Pete Martin: STV’s new contender has BBC on the ropes

HAVE you seen STV’s sparkly new current affairs show, Scotland Tonight? If not, it’s worth having a look at – through binoculars. Because it seems to be that rarely sighted beast: a Scottish television programme that’s intelligently put together to add quality to popular culture in Scotland.

For a start, it’s cunningly designed to make the BBC’s Newsnight Scotland look bad. You might think this is not such a hard task. The BBC’s news review gives us 20 minutes of Scottish perspective, after the “proper” UK Newsnight cuts off.

As a result, Gordon Brewer, the host of Newsnight Scotland, has always had a hard job not looking like Jeremy Paxman’s poor country cousin.

The UK Newsnight set is cavernous, filled out with big stories, larger-than-life guests and the presenter’s own giant ego. Paxman may not be to everyone’s taste, but fools suffer badly at his hands. Politicians and pundits trifle with him at their peril, and you watch in hope for some dimwit to be skewered point by point on his sarcasm.

But it’s only when you see the STV competitor that you realise the Newsnight Scotland set is huge too. In comparison, Gordon Brewer looks lonely on set, his voice echoing in the gloomy blue, especially at the big round table when there are no guests present in the flesh.

Sometimes, to compensate for the scale of the set, Brewer talks to us standing very close to the camera. The wide angle lens is unflattering. It accentuates his features and the deep space behind him. But it’s also disconcerting, like someone invading your personal space.

That’s when you start to realise how well thought out the STV show seems to be.

With the track record of Scotland’s commercial broadcaster, it’s tempting to think that the success of the format is just happenstance. Maybe the Scotland Tonight team simply decided to do the exact opposite of Newsnight Scotland: “The BBC colour scheme is blue and cold; ours will be red and hot. Their table is large and round; ours will be small and square. Their set is big and empty; ours will be compact and bijou.”

And, of course, you wouldn’t need to be Einstein to work out the best time to broadcast Scotland Tonight relative to the BBC. The STV show comes on half an hour before Newsnight Scotland, ending with an “and finally” flourish before Brewer even gets a chance to stand too close to the camera.

Yet Scotland Tonight seems much more smartly constructed than that. The show is palpably art-directed. The graphics are strong and spangly, perhaps designed more for the glam of “Glas Vegas” than the dreich of “Deadinburgh”.

John MacKay’s tin flutes look sharp too, with a hint of sheen in the cloth. In one broadcast, he was even wearing a co-ordinating red shirt. You might not buy a used car from someone dressed like this, but with co-presenter Rona Dougall’s “TV-normal” beauty, it all adds up to a feel that is more Hollywood than Holyrood. That’s the secret. Scotland Tonight isn’t a current affairs programme: it’s a TV talk show.

The format is slick and fast-moving with topics and Tweets chosen for resonance with Joe McPublic, as well as relevance to the political classes. Miss World, murder, Trump and even Tory leadership hopefuls were all paraded for our infotainment in a breezy chat show style.

The set looks sparklier – and so do the guests. Even the less lustrous contributors seem to have been given a healthy dusting of make-up and it looks like STV is actually spending money on the production.

Overall, there’s a pizazz that is simply lacking on the Beeb programme. Last week on Scotland Tonight, we could watch a former Scottish beauty queen try to defend the Miss World “meat market”. Facing good-humoured invective from older feminists, I’m sure she uttered the phrase “I was barely in a bikini.” The self-confessed bra-burners tried hard not to give her a doing.

Later on the BBC, Newsnight Scotland was droning on about the “doings” down at Westminster: committee infighting and political incorrectness. It’s a wretched story – the kind of pointless, point-scoring that makes HR directors up and down the country sigh (usually because there’s no smoke without fire, but also because the emotional smokescreen is often used by the complainant to divert criticism from their own dubious path of action).

So hats off to the programme makers over at STV for messing with our national conversation. And yet, can Scotland Tonight really make a difference? Will it genuinely create new political debate and understanding north of the Border?

It would be nice to believe that STV has finally twigged that, in a massively competitive market, their own self-interest and only competitive advantage lie in investing in content designed to connect with a Scottish audience.

Of course, cynics might wonder if the upcoming renewal of the broadcasting licences in 2014 means STV is more interested in demonstrating its public service credentials and connecting with the political classes than in developing popular culture for Scotland.

Even so, I feel Scotland Tonight marks a crucial, bold step in bringing a fresh populist edge to Scottish current affairs.

For example, when was the last time you saw four Conservatives in Scotland? The segment featuring all the contenders for the Scottish Conservatives’ leadership was almost mesmerising – a bit like David Bellamy revealing some long-lost species in the undergrowth.

It reminded you that television is a terribly distorting lens, as well as weirdly revealing. I can’t remember much that front-runner Murdo Fraser said: I was too distracted by his ears.

Jackson Carlaw styled himself as the peacemaker but let himself get talked over by more forceful colleagues. Margaret Mitchell surprised us all by admitting that taking on Alex Salmond might require a Big Personality – without claiming or demonstrating for a moment that she had one. After just a few minutes, it was hard to conceive that either Mr Carlaw or Mrs Mitchell could carry the day, never mind carry the party forward, because when MacKay asked if anyone other than Mr Fraser had a Big Idea, only Ruth Davidson spoke up.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that Ms Davidson is gay until I watched Scotland Tonight. I thought she was just a woman with a sensible haircut who liked kickboxing. I was left wondering about the Tory faithful’s gaydar. Obviously, it doesn’t matter to the rest of us, but reactionary sexual attitudes are ingrained among Conservative diehards. You do worry that an openly lesbian leader might cause a mass cardiac arrest among the blue rinses.

However, on this TV showing, you’d say Ms Davidson was the knockout winner. She has youth on her side, and mouth: the pushy confidence that’s only possible when you don’t know how little you know. She wished to go “toe-to-toe” with the First Minister but stopped short of saying Mr Salmond would get a doing.

Squaring up to Scotland’s political heavyweights, she might find a powerful left block and good old-fashioned straight right could still put her on the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

In a similar way, the makers of Newsnight Scotland must be dusting themselves off and wondering what hit them. With all those cuts, can the old-timer even get back in the fight? Will the young contender in the red corner be able to sustain that early flurry? And will either programme gain enough audience to punch themselves into Scottish public consciousness?

If it’s possible, my money is on Scotland Tonight. The show may float like a butterfly but, right now, it stings harder than the Beeb.

• Pete Martin is creative director at The Gate Worldwide