LOCAL & SCOTTISH TV NETWORKS1
The programming on local channels would, over time, include news and debate,
cultural and what’s on programmes, and, as a Scottish network, allow local stations
to combine budgets and commission documentaries for all or part of the Scottish
audience. Current programming, Scottish Parliamentary debates, relevant news and
interviews from the European Parliament could all be supplied to local TV ...
Scottish Broadcasting Commission,
Transcript of Oral Evidence, Institute of Local Television,
4 February 2008, p 19
CONTENTS
1.00
2.00
3.00
4.00
5.00
Introduction
What happens when the Scottish Digital Network channel is launched (in
2011/12)
The seventh mux spectrum
Two alternative solutions using the seventh mux
Conclusion
APPENDIX: May 2008
Local Channels under Local Control: are the local TV interests and proposals
for a new Scottish channel compatible?
Introduction
1.1
The public service television objective is to respond to demand for a more
localized and identity enhancing television in each area (the social demand) by
building a more widespread base of production from this more local TV broadcasting
model (the economic case).
1.2
Regional broadcasting has given way to an increased centralization of the
dissemination of broadcast media with dramatic impact upon social and cultural
representation. While university media courses flourish throughout the UK there has
been an accelerating drift of work into the UK’s broadcasting and commissioning
centres as national channels have grown and as regional channels have shrunk.
1.3
London alone has an annual TV production spend of £1476m compared to
spending in Scotland of £138m.
Perhaps as significant as the Scottish Broadcasting Commission’s
objective to correct the London-Scotland inequalities is the
Commission’s recognition of a need to address the current disparity in
Scotland, with 96% of the nation’s TV production spend concentrated on
Glasgow.
1.5
Recent commitments by the BBC to increase annual spending in Scotland
from 3% to 9% over the next eight years will see further investment largely in
1
Reproduced from ANNEX III LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION in SCOTLAND the
Scottish Local TV Federation response to Digital Britain and a request to address
questions from the DCMS (2009)
1
Glasgow. While this has to be welcomed from a ‘Scottish’ point of view, it will further
exaggerate Glasgow’s economic dominance of television across Scotland, with an
impact on cultural, educational and economic regeneration. Along with devolution we
therefore need to recognise subsidiarity2 encouraged by local regulation and
broadcasting centres3.
1.6
The local-federal-national plan proposed by the Institute of Local Television to
the Scottish Broadcasting Commission in February 2008 (see above) has been
joined from the opposite direction in a positive Report by the Scottish Broadcasting
Commission’s suggesting a new Scottish Digital Network, with the possibility of local
opt-outs or locally affiliated TV services. As yet there is not an equality of opportunity
between the local and Scottish networks as proposed. This paper seeks to address
that point.
1.7
Spectrum is available in sufficient abundance in Scotland to benefit both the
‘local’ and the ‘national’ in the design of an integrated new TV service that is more
than the sum of its ‘local’ and ‘national’ parts. Neither service is likely to be born
without suitable digital spectrum. The approval of a frequency plan known as the
‘seventh mux’ put out for consideration in Scotland by Ofcom between June and
August 2008 may be key: spectrum was not ignored so much as rejected by the
Scottish Broadcasting Commission in the belief that establishing demand would bring
forward the means to supply.
1.8
Recently the Scottish Parliament recommended the introduction of the
‘seventh mux’ frequency plan for new PSB services for Scotland and made its views
known to Ofcom4.
1.9
Digital switchover provides opportunities for new commercial and public TV
services to access freed up spectrum in Scotland beginning in the South of Scotland
in 2009, moving Northwards and to the North East in 2010 and concluding with
switchover for the East Coast, Central and West in 2011.
1.10 Local TV is seeking to be introduced progressively with switchover and for
much of Scotland geographically this will occur before the proposed Scottish Network
launches in 2011/12. Organizing some of the spectrum freed up by switchover into
the so-called seventh mux spectrum was publicly identified by Ofcom in June 2008.
Once recognized by the local TV working-groups, this configuration was pushed
2
As an organizing principle subsidiarity suggests responsibilities ought to be handled by the
smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority. The Oxford English Dictionary
defines subsidiarity as the idea that a central authority should have a subsidiary function,
performing only those tasks that cannot be performed effectively at a more immediate or local
level.
3 See for example September 2008 and February 2009 submissions to Calman Commission
on Scottish Devolution,
http://www.commissiononscottishdevolution.org.uk/engage/submissions-received.php
4 Scottish Parliamentary debate, motion passed to support introduction of the ‘seventh mux’
required for local TV as local public service television. Noted in particular from Ted
Brocklebank, MSP: "We firmly believe that a digital channel, partly funded by commercials,
could also allow for the development of city and local TV, which is widely available throughout
Europe, with Spain alone having 1,000 channels. Such broadcasting is also highly successful
in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It has been suggested that up
to 16 local TV channels could be viable in Scotland, which could provide up to 330 new jobs.
However, we think that the Government should urgently engage with Ofcom to ensure that
the spectrum is available for the roll-out of a vital new digital service."
2
further with ngwireless [now arqiva]to reveal sufficient capacity for a public service
scale multiplex offering massive economic and social benefits for Scotland’s TV
industries and public services in reaching PSB-scale or universal coverage5.
1.11 Over the summer (2008) the Scottish Local TV Federation lobbied for this
seventh mux spectrum to be made available to introduce ‘local public service
television’. The Scottish Government supported this lobby, with the First Minister
writing to Ofcom on three occasions to ensure this spectrum was not lost in the rollout of the national multiplexes. The Federation pointed out the spectrum might be
vital for any Scottish channel(s) to emerge in the forthcoming Scottish Broadcasting
Commission recommendations.
1.12 The Scottish Government asked Ofcom to ‘save the seventh mux’ until the
Scottish Broadcasting Commission had reported to Parliament and Scotland’s
Ministers had determined the way forward for future public service broadcasting in
the nation and local areas.
1.13 In October and November [2008] the Scottish Local TV Federation met with
Blair Jenkins of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, with Scottish Enterprise and
with the Scottish Government to discuss the importance of local public service
television and the value of the seventh mux in being able to reach all households.
1.14 All engaged welcomed proposals to help secure the seventh mux to deliver
new national as well as local TV services on Freeview after switchover. The Scottish
Government wrote recently in response to Ofcom’s Second PSB Review: Phase II6.
The ‘seventh mux’ offers between 3-7 digital TV channels from each
main transmitter distributed through the national mux equipment being
installed in Scotland. The signals are capable of being retransmitted
through the relay network to reach up to 98.5% of Scottish households
on Freeview.
5
The delivery to all households able to receive BBC/ITV etc in fact suggests the mux is better
named the ‘fourth public service mux’. Capacity for a similar ‘seventh mux’ has been identified
for Northern Ireland, but currently not for England or Wales.
6 “Local television We are in broad agreement with the analysis offered by the [Ofcom's PSB] Review. Local
public service broadcasting did not form a core part of the plans developed by the Scottish
Broadcasting Commission for implementation at a Scotland-wide level.
But we are aware of interest in several regions and localities in developing services
sustained by local public, private and community support; and of the level of audience interest
in content about their locality. We therefore support the work being undertaken by Ofcom and
stakeholders to investigate how to maximise the technical broadcasting capacity for local
television. It is right that Ofcom's allocation of spectrum should not hinder local initiatives for
television services but instead should offer these a fair wind. It would not seem right that,
where these local initiatives have public service at their core, that they need to compete in an
open market for spectrum. For the Scottish Network, the Commission proposed that Ofcom
identify and provide suitable gifted or discounted spectrum as appropriate regulatory support
to a public service broadcaster. While - to repeat - a network of local services is not put
forward as a core part of the Network, if there is technical capacity to achieve a very high
level of coverage for the core digital channel while configuring spectrum allocation in such a
way as to enable local television providers to acquire spectrum and offer services as opt-outs
from the schedule outwith peak times then this could have public benefit. Such possibilities
should be considered by Ofcom in any analysis of spectrum provision for the Network”.
3
The new public channels delivered on this Scottish seventh mux should
be favoured on the electronic programme guide (EPG) because each
channel would satisfy ‘public purpose’ criteria in its terms of licence7.
1.17 Since April 2008 the business plans of Scotland’s local TV working groups
have provided Ofcom with a growing body of evidence that local TV channels do
serve public purpose. These have demonstrated a growing ambition for local
services to be transmitted in an autonomous but integrated way in order to provide a
mutually supportive and beneficial portfolio of local and shared programming
throughout the nation (and the UK where appropriate).
1.18 Using the seventh mux spectrum these local channels will achieve public
service levels of reach, while as independent local services they will be developed to
offer the number of local broadcast hours and minutes that they and their viewers are
most comfortable with each day8.
1.19 In order to guarantee local reception on a universal scale viewers will receive
all/most of the local channels from their local transmitter. Those local channels that
share a main transmitter and its relays need to work cooperatively to ensure that
viewers have a complimentary and different sustaining service when their own local
programming is not on air.
1.20 The main transmitters in some areas serve three or more distinct local civic
regions.
1.21 One channel of three (or more) local channels sharing a mux on a particular
transmitter site could run a music and arts sustaining service; another might offer
rolling local news and documentaries while educational services might be the main
focus offered on the third channel. Each of these three local channels provides its
own ‘core’ local news and current affairs programming targeted on issues of interest
to identify with those living in its own specific local authority region or city. (FIGURE
ONE overleaf.)
1.22 This core local PSB service is the unique programming specific to each local
area – programming of variable length depending on an area’s capacity to sustain
services and the size of audience requiring the local content.
1.23 Alongside this core service a secondary service of sustaining programming is
delivered in the hours when local content is not being transmitted – programming of a
more general or regional nature that would address interests to all in the
transmission area.
1.24
A third pool of programming is drawn from outside the transmitter area and is
7
For example see public purpose as outlined by Ofcom in Digital Local (2005)
We might not anticipate that a rural sparsely populated area is able to sustain in advertising
or by other means as many hours or minutes of quality local and community programming as
an urban local station reaching 2-3m viewers. But we don’t make a pre-emptive assumption
about this – so that local content is a locally evolving rather than artificially constrained
consideration. For example – a Scottish University of The Airwaves might adopt large
portions of the day-time schedule in rural areas to enable out-reach courses to compensate
for isolation – and grow its courses as time goes on.
8
4
the federal or shared programming, typically community of interest programmes
made for or by a cluster of local channels from as few as two up to the full
complement of local channels - or to all intents and purposes the ‘national
programming’9.
1.25
9
This federal programming might be commissioned from companies set up to
Assuming local TV in every area of Scotland and/or the UK.
5
serve a bigger-than-local market in scale and purpose but falling short of a UK wide
commission. This is targeted programming, serving the interests of specific
communities well represented in particular but not in all local TV areas, shown
perhaps at different times of the day; programming unlikely to justify simultaneous
screening or satisfying a national interest. The ability of local TV to aggregate
programming to variable patterns of audience will change the nature of television
commissioning, the structure of commercials, of advertising and sponsorship
1.26 By establishing a collegiate or federal production sector programmes can be
made by those working primarily with their own local channels to develop these local
shows into a common series. A development for the local TV sector across the
Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and South of Scotland provides an example
here.
1.27 Several local TV channels contribute to a series to fit an agreed graphics and
music structure – Art Show and Book Show initially in this case.
1.28 All stations involved make one programme per month (for example); so if
four channels are ‘partners’ each receives three additional programmes in return for
their single contribution.
1.29 The production techniques are made simple and running time kept short – 10
minutes or less, and usually interview based with cutaways.
1.30 More ambitious production schemes could evolve to share content that
serves different communities of interest scattered among several local TV
transmission areas. This economic model of production offers a creative commons or
low- no-cost example10. Meanwhile this series of programmes is open to ‘national’
sponsorship – not only by local galleries keen to feature the work of their artists but
by bookshop chains and larger book festivals promoting their authors11.
What happens when/if the Scottish Digital Network channel is launched
(in 2011/12)
2.1
It has been proposed that the Scottish Digital Network will commission rather
than make most/all of its programming, perhaps up to a maximum of four hours a day
of new programming. Scotland’s broadcasters – like most areas of the UK – have run
down their current affairs and social/critical documentary capacity. The budgets and
public agenda of this new Scottish channel suggest that broadly current affairs may
be a mainstay service. How will the new capacity be found?
2.2
Although at an early stage, the discussions between the Federation and the
Commission favour between 1.5 and two hours of local TV to sit before or to either
side of the peak time or evening national schedule.
10
Channel Six Dundee ‘swopped’ its night-club programme with Southampton TV’s nightClubscene.
11 Edinburgh TV regularly screened interviews from Waterstone authors on tours to promote
their books in the City. Coverage of the Edinburgh International Book Festival is now in its
ninth year, providing interviews with authors to NvTv, DCTV, Dublin and European local and
community channels. A network approach is offers a better targeted and more realistic focus
for niche and community of interest programming than the blanket coverage of national
channels. The competition to access national channels is also very intense.
6
2.3
The Federal contribution as outlined above will evolve as programming
becomes available to share between local channels in Scotland, across the UK – and
beyond. If local TV starts in advance of the Scottish Digital Network there will be a
pool of local, federal and ultimately new national programme makers available by
2012 who will work between the three scales enabling company development with
greater security of income from three sources, all independent of London or UK
commissioning editors.
2.4
The balance of broadcast hours each day when neither local nor Scottish
Network programming is screened remains an open space in which local, federal and
national (acquired/repeat) programming can compete for screening on grounds of
quality and local relevance.
How is national programming in Scotland different?
2.5
‘National programming’ is content that has particular relevance for a Scotland
wide audience and therefore requires Scotland wide distribution12.
2.6
To take an example (that will not do justice to the potential dynamic of the
Scottish Digital Network) if highlights of a Scottish Parliamentary debate were to be
screened across Scotland as part of the national network we would expect its content
to be generally relevant to all, and typically not to focus on one local area in
particular.
2.7
After screening this Parliamentary coverage within each local schedule it
might be appropriate to have a local Week in Parliament programme that pulled the
threads of national argument into a discussion that focuses upon their local impact –
what will this policy/proposal actually mean here? What local views might the
politicians consider before reaching a decision?
2.8
With an integrated national-local network arrangement – avoiding simply
opting-out or opting-in to an otherwise fully formed national channel – the national
package might in some instances be delivered to each local service in the form of
nationally sourced but relatively ‘raw’ content. At each local channel a further
programme based on an impact assessment and review of the Parliamentary
discussion can be added for the local audience – possibly with participation from the
area MSPs, local councillors and interpretation. This tiered or cascade approach
applies whether discussing Holyrood, Westminster or Brussels business.
2.9
While it may be possible to achieve four hours per evening of new Scotland
wide programming on the national budget envisaged for the Scottish Digital Network
– these national ‘pounds per hour’ might, on some occasions, be better spent on
providing a common centrally produced programme element to trigger or to ground a
localized platform upon which to break-out into a longer more relevant local debate.
2.10 Locally smaller budgets will provide for this discussion element. These will
offer heightened relevance and add more direct public value through their
interpretation of national or nationally (and EU) produced location elements.
2.11 A further reflection on ensuring that a ‘national package’ is (mostly) presented
on ‘local terms’ is that the local contributions are likely to provide further content from
12
And may have further relevance for the Scottish diaspora on broadband as well as for
screening on UK TV (etc).
7
around the nation for a round-up or second nationwide transmission. A collection of
the views arising from across Scotland can be brought together to summarise debate
in each area as a follow-on programme for broadcasting to all areas.
The local engagement we see broadcasters making on television during
an election count could become the norm rather than the exception in a
new de-centralised Scottish network service – especially a service
whose public purpose includes seeking to demonstrate local
engagement with national political issues and national engagement with
local concerns.
2.13 But this structure needn’t just inform political discussion. Local talent shows,
entertainment reviews, local ‘battle-of-the-bands’ heats, can migrate from local to
regional and then onto national finals. The local-to-national structure provides a
strong demonstration that each local community (potentially) contributes to the
national context without resorting (as now in broadcasting and (often) in government)
to ‘local’ being treated as an example. In an integrated approach local TV becomes
the eyes and ears for a national service; not a service confined to an entirely local
opt-out delivery or an area subordinated by broadcasting to diminished importance
because of its size of population or remoteness from a ‘broadcasting’ centre.
2.14 In a more routine daily TV example the local news could either precede or
follow Scottish/international news from the Scottish Digital Network – just as regional
news does now on the UK-wide public channels.
2.15 The local programme elements are popular13. The local news and muchwanted local debate will help bring an audience to a (Scottish) network programme
and vice versa, providing many new possibilities for scheduling against competing
national channels, that is, those channels stuck with a ‘one size/time fits all’ model.
Taking the Scottish and local network together, there is a major
opportunity here for Scotland to write new broadcasting rules and to
resurrect some of the lost rules of television broadcasting by
developing a flexible model of local-federal-national TV service that
integrates programme making and distribution opportunities.
The seventh mux spectrum
3.1
As characterized the seventh mux spectrum in Scotland offers between three
and seven channels from each transmitter. The variation in the number of channels
depends on the compression mode chosen to deliver the mux at each transmitter
site.
3.2
In rural areas where long distances lie between transmitters and relays the
compression will be chosen to bridge the distance but this will be at some cost to the
13
In spite of its clumsy sub-regional coverage STV’s five minutes of micro-regional news optout is the most watched STV broadcast (conversation with Bobby Hain, STV.)
8
number of channels the mux is able to carry.
3.3
In urban areas where population density demands several services, up to
seven channels on the seventh mux are available – although this number will
probably only be necessary at one transmitter serving central Scotland.
3.4
Broadly there is a trade off between distance and capacity in delivering digital
TV terrestrially. The overriding factor for local public service television is to ensure
universal coverage, across the entire Scottish universe as well as to each distinctive
civic area. In rural regions less channels are offered but invariably less are actually
needed to ensure PSB programming reaches identified communities.
Two alternative solutions using the seventh mux
4.1
The seventh mux spectrum can deliver either a ‘separated’ or an ‘integrated’
local-national solution.
Model One: Separated
4.2
A Scottish Digital Network channel could run on a single channel from each of
the transmitters on the seventh mux. The local channels would run on the balance of
channels on the mux. There is capacity for the mux to be shared between a single
Scottish channel and the local channels required in each area.
4.3
However, if a new TV network were being designing today the engineers
would not propose the current regional or national (UK and Scottish) plan as devised
in the tentative start-up phase of commercial TV in the analogue era. Moreover these
days the national broadcasters no longer deliver content on single channels.
Model Two: Integrated
The Scottish Digital Network need not be introduced as a ‘single’
channel but as a national network of programming/branding that is
integrated and visible through each local channel, with local as the
‘outlet’ in each area for national, regional and local content.
For example, we could call the channels (or describe them as) ‘Scottish
Digital Network: Fife’, ‘Scottish Digital Network: Angus & Dundee’ (etc).
Each local TV channel carrying the national programming would do so
at different times of the day. This integrated local-regional-national
model would also use one less channel from the mux at each
transmitter.
Evaluating Models One and Two
4.5
In Model One, the Scottish Digital Network channel remains a single entity
unable to localize the (eg) news and current affairs content to serve a smaller
audience than the totality of viewers living within range of the single channel from the
transmitter site. The massive downside of this is the need to work within the
analogue inheritance of aerials set up for reception on each house. The adverse
impact for the Scottish Digital Network is similar to problems experienced by those
watching the micro-regions of STV. With STV Glasgow’s local news opt-out can also
be seen by one third of Edinburgh households, viewers who cannot receive their own
9
news opt-out service from their supposed micro-region in the East. In addition, those
living in the northern half of Fife receive the Angus & Dundee local opt-out and those
in the southern half of Fife receive the Edinburgh or East opt-out. Proposing the
Scottish Digital Network plan as a single channel was not thought through.
4.6
There is greater scope in rural areas for local transmitters and thereby
services to be better attuned to reaching recognized civic communities. But even
between Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders there remains a small ‘gross
audience’ living at the border between the regions who can receive signals from
either the ‘Dumfries and Galloway’ transmitter or the Scottish Borders’ transmitter
regardless of the local authority region they actually live in. This is addressed by
broadcasting both channels from the two transmitters serving the combined area.
4.7
From the ANGUS transmitter there are three distinct audiences to be served
– Perth & Kinross, Fife and Angus & Dundee. Two of these local channels also
require access to neighbouring transmitters at DURRIS and CRAIGKELLY to ensure
coherent coverage for their populations.
4.8
The Institute of Local Television’s Local Channel Atlas (2005) introduced a
solution to resolve the inherited historical legacy of analogue and direction of
domestic aerials and was able to meet local demand to secure universal coverage.
This ‘add/drop’ solution retained each domestic aerial’s alignment according to the
vagaries of ‘gross’ rather than ‘net’ coverage by offering reception of relevant
incoming local signals alongside national digital channels.
4.9
Model Two envisages the Scottish Digital Network as a commissioning and
coordinating resource (and as a common ‘network’ brand) integrated with rather than
separated from the development of the local and federal proposals. Many of the local
channels can go on air with switchover and provide programming to work around the
national hours commissioned by the Scottish Digital Network from 2011. The national
service can emerge in the combination of locals at the culmination of switchover in
Scotland in 2011-2012.
4.10 In Model Two the viewer comes to the national content of the Scottish
Network through ‘their local channel’. This strong local identification - experienced by
the author in setting up Channel Six Dundee as a local analogue TV channel - and
indicative more recently in Ofcom’s research in the South of Scotland14 provides the
forum to merge national debate with local participation focused on relevant content
(including advertising)15.
The local channel is the portal through which the Scottish Digital
Network content arrives, integrated as a combined service that brings
an audience to view the national programmes at times best suited to
each local viewing audience and its demographics.
4.12 For example ‘Scottish Digital Network: Fife’ might show the national Scottish
Network news and its local news as a package half an hour later than the equivalent
14
In research work published as Appendices for the Second PSB Review: Phase II.
While local TV content might carry advertising the Scottish Network currently proposes not
to.
15
10
shown on ‘Scottish Digital Network: Edinburgh’. This time-shift would address the
longer work-to-home travel distances experienced by a significant portion of the adult
Fife population who work in Edinburgh.
4.13 The differences in scheduling national content across local outlets is
superficially similar to Channel 4+116 where ‘C4’ is replaced by ‘Edinburgh’ in
comparison with ‘Fife’ as ‘C4+1’. However this time shift would not be uniform across
the broadcast day. Scottish children’s programming should be aired to address local
and regional variations for in-service days and public holidays. Paying this degree of
attention to local detail draws the audience closer to the service, adding a structural
relevance and underwriting a sense of common ownership.
4.14 As suggested the time-shifting model differs from Channel 4’s approach
because the step-change is not uniform across local channels or throughout the
broadcast day. Scheduling remains a local decision based on greater understanding
of local viewing patterns, of travel to and from work times and of local demographics,
all of which differ among the local transmission areas in Scotland.
The objective of an integrated plan is to maximize first run exposure for
national a well as local programmes by ensuring these are responsive to
local sensitivities in scheduling through the flexibility offered by local
channels. This approach also offers national programmes a ‘Channel 4’
type second and sometimes third chance to be viewed in most areas.
A ‘single national channel’ even with local opt outs would not be able to
deliver these options, relying entirely on broadband or IPTV for second
runs while indifferent (like STV) to local viewing patterns that its
analogue model of distribution followed in digital cannot address17.
4.16 If a programme is repeated on a single channel it takes up the valuable airtime of a possible new programme when trying to catch a second wave of viewers.
With each programme variably scheduled across a local network the audience has
an opportunity to see either a new national or local programme or a national repeat.
CONCLUSION
5.1
For Model One distribution of ‘local’ and ‘national’ content on a single channel
in defined zones between 5.00pm and 11.00pm would suggest segregation, isolation
and differentiation between local and national content, with (say) local appearing
between 5.00pm-6.30/7.00pm and national running from 7.00pm up to 11.00pm.
5.2
This is an old analogue and overly linear approach – a legacy of broadcast
16
“The growing importance of Channel 4 +1 means that it now accounts for 8.5% of the
Channel 4 network's total audience share, up from just 2.3% last year” ‘Channel 4+1 props up
broadcaster’s overall share’, Leigh Holmwood, Guardian 08/12/08
17 Diane Coyle - BBC Trustee and chair of the Public Value and Fair Trading Committee ...
(Guardian Media. Letters 08/12/08) "The major reason for our decision [to instruct BBC
management to drop their plans for a broadband video service] was the evidence that such a
service would not meet the demand for better local news. The public mainly want this news
on radio and TV, not via the internet, and we have asked the BBC management to bring
forward new proposals to meet that demand".
11
rather than network thinking. Even without broadband there are immense flexibilities
offered by the idiosyncrasies of mux delivery, if planning can overcome the
limitations of analogue site location and take advantage of the varied scheduling
possible across a digital network. Of course these terrestrial channel can also be
complimented with broadband streaming and on-demand or catch-up that can be
offered by each local outlet working as part of a common network.
5.3
A simple allocation of hours to be divided between local and national
contributions would miss several of the tunes that can be played with digital muxed
channels. A universal offering of a 1.5 or two hours local window could either underor over-estimate the local TV capacity by area or by time of day. Hopefully as
planning for the Scottish Digital Network begins both local and national TV aspirants
will be able to achieve a comfortable capacity to maintain quality and retain their
audience. Clearly local TV and its own network (or with the Scottish Digital Network
as a parallel endeavour) requires an integrated approach to planning to construct the
underlying schedule that needs to be achieved. For example, if a big TV story comes
up locally then the schedules of other local channels should not have to make way by
sacrificing their own or a national programme to allow for this. But as a local public
service the priority for local TV is to give the big local story the attention it deserves.
Giving priority to local stories serves public purpose and can only help ensure that
the viewer sees the local channel as addressing their priorities: as being on their
side.
An important feature of the digital seventh mux delivery is its ability to
offer levels of localness that other channels fail to recognise. To
overlook this feature would mean repeating the mistakes of the ITV/STV
regions in offering a scale and clumsiness that the Scottish (and UK)
public has roundly rejected in the TNS System Three (2008) and earlier
regulator studies by the IBA, ITC and Ofcom.
5.5
Satisfying localness is the USP that digital terrestrial has to offer. While all
other channels are heading towards centralization, following or consolidating their
analogue forebears, localness and identification with the civic audience is the unique
driver for a Scottish Digital Network delivered on a mux rather than as a single
channel. The Scottish Digital Network seems to have been envisaged in analogue
terms when in practice digital delivery offers a very different and far more flexible
delivery and viewing opportunity.
5.6
While Model Two involves some duplication it also allows viewers a choice of
local channel as second or third access points to view alternative local-federalnational content, as well as the benefits of time-shifting according to
demographic/travel perceptions. The opportunity to treat local as an equal integrated
with a national service will be invaluable both economically (in providing a broader
based TV industry) and socially (in affording greater equality to local values and their
expression).
The seventh mux offers Scotland an incredible chance to develop a new
TV network – combining the local-federal-national range of services in a
seamless and unique way for viewers to experience in each local area,
ensuring that relevance and engagement remain the watchword in a
network with a strong public service, social cultural and economic role.
12
5.8
Finally … the way in which servers at transmitters can be linked to deliver
channels compiled to reflect local demand is something we’ve explored for South of
Scotland TV and have experience with at the analogue local TV channels of Channel
Six Dundee and Edinburgh TV.
5.9
While TV broadcasting is concentrated on London the TV production sector is
over attentive to the demands and crises of UK based broadcasters. The producers
second guess (London/UK) commissioning editor’s requirements. The future
development of a flexible funding and production base - that combines national
public funding, local commercial and public income with voluntary sector/project
grants – will enable the industry to be reshaped from smaller to intermediate to larger
scales and to a greater extent hand some of the control of channel identity to the
producers who identify locally18,19.
5.10 Some of the digital tricks outlined in Model Two suggest that the viewer’s
telescope of TV can be positioned in their own space to view from here to there, not
to see either the local or the national (or the global) but to focus views from the close
to the distant equally distinctly and with meaning attaching to control of that process.
5.11 Further discussion between the Federation and Scottish Digital Network will
hopefully lead towards Model Two or a variation.
18
See recent submissions to Ofcom from the South of Scotland and Scottish Local TV
Federation
19 “The growing importance of Channel 4 +1 means that it now accounts for 8.5% of the
Channel 4 network's total audience share, up from just 2.3% last year” ‘Caught in a Storm’,
Maggie Brown, Guardian 08/12/08
13