ON THE MINDS OF TV'S MASTERS

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Aug 17, 2008 | by PETER JOHN MEIKLEM , MEDIA CORRESPONDENT

Sky's Richard Woolfe welcomes the prospect of a digital channel for Scotland, one of the central ideas that has come out of the debate, and highlights the potential that digital television provides for a range of similar projects.

Danny Cohen, controller of youthoriented channel BBC Three and a copybook metropolitan provincial, confesses to being "unclear" (read uninterested) as to what was happening north of the Border.

Bobby Hain, SMG's director of broadcasting, says it doesn't matter if London controllers are keeping up, the demand for change has been heard at the department of culture, media and sport, and media regulator Ofcom: "I'm not sure it has registered with the TV festival community but I don't think that matters - this is about the Scottish creative community."

However, the "creative community" is hardly united on what needs to be done. Says Gray: "I think it [a digital channel for Scotland] is a ghastly idea.

What Scotland needs is one of the major channels, such as BBC One or BBC Two, to be relocated to Scotland, not some specialist channel that nobody will watch and will be filled with crap.

Anything apart from moving a channel is just tokenism - it's 'shut up jocks, you can have this'."

DIGITAL SWITCHOVER

TO MOST of us, digital switchover means an extra GBP100 for a digibox for the TV and some adverts with a naff robot, but to TV people it symbolises something far more sinister: audience fragmentation.

This - a key worry for the movers and shakers in commercial TV - means mass audiences have splintered into smaller, more niche groups bringing down the amount of money that can be made from placing an advert on a show, posing new headaches for programmers on how to attract and keep an audience.

In 2012, the analogue signal will be turned off, leading to a situation leading television producers ominously call "the wild west".

Nobody knows exactly what will happen - whether the big five terrestrial television stations will be able to maintain their audience share once they cease to enjoy pole position on the nation's TV sets - but sure as eggsis-eggs, finding the best ways to attract viewers, the most startling new ideas for shows and the best ways to keep advertisers happy, will be the cause of head scratching come next weekend.

BBC Three controller Cohen's performance will be one of the big talking points. Despite enjoying a budget of GBP83m and enjoying a mandate to engage audiences in the 16-35 age range, many of Cohen's programmes - such as a social networking chatshow hosted by Lily Allen - have bombed with audiences and attracted critical brickbats.

Leading BBC figures such as broadcaster John Humphrys have called for the station to be scrapped to protect the corporation's news content.

"With the best will in the world, " shrugs Cohen, "those people are not in the target range for the show so I'm not too concerned."

Not surprisingly, Gray has a viewpoint:

"You can still attract big audiences. You just need to remember to make something that is of high quality and you can't make high- quality programmes without a budget.