Give them time

Edition 2 of the new weekly BBC news and current affairs offering to Scotland - Timeline - goes out tonight on BBC2 Scotland at 7.30pm. The overnight ratings for Edition 1 clocked 76,000 viewers. That compares with 72,000 in Scotland who chose the second half of Channel 4 News.  And 7.33m viewers across the UK who chose EastEnders. And an average figure for Reporting Scotland of around 500,000. But it does represent a massive improvement on the 30,000 average who were tuning to BBC2 Scotland for the dying days of Scotland 2016. Remember, however, that it launched, as Scotland 2014, with close to 90,000 viewers for the first edition.

[Thank heavens Lord Hall doesn't espouse the Radio 2 theory, which has left 900,000 overnight listeners with repeats and robot disc shows. A reminder. Head of Radio 2 Lewis Carnie said "As a relatively small percentage of our audience listens to Radio 2 through the night, changes need to be made to ensure that our programming spend reaches the most listeners."]

Lord Hall and Anne Bulford will have to go on tour shortly to face the licence-fee hungry sub-committees of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. According the Sunday Times, a Scottish Six will not be amongst the trinkets he'll be bearing to Edinburgh.