STV decision to scrap Aberdeen-based Six O’Clock News must be challenged

In the 1980s, I moved to Aberdeen as a young reporter to discover a whole media industry of TV, newspapers and radio dedicated to keeping people in the know about their area.

The news was different. There was more about fishing, farming and, of course, oil and gas than I had experienced in the Central Belt. As for sport, this was all Aberdeen and the Dundee teams. The New Firm rather than the Old.

Grampian TV’s North Tonight was an institution and over the years their friendly rivalry with us BBC types created friendships many of us cherish today. Friendships forged in coverage of issues like Piper Alpha, offshore helicopter crashes, the Orkney Child Abuse Inquiry and the collapse of the bank BCCI and its impact on the Western Isles Council.

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News coverage of the issues affecting North East Scotland, like the oil and gas industry, always had a different flavour to broadcasts in the Central Belt (Picture: Andy Buchanan) | AFP via Getty Images

£2.5 million of savings

As recently as this past week, 40 per cent of viewers chose STV’s Aberdeen-based Six O’Clock News programme for their updates. But all of that is now gone and the announcement from STV that their Aberdeen programme is to be cut feels like the final nail in regional Scottish news’s coffin. The local five-minute slots for both Edinburgh and Glasgow will also disappear.

The decision is part of a move to cut 10 per cent of the station’s jobs and make savings of £2.5 million. Advertising revenue is apparently down but I wonder how they will entice it back to the station if it abandons the local connection with viewers which is its attraction.

As a politician, I wonder how the communities in Tayside, the North East and the Highlands will take to their issues having to tussle with those of the Central Belt for coverage. In Edinburgh and Glasgow too, we will lose the station’s recognition of the differences in our cities’ political, sporting and economic interests.

Then of course, there is the individual impact on the employees, many of whom have worked their entire careers for STV or who will find it difficult to move on. The loss of opportunity too for youngsters, no longer seeing their own region and culture reflected in the news and therefore unaware of careers on offer.

I have no doubt there will always be talented youngsters north of the Tay who will find their way onto our screens or to their destined careers, but this will make it much more difficult.

Public service broadcasting?

It is just a year since the watchdog Ofcom confirmed STV’s licence as the public service broadcaster for its areas and boasted of its “strong schedule of local programming, news and current affairs”.

Many will doubt that what they offer now will be genuine public service broadcasting rooted in the community. The decision must be challenged and Ofcom called before the Scottish Affairs Committee to explain how they will protect local news, sport and culture. Ironically it may be safer in the Scottish Borders under the remit of English-based franchises.

The bosses of STV themselves must come to parliament and explain how they will fulfil their public service remit in their slimmed down, single-centre approach.

Yes, there will still be journalists in all of the areas they cover. But they now face a tougher battle to ensure their communities’ issues are aired and their voices heard.

Christine Jardine is Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West