Television with borders (updated)

This is an edited update of a post I wrote in January about the drive to create a Scottish Digital Network, to rival the S4C/C4 style relationship in Wales. Blair Jenkins is the driving force behind it, and my original piece described him as cold and humourless when he was at the BBC; Blair's been in touch to say "I am one of the most relentlessly upbeat and optimistic people you are ever likely to meet".  I'm happy to correct the record - my contact was largely at other end of video links and at conferences, when he may have seemed sterner.

I was also mistaken when I said he was a battler for the so-called "Scottish Six". Blair says "These debates were held and decisions reached during the time of my predecessor, Ken Cargill, in 1998..... I was not an employee of the BBC until 2000".

The piece went on as below; I've removed the adjective bitter, for which I wholeheartedly apologise for applying to Mr Jenkins without foundation and personal knowledge.

 Blair resigned from Auntie in 2006, ahead of major job cuts in his department. Since then, his "Scottish Broadcasting Commission" has pondered, and, unsurprisingly, proposed the SDN as a public service broadcasting counterpart to the BBC.  And joy of joys, though a little late on the Welsh precedent, he now wants the SDN funded by the licence fee - £75m p.a, please.


You might cry "ingrates". Since the perceived depredations on BBC Scotland by "London", the BBC has moved Radio Scotland to Inverness at considerable cost, set up BBC Alba at considerable cost, and built, on a PFI, Pacific Quay in Glasgow at considerable continuing cost. Meanwhile STV dances all too readily to the SNP tune.


It's not enough for Blair.  He proposes new headquarters away from Glasgow for the SDN. He apparently wants to break up the city's dominance of Scottish Broadcasting.


The time for appeasement is over.  If the SDN is really what the people of Scotland want, the BBC should just give them Pacific Quay and go home, jamming transmissions from south of the border as they go.  Let them pay directly for their own broadcasting, and buy what they fancy from BBC Worldwide.  Not a bad idea for the Welsh too.