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BBC Radio Scotland set to cease broadcasting at night

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

October 6, 2011 | 4 min read

As the BBC announced its strategy for handling the budget cuts it will implement as a result of the freeze on the television licence fee, here is a look at the proposals for BBC Scotland in the report, with BBC Radio Scotland set to no longer run during the night.

The ‘Delivering Quality First’ report outlines the changes that will be made to the new channel, which will see a total budget decrease of £24m each year, and the amount of time spend on breaking news will be reduced, and more material repeated from Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions, during ‘lower demand’ times.

Television programmes for Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland and Wales, will be shown to audiences across the UK, likely to include River City finally being seem outside of Scotland, having long been mooted.

The existing number of new bulletins and strands will be maintained, although it will ‘reduce slightly’ other non-core news and current affairs programming, while ‘other genres’ of programming will also be reduced in number.

The BBC has also promised ‘a significant investment’ in the amount of network programming produced in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with the likes of Question Time move to Glasgow.

That investment will see a reduction in budgets for London and London, with a 17% target for network television programmes to being expected to be met by programmes produced in the Celtic nations earlier than 2016, aiming to bring millions of pounds of new network commissions in each country.

Three versions of BBC One will immediately be implemented across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, to be broadcast in HD by the end of next year, although this will not be converted to BBC 2 variants, with standard definition to be maintained until at least 2015.

BBC Alba be not be affected by the proposals it has been stated, while BBC Radio Scotland will now focus on delivering speech output in daytime, and a music output in the evening. There will also be a reduction of between 10% and 20% in original comedy, drama and documentaries, which will be replaced by repeats and ‘relevant programmes’ produced in Scotland.

A reduction in weekday afternoon programmes will also be made, while aiming to continue to cover the arts and culture of Scotland, while there will be fewer variations between Medium Wave and FM programming, in particular sports coverage, highlighting the opt out between long running programme Off the Ball and live football coverage.

Should the corporation no longer run BBC Radio Scotland overnight, stopping at midnight, then Radio Five Live will broadcast until 6am.

As a result, the proportion of the licence fee spent in Scotland, Wales and Ireland will rise.

At the time or writing there was no word as to how this would affect jobs numbers at BBC Scotland or the other countries.

Update: AllmediaScotland reports that around 120 jobs may be at risk at BBC Scotland with the budget cuts.

At the time of writing The Drum was awaiting a call back from the BBC Press office.

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