Listeners are switching off from Radio Scotland in their droves with 200,000 ditching the state broadcaster in the last two years.
For a commercial operator that sort of loss would be critical with heads rolling and reviews being called. With the state broadcaster backed by government funding plans are advanced for the £32m launch of a new television station later this month.
With that sort of money being ploughed in commercial stations face an even tougher battle for viewers, listeners and crucially advertisers.
The Times reports:
A BBC Scotland spokesman said: “It’s a competitive time for radio, with listeners consuming their content in many different ways.
“We will continue to listen to our audiences and adapt to provide the content they love, where and when they want it.
“BBC Radio Scotland still has the second largest weekly reach of any station in Scotland and during the last quarter of 2018, listeners spent more time with us than during the same period in the previous year.”
All of the Scottish commercial operators are bidding for their share of the audience to appeal to advertisers with listening figures deciding who sinks and who survives.
Over the last few days the BBC has been slaughtered on social media for creating a largely Tory audience in Motherwell for Question Time with one track-suited plant in the audience being exposed online.
In terms of football coverage Radio Scotland dominates the airwaves with a massive cast of pundits to call upon, often as selective as the audience on Question Time.
Neil McCann and Gordon Smith have recently been added to the roster which includes the views of Kris Boyd, Billy Dodds, Alex Rae and Steven Thomson with all of them except Smith benefiting from the disguised remuneration scheme set up by the old club from Ibrox.
Former Celt’s Packie Bonner and Scott McDonald are also regularly on air.
