Who killed Scotland's TV? 'TELEVISION: REGIONAL PRODUCTION

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Jul 1, 2007 | by Steven Vass

MICHAEL Grade's angry words will have been ringing in the ears of Scottish producers as they returned from Cardiff over the weekend. With his face pink and his eyes bulging, the ITV chief executive gave short shrift to suggestions that Scotland should get commissions on anything other than merit.

"It's your problem. It's not my problem.

We are open for business. You can't expect us to dish out money like sweeties because it's your turn, " he had growled.

The Ofcom conference on public service broadcasting in the nations and regions could hardly believe it. With Grade most recently cast in the role of calming chairman to fiery director general Mark Thompson at the BBC, many had expected him to come to Cardiff with soothing words about the importance of the ITV regions and how he would make them great contributors again.

Instead the audience was treated to a tongue-lashing that will have turned up the heat several notches on the gathering debate about network commissioning in Scotland. Those in the recently sworn in SNP administration that was so hawkish about a better deal for their country in the run-up to the election will no doubt be considering their options.

Scottish network commissioning may have been a sore point for some time, but it landed squarely on the agenda a few weeks ago when Ofcom published its annual figures. At a time when most people in the industry agree that too few network programmes are commissioned north of the Border, it showed that things are rapidly moving in the wrong direction.

The proportion of network budgets spent in Scotland halved between 2004 and 2006 from 6-per cent to 3-per cent, thanks to big drops from the two main broadcasters, which seems particularly dismal when you consider that Scots make up 9-per cent of the UK population. At ITV, the proportion fell from 3-per cent to 2-per cent over the period, which sufficiently worried Ofcom that its Scottish director, Vicki Nash, was quoted in these pages a few weeks ago saying that the regulator will consider quotas next year if there is no improvement.

At the BBC, meanwhile, the proportion fell from 7-per cent to 4- per cent, even though that organisation is supposed to be working towards increasing network spending in the three nations of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales by GBP50 million over the next few years.

Five was down from an already very low base, and although Channel 4's proportion increased from 2-per cent to 3-per cent it was still down in terms of the proportion of hours being produced. Glasgowproduced comedy Meet The Magoons and a smattering of commissions in non-peak areas such as schools programmes were clearly not enough to make a big difference to the figures.

The signs are that this year will not be any better. Most production companies in Scotland are saying that commissions have dried up in recent months, and everyone is looking nervously at their profit and loss accounts. While this appears to be part of a wider commissioning recession across the UK, the worry is that the London-based commissioners stick ever more to their trusted partners in difficult times.

As Colin Cameron, managing director of Lion Television Scotland, explains, the current drought is caused by an unfortunate coincidence of events. He says: "Channel 4 has had a commissioning freeze in recent months. The BBC has been so thrown by its [lowerthan-expected] licence fee settlement that everything is up in the air. Channel Five has nobody at the helm until October and ITV has its own travails [including a new chief executive and falling advertising revenue].

"There's no doubt that Scotland is hurting at the moment. People in the Scottish government and the support agencies need to be very aware of what's happening." When you ask why the Scottish figures are so low you get any number of answers, but the favourite is the problem of metropolitan bias as raised by STV director of television Bobby Hain at last week's conference.

As one producer says: "I don't think the commissioners at the BBC and probably also Channel 4 really make much of an effort to get to know indies outside the M25."

MIKE Kidd, head of the Screen Industries Summit Group (SISG), which has long camapigned for fairer UK-wide commissioning, suspects London has made a conscious decision to stop worrying about Scotland. He says: "There's a view that the Scots have had their slice of the cake.

[Former BBC director general] Greg Dyke has certainly expressed that publicly in the past. The phrase going around the BBC after it was agreed to build the new state-of-the-art studios in Pacific Quay [in Glasgow] was that 'Scotland is sorted'." The struggle to get on the big rosters was, meanwhile, one reason why IWC and the Comedy Unit, Scotland's two largest independents, both sold out to London- based RDF over the past couple of years. This is a reflection of the fact that not only are there issues over distance and prejudice, Scottish companies are being further frozen out by the fact that none of the so-called superindies which have come to dominate out- of-house production are based here.