Hey, commissioners, dinnae forget the wireless

Published on Thursday 6 September 2007 00:54

IT HAS felt like this summer the BBC has been in the news as much as delivering it. Spare a thought, then, for those of us who work in a part of the organisation whose audience is expanding, whose appreciation figures have never been higher and whose variety is dizzying.

I refer, of course, to the wireless. A medium with which I have been involved for 20 years, man and boy, but sometimes gets overlooked in the current big-boys' debate about television. Grave predictions of the demise of radio a few years ago, in particular BBC radio, have been countered by a whole new digital audience and hundreds of new stations. The last set of audience figures showed that listening to the radio on mobile phones is increasing at a huge rate.

In fact, as TV viewing figures fall across the board - and network bosses fondly reminisce over a schooner about the days when audiences of 16 or 17 million would watch Howard's Way on a Sunday night - radio audiences are healthy, stable and are offered greater variety than imaginable ten years ago.

BBC Radio Scotland, resplendent in its new home by the banks of the Clyde, is in rude health and its head, Jeff Zycinski, has great plans for the future, taking full advantage of the new ways of delivering content. But here is the thing with all the current chat about Scottish Broadcasting Commissions and who controls what, where: Radio Scotland is fulfilling something unique, popular and possibly worth bearing in mind.

For more than 25 years, programmes such as Good Morning Scotland have been delivering a mix of Scottish, national and international content, all edited in Scotland for a Scottish audience. One of the fundamental misunderstandings posited in the debate by some commentators is that if James Naughtie or Nicky Campbell present news programmes in London then it is still something a "bit Scottish" because they are, er, Scottish themselves.

Wrong. They are edited and directed in London. The presenters' origins are irrelevant. I should know: for four years I was assistant editor of the World at One on Radio 4 at the height of the devolution debate. Whether it was Nick Clarke or James Cox presenting mattered not a whit. It's where the editorial control lies that matters and, in pursuit of that, where the money is.

Sitting in the editor's chair at Good Morning Scotland, I have been lucky enough to send reporters to the United States to cover Hurricane Katrina and the Ukraine for the uprising in Kiev: getting a reporter to Europe now is as easy as getting them to London with the advent of cheap flights from Scotland.

If, at the end of the commission's deliberations, it comes to the conclusion that more editorial control should rest in Scotland, then it would do well to look at the template offered by Radio Scotland. It is really not a difficult proposition. Radio Scotland is, after all, a product of the first run at devolution in 1978, as a precursor to the 1979 referendum. The editors of GMS, Scotland Live or Newsdrive draw up their running orders and prioritise stories not on the basis of what is of the parish or what is leading the news in London - but on the news from a Scottish perspective.

• Stewart Easton steps down today as editor of Good Morning Scotland after three years in the job.