scotland resource into online and our bases, where we have seen strong growth. It is not a static process. The investment that has been made in the channel and “The Nine” is an investment in resource and an investment in people. That has now gone right through our schedule. People such as Martin Geissler, Laura Goodwin, David Wallace Lockhart and Rebecca Curran are all either new to or have been given opportunities with the channel, which is now part of our mainstream output. The channel has always had a record of innovation and doing new things. We are proud of “The Sunday Show”, which was the first radio and TV simulcast using resources and some of the talent from the channel. That process continues, and we continue to innovate to make sure that we have the right balance of resources across our services to harness the power of them working together as audiences change.

In the same item of business

The Convener SNP
Our second agenda item is our annual evidence session on the annual report of the BBC, which has a firm place in the committee’s calendar. We are delighted t...
Steve Carson (BBC Scotland)
It is a pleasure to be here, before the Scottish Parliament’s committee with responsibility for culture, and I am delighted to have alongside me the BBC’s ch...
The Convener SNP
Thank you for that introduction—and for allowing me to host a showing of “Dr Who” at Christmas time at the Parliament on behalf of the BBC. It was enjoyed by...
Alan Dickson (BBC)
I will start by offering a few comments, after which I will ask Steve Carson to pitch in. We are proud of the fact that it is a record year for BBC spend in...
The Convener SNP
Thank you for that. Wales and Northern Ireland are sitting at 111 per cent. Does that additional investment come from a UK pot of money?
Alan Dickson
Again, it will be a mixture of those two factors of how many network commissions are going through Wales and Northern Ireland and the local content. The infr...
Steve Carson
I will put a little more flesh on the bones of those numbers. On that metric that is published in the annual report and accounts of licence fee raised and sp...
The Convener SNP
That is helpful. Thank you very much. We will move to questions from colleagues, and I will bring in Keith Brown first.
Keith Brown (Clackmannanshire and Dunblane) (SNP) SNP
The total expenditure in the UK is around £6 billion, more than a third of which is raised from sources other than the licence fee. What is the equivalent fi...
Alan Dickson
Steve Carson or Louise Thornton might want to talk about that. The commercial side of the business, which is growing—it has surpassed £2 billion for the very...
Steve Carson
BBC Scotland is clearly funded by the licence fee and is on the public service side of the BBC. Within that, we have several mechanisms for bringing in incom...
Louise Thornton (BBC Scotland)
The way in which my commissioning team is set up is that each commissioner looks after a certain genre and we have point-to-point relationships with the genr...
Alan Dickson
It is true to say that a relatively small percentage of the £2 billion commercial income that the BBC generates is derived from Scotland.
Keith Brown SNP
I expect that it is, but, for the committee, in trying to come to an idea about the fairness of the apportionment of funds, it is an important figure. If it ...
Alan Dickson
Previous directors general have appeared before the committee, Mr Brown, so I imagine that—
Keith Brown SNP
It was not so much about the committee. The meeting that happened at Westminster was for a particular political party. Is that courtesy extended to all parties?
Alan Dickson
I am sure that the director general would be open to communication. If there are any issues or concerns to put to him, I am sure that he would respond accord...
Keith Brown SNP
I will make one last point. The table that we have says that the spend as a percentage of the licence fee collected is 86 per cent. You referred to that figu...
Alan Dickson
No. First and foremost, we always look at our approach and strategy to address the need to serve audiences across the UK, particularly in Scotland, as well a...
Steve Carson
There are a few things to unpack in your question, Mr Brown. On the licence fee raised and spent, we would all agree that if every nation spent 100 per cent ...
Alexander Stewart (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Con) Con
Good morning, and thank you for your comments so far. The record spend is very welcome and shows the commitment that is there. There have been some real suc...
Steve Carson
When it comes to the broader picture in relation to whether we are organised and have the right balance of resources across our services—TV, radio, online an...
Alexander Stewart Con
Your new concepts, BBC iPlayer and BBC Sounds, seem to be another way to capture people who come back to watch or listen to content at another time. That is ...
Steve Carson
That is another reason why we are well set for the future. If we look back at the creation of the Scotland channel, it was always conceived as being what we ...
Louise Thornton
That is absolutely the right question. We know that we are in a very competitive market, but we are also lucky to have a huge amount of tracking data, which ...
Steve Carson
I can give another example of our approach to working across services—one that shows how we are positioned in both places. You may be aware of a “Disclosure”...
The Convener SNP
Were those online articles being read on the news section of the BBC website?
Steve Carson
BBC News Scotland has its own home page and we have indexes for all parts of Scotland, but that is also available to audiences around the UK.
The Convener SNP
Thank you. Neil Bibby has some questions.
Neil Bibby (West Scotland) (Lab) Lab
Good morning to the panel. You spoke earlier about growth online and of news online in particular. While that is welcome—that is how society is moving forwar...