Britain has changed, but the BBC hasn’t. And its refusal to provide a broadcasting service equal to the age risks its reputation in Scotland.
Scotland has moved on. Twenty years ago we were governed by direct rule from Westminster. So it was hardly surprising that Scottish news was just five minutes tacked on to the end of bulletins broadcast from London.
Scottish nationalism was a minority political interest, with barely one in four voters supporting the SNP cause. And although Scots had a fierce pride in their identity, they were generally content with entertainment output decided in London W1A 1AA.
Now, in 2015, Scotland has been governing its own domestic affairs for a decade and a half. And yet still the lead item on our BBC news bulletins can be about English schools or hospitals. Power has been devolved to Scotland, but the BBC news agenda has not.
Almost half the population now wants a separate Scottish state, and more than half of the population intends to vote for Scottish Nationalist MSPs. And yet those whose primary focus — politically, culturally, socially — is Scotland have limited opportunities to reflect that in their consumption of radio and TV.
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No wonder some regard the BBC as an instrument of British unionism.
Technology has made the BBC’s traditional attitude to Scotland redundant. Whereas 20 years ago the UK had four TV channels and a handful of radio stations, we now have a digital choice that runs into thousands. You can spend all day watching Italian game shows and listening to bhangra music. But your choice of distinctively Scottish viewing, if you don’t happen to speak Gaelic, is limited to a handful of programmes a week, plus a news service designed to report on a bygone age.
There are those for whom the idea of a Scottish TV channel conjures up a vision of endless Hogmanay shows and reruns of Thingummyjig.
The truth is that the worst of Scottish broadcasting is a result of programme chiefs paying lip service to Scottish audiences, rather than taking them seriously. To say that Scots are somehow incapable of producing world-class broadcasting is to demonstrate a serious case of the Scottish cringe.