BBC Scotland are set to feel the chill winds of change even before the UK Government attempt to replace the licence fee (BBC tax) with a subscription model.
The state broadcaster exerts a huge influence over Scottish football. ‘Trial by Sportscene’ has been well established for years while hours of radio coverage provide a living for pundits such as Steven Thompson, Alex Rae, Billy Dodds and Neil McCann as well as presenters of the calibre of Kenny MacIntyre and Alisdair Lamont.
At the weekend The Times carried a report that the licence fee was about to be replaced by a Netflix style service. Dozens of Radio stations will be binned with their massive web presence vastly reduced.
More urgently, today the Daily Mail reports a 200,000 drop in the number of homes with a TV(BBC) licence between November 2018 and November 2019.
Figures obtained by the Daily Mail show that in November 2018 there were 25,805,141 licences but in the same month a year later that number dropped to 25,606,957 – a fall of 198,184.
Monthly breakdowns for January to November last year also show, with the exception of one month, a steady decline in households owning a licence – which currently costs £154.50 for a year.
The final month covered in the information obtained under Freedom of Information rules, November 2019, shows a drop of 62,000 licences from the previous month. Other months posted drops of between 7,000 and almost 30,000.
That level of drop off is likely to escalate, younger people will put their Netflix or Amazon Prime subscription way before paying for the middle-class output of the BBC.
With no need to justify their output by bringing in advertising the BBC saturates the football market. Whatever your feelings are about Radio Clyde and STV their output reflects their ability to reach a market. If hardly anyone listed to Superscoreboard advertisers wouldn’t touch it but they know that those slots reach a huge audience.
Tonight, Radio Scotland are starting Sportsound at 6pm in direct competition to the commercial operation.
After the failure of STV2 to justify itself the BBC decided to launch BBC Scotland, an incredible act of indulgence with many programmes failing to register any sort of audience. Already they have BBC Alba which brought in it’s biggest audiences for the bizarre spectacle of live lower league football with a Gaelic commentary- switching to English for their guest pundits.
With BBC Scotland forced to move towards output that reflects subscription levels major change is on the way providing commercial outfits large and small with the opportunity to compete without having two hands tied behind their back.