Scotland’s different relationship with the BBC – evidence from the Corporation’s own data

By stewartb

The National Audit Office (NAO) has recently published an assessment of a BBC corporate initiative called ‘Across the UK’.

The NAO’s report explains (with my emphasis): ‘In March 2021, the BBC published The BBC Across the UK (ATUK), setting out its ambitions to strengthen its delivery for the whole of the UK, particularly in areas where perception of the BBC’s relevance are relatively low, and to ensure that every household gets value from the BBC. It plans to do this by cumulatively spending at least an extra £700 million outside London between March 2021 and March 2028. Its March 2021 plans covered television, audio (radio and music), news, local communities, online and technology, production hubs and studios, training and apprentices, and property, with impacts falling primarily on its Content, News, Technology and Product divisions and support functions.’

Source: National Audit Office (24 November, 2023) The BBC’s implementation of ‘Across the UK’. (https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/the-bbcs-implementation-of-across-the-uk.pdf )

The plan

The NAO notes: ‘ATUK plans include reallocating money as well as people, power and decision-making away from London into the UK’s nations and regions. The BBC believes that moving decisions on budgets and expenditure outside London will change the culture of BBC commissioning, production and BBC News journalism.

‘In turn, that will improve audience portrayal perceptions, increase the BBC’s regional economic footprint, support growth of creative industries in the nations and regions, and help reduce regional differences in audience portrayal perceptions.’

The notion that giving BBC Scotland more resource to do more of what it does now would be the means of improving anything for its audiences in Scotland is curious – to say the least!

Audience perceptions

The NAO reports: ‘As of March 2023, 54% of UK adults think the BBC is effective both at reflecting people like them (22% think it is ineffective) and catering for the part of the UK they live in (20% think it is ineffective).

However, within this overall statistic we learn: ’There is a consistent geographic divide to the BBC’s audience scores for portrayal and representation … Scores for the metric ‘The BBC is for people like me’ are highest in London and southern England, but lowest in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England. ATUK aims to show audiences that the BBC is relevant to their lives through programming that is rooted in, and inspired by, their communities.

The NAO adds: ’BBC research has shown that audiences feel well portrayed by content that shows or mentions local places; is made nearby; or features their regional accent.’

Show or mention local places, make programmes nearby, use a regional accent – and that’s the remedy? Ever felt just a wee bit patronised?

The NAO goes on: ’Given the variation in portrayal perceptions in different parts of the UK, the audience goal of ATUK is focused on reducing the portrayal perception gaps rather than on increasing audience usage numbers.’

For an organisation that receives substantial amounts of public funding to provide a service, not seeking to increase audience numbers in less satisfied parts of the UK seems odd!

A different relationship with the BBC

The following graphs taken from the NAO report make clear the degree of difference between views on the BBC in Scotland and elsewhere across the UK.

NAO consultations with stakeholders

In an annex to the NAO report, we learn of primary research conducted with external stakeholders in the ‘nations and regions’ in the preparation of this assessment of the BBC initiative. Given the relative severity of audience opinion ‘problems’ in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK (see graphs above), the list of engaged stakeholders is notable – for the ones missing!

The NAO explains: ’The BBC shared with us the list of external stakeholders it had engaged with on ATUK. We undertook a further stakeholder mapping exercise identifying a wider range of organisations which we considered to be relevant. We invited all organisations on this long list of stakeholders to tell us about their direct experience of ATUK. We received responses from seven of the 10 organisations provided to us by the BBC and eight of the 17 wider stakeholders we identified.

‘We received 14 written submissions (one of which was a joint written submission) between July and November 2023. Submissions were from a mix of organisations. These included:

– ‘six local bodies: Birmingham City Council, Cardiff Council, Newcastle City Council, North of Tyne Combined Authority, Tees Valley Combined Authority and Create Central’

– ‘six national bodies or trade organisations: AudioUK, Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU, a Sector of Prospect), National Union of Journalists (NUJ), Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT), Sunderland Software City and Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru (TAC); and

• ‘three creative organisations: Creative Wales, Northern Ireland Screen and North East Screen’.

To make the obvious point, the above list has no ‘external stakeholder’ specifically from Scotland! The NAO adds that of 14 written submissions four were from organisations in the devolved nations (Creative Wales, Cardiff Council, Northern Ireland Screen and TAC – Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru), thus reaffirming the lack of involvement of external stakeholders from Scotland with the NAO’s investigation into the BBC’s initiative.

Furthermore, the NAO reports on its own fieldwork visits: ‘Between July 2023 and August 2023, we undertook our visits to BBC establishments in England and Wales to support our understanding of how ATUK is being delivered on the frontline.’

No point in devoting effort to changing perceptions of the BBC in Scotland? No motivation within the BBC to achieve change if this would require acknowledging opposition to the Union and support for national self-determination?