Broadcasting in Scotland

Tessa Ransford
Cheated and abandoned

The Broadcasting Commission led by Blair Jenkins gave its interim reports in the first half of 2008 under various phase-headings. One of these was the 'Cultural Phase'. I attended a public meeting myself in 2007 during the commission's evidence-gathering and filled in a questionnaire. The report of March 2008 states that the dominant theme is a 'wish for broadcasters to be more ambitious in their programmes and services for Scotland, not just reflecting Scottish life and culture more comprehensively, but also in bringing a Scottish perspective to international topics'. It identified an 'insufficient level of ambition’ and a 'limited range of cultural content'.
     It further found a need for using a full range of Scottish talent and creativity and a plea from cultural events organisers for more 'broadcast partnership'. Eighty-four percent of those responding wanted the broadcast media to 'inform and teach you about Scotland'. It was discovered that an average of three and a half hours a week is allocated for everything cultural – drama, music, poetry, children, education, documentary and religion – once sport, news, currents affairs and Gaelic are excluded.
     In terms of Westminster-based funding and commissioning, control and decision-making, 81% of those questioned would like a separate Scottish channel and there is discussion as to whether this could be included under the Gaelic digital channel.
     Attention will be focused on defining what is the appropriate range and quality of BBC Scotland and in achieving 'higher levels of ambition: cultural, international, innovative and creative'.
     It is deeply depressing that in the eight years since I took part in an Institute of Contemporary Scotland debate on this subject, and two years on from the Broadcasting Commission's report, we have seen very little improvement in cultural coverage on broadcast media. Perhaps the web and podcasts have replaced original programmes to some extent and of course we have had the recession. Highly-paid personnel may become less affordable. However if the wages budget were spread more thinly to a greater number, there is no doubt that doors would be opened to hundreds of creative people, young and older with experience and work untapped. Are we not a little tired of the same faces and voices monopolising every kind of programme often with ridiculous garb and garbled speech?
     With this introduction I will now append my slightly updated contrbution to the ICS debate:
    
Now that we have the opportunity to take responsibility for our own national health, in respect of its arts and culture, we seem to have sloughed it off in the sphere of broadcasting. There is a depressing vacuum in this vital area of our national and local life.
     You could think of culture as a kind of clothing in which we live and move and have our being. When highland dress was banned after Culloden, the aim was to try to destroy highland culture in general. I maintain that what is happening now is a similar repressive but unacknowledged prohibition, leaving us not naked, but invisible – except of course when there is a bit of rather pseudo 'dressing up' for special occasions like the opening of the Scottish parliament, New Year, Burns night, St Andrew's night. On a day to day basis it feels as if we are denied our cultural clothing.
     I have made inquiries from those with a better knowledge of the broadcasting scene than I have, expecting to be told that yes, it is a matter of funding, ratings and scheduling: the arts just can't be afforded, reach enough people or be given enough time. I was told these things but with a surprising lack of conviction. It doesn't, of course, take much to show that arts programmes need not be inordinately expensive, unpopular or long, so perhaps the lack of conviction is not so surprising. It would appear therefore that these replies are a cover for some other story that might explain the abandonment of the cultural scene by Scottish broadcasting. It all begins to feel like a Bird and Fortune sketch on the Rory Bremner show.
     What appears to be the case is that nobody in broadcasting is allowed to care. Top people – faceless in that the buck is always passed – whose indecision, lack of commitment or policy allow this damaging situation, do not care. Experienced producers with knowledge and skills are disillusioned and turn their attention elsewhere or to other countries and other channels. The cohorts of young, barely-educated-far-less-cultivated apparatchiks in radio and television understandably care mainly for their careers. Nobody cares about the actual audience except in terms of ratings.
     Meanwhile creative artists (including those working in broadcasting) across the genres tend to leave Scotland if they can or resign themselves to remaining in obscurity and penury. The Scottish Arts Council surprisingly does not seem to lobby for better broadcast coverage, probably out of fear that it would be accused of being 'political'.
     I imagine a Bird and Fortune sketch something along the following lines:
     'My dear Fellow', explains Fortune, 'the audience is the last thing we consider in making programmes'.
     'But surely the audience is what it's all about? I mean…'
     'You must realise we don't make programmes to please people; we make them to appease people. Our job is to condition people to violence, fear, imbecility, unnecessary consumption and exploitation – what the Romans called bread and circuses – or games. We do the game shows.'
     'You mean broadcasting is the equivalent today of the Roman Colosseum?'
     'Well you could think of it that way. We do have to make sure people go on shopping, borrowing, dumbing down their minds, polluting the earth, subsidising the arms trade and killing each other.'
     'Why on earth? I mean we all want peace, freedom and democratic values, don't we?'
     'What an extraordinary idea! I don't know what sort of education you had to learn notions like that? What we want is to keep our rulers in power, our bankers happy and our systems profit-making.'
     'But I don't understand. What profit can there be in such degradation?'
     'My dear fellow, you'd better be careful if you start asking questions like that. You’ll certainly not get a job in broadcasting. More likely you'll be arrested for terrorism.'
     
To return to my theme: we have an amazing cultural and artistic history ranging from, for example, Callanish to modern environmental art. We have gifted artists of all kinds – creative people whose work is unknown beyond their own circle, as are the traditions out of which it has developed and the efforts that have made it possible. Many kinds of events do take place in schools, colleges and communities, in exhibitions, concerts and festivals, in publications and compositions, but few get media coverage – even where a liaison between event and the media from the outset would be technologically easier than ever and would obviously benefit both.
     There seems to be apathy among those working in broadcasting, although I'm sure it still attracts idealistic and committed people. There is certainly a feeling of betrayal and disappointment among the people of Scotland, who had believed that, with devolution, we could at last begin to regain self-knowledge and self-confidence, redefining and renewing our cultural and multi-cultural identity.
     What is it we are being bought and sold for this time by the parcel of rogues? Perhaps it is nothing to do with money, elitism or time. It is surely obvious that if, as it is said, the arts are judged as 'superserved' (that is given more time than their audiences deserve) then this policy of denying the public access to the arts through broadcasting only serves to perpetuate and reinforce the very elitism that is deplored.
     Someone living and working in Scotland, perhaps bringing up children, short on time, energy or money to pursue an interest in the arts, should be able to absorb by osmosis a good deal from a properly-planned, wisely-researched series of arts programmes on radio and TV. As it is, such progammes tend to be commissioned and broadcast in Canada or America. Most programmes about Scottish culture are not deemed suitable for Britain but are quite comprehensible anywhere else in the world. Even small-scale Gaelic programmes dealing with arts and culture are of international interest. However, contrariwise, some programmes get turned down as not being relevant to Scotland, such as Murray Grigor's stunning film about the Book of Kells, welcomed in Australia, Canada and the US. When we do have a series, such as the recent Scottish history series, it is so unusual and so popular that an academic from Oxford writes to the papers rubbishing it.
     What Scotland do they have in mind, to which the Book of Kells is not relevant? How many of the hundred objects now being lovingly described on radio by the British Museum director, Neil Macgregor, are of Scottish origin? I believe the Lewis Chessmen are to be featured since some of them are kept by the British Museum. This purports to be 'a history of the world in a hundred objects'. Much as I enjoy it, I feel it should be entitled 'a history of the world from a London perspective told through a hundred selected objects at the British Museum (about which we know practically nothing)'.
    
Human beings in societies have basic needs. But we also need self-confidence, vision for our lives individually and communally, a sense of the past, a hope for the future. These latter needs may seem secondary but in reality they are not. They make for what in Scotland we call the common weal – the common good. Why are so many young people suicidal or on drugs? Why is our population ageing? My concern is not just that of a few elitish people feeling let down. Our whole country, and the ever-changing and varied communities within it, are being let down, cheated and abandoned. Books are not burned in Charlotte Square. Rather there is an annual 'bigger and better' book festival there every year. But publishers and bookshops in Scotland are closing and libraries have become providers of web-access. What does this mean? That the book has become a commodity and that culture itself is in a similar manner being devalued.
     I've come to believe there has been and is still, to large extent, a paranoia on the part of politicians – those who hang onto control of the media with grim desperation – about anything that might encourage or empower Scottish culture. The paranoia is so deep-seated they are not even aware they have it or what they are doing. There have been 10 ministers for culture, sport and the arts in Scotland in the 10 years of devolution and the post was described as a demotion from that of education. The years since devolution have been dominated by hugely expensive 'consultations' about the arts, aimed it seems at further commodifying them. If some aspects of the arts can be economically beneficial that is fine, but it is not their aim and cannot be used to justify their support. However the arts are humanly beneficial and human and communal good is what underlies the 'common weal'.
     Culture and the arts can make for heightened consciousness and understanding, commitment and enthusiasm for life among more people. If that is a danger to those in power politically, then those in power politically are a danger to us. I'm reminded of the woman with her baby in church. The baby began howling during the sermon. The woman got up to go out with it. The minister paused and said, 'Oh don't go out Mrs Morrison, I assure you the wean isn't upsetting me', whereupon she replied 'well minister, that may be so, but you're certainly upsetting the baby'.
     It is time we woke up and howled. What is the point of having Scottish radio and television at all if it is incapable of taking responsibility for our arts and culture? My recommendation is that we make this a priority issue in the next election. Let's demand that 'higher level of ambition: cultural, international, innovative and creative', which the Broadcasting Commission identified as an agreed aim. Without it, the devolutionary effort is a charade. We must demand more control of our own broadcasting and develop it into one that is envied and admired by other nations, as well as praised and supported by our own population.
     Oh – by the way – has anyone seen a Bird and Fortune sketch on the subject of broadcasting?
     I wonder why we haven't?

Tessa Ransford is a poet and founder of the Scottish Poetry Library