Stuart Cosgrove: New outlet could address creative industry's talent drift

Published on Monday 8 September 2008 22:17

THE recommendation that Scotland should have its own digital channel is a very good one and will bring Scotland in line with other parts of the UK.

Scotland is especially lagging behind Wales and Northern Ireland.

The one big question is where the funding is going to come from? That hasn't really been addressed yet.

Also, the 75 million quoted would not be enough to deliver entirely new content. It would still need repeats and it may, as other digital channels have been, be limited to peak time hours.

The other question is who would operate it? I could see Channel 4 taking it on or one of the existing companies. The advantage there is that there would be other channels to promote it.

However, it is not impossible that it could be a new start-up or one of the radio or newspaper companies who would run it. For example, the Guardian currently runs a Channel M in Manchester on a digital platform.

A new channel would boost the creative industry in Scotland, which does suffer disproportionately from talent drift.

There are several independent production companies in London owned by prominent Scots in the industry including Shed Productions, Wall-to-Wall and Attic Productions.

There is a lot of talent in Scotland and a lot of opportunity, but that is not being tapped into in Scotland at the moment.

The more general point of the report is also fair, which is that Scotland has not had the investment it should have done in broadcasting from the BBC or Channel 4 and the sector here has under-performed.

So I welcome the recommendations the committee has made on bringing in more investment.

&#149 Stuart Cosgrove is head of programming with Channel 4