Interview: Maggie Cunningham, head of BBC Alba, on her plans for the station’s future

MAGGIE Cunningham, the new head of BBC Alba, sets out her plans and hopes for Scotland’s Gaelic TV station, which now has a combined weekly audience of 500,000, but believes it can only continue to thrive with more original programming, she tells Stephen McGinty.

Farpaisean Chon-Chaorach is unlikely to trouble Downton Abbey in terms of ratings or audience share, but BBC Alba’s coverage of furry bullets rounding up their bleating foes has succeeded in corralling me as a fan. I came upon the Sheepdog Trials, in its English translation, while randomly stabbing the remote one Sunday evening. And there they were. Man and beast in perfect lock-step, separated by hundreds of yards, but in constant communication through the iPhone of the canine world: a symphony of whistles and the occasional cry of “come by”. Those Cheviots didn’t stand a chance. On screen were collies with the dribbling powers of Ronaldo, and so smart that after snaring the sheep in the pen I half expected them to settle down with the FT and prepare their owners’ tax returns. The programme had a contented, soporific feel with Donald MacSween and Catriona Macphee introducing us to the owners of these four-legged wonders. Yet there was one thing missing from the television coverage: head cams. In these days of miniature cameras why weren’t they fitted to the dog’s head so that the viewer could follow the action eye-to-eye? Surely it would revolutionise the sport and farmers would soon be driving Porsches and wearing Red Bull logos on their smocks.

So when Maggie Cunningham, the new chairwoman of BBC Alba, agreed to an interview it is among the first questions I put to her. Sitting in a booth in the bar of the Blythswood Hotel in Glasgow, the former joint head of programmes at BBC Scotland thinks for a second then replies: “That is a very good idea. I will be sure to tell them about it.” So if Farpaisean Chon-Chaorach looks a little different next season viewers can direct their e-mails of praise this way.

Having contentedly put a big red tick next to “dog cam” on my list of questions, I could then move on to one every journalist is required by law to ask whenever the subject of Gaelic is raised: “Maggie, why, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, are we spending £20 million a year promoting a language spoken by just 55,000 people?”

The idea of yanking the life-support of public cash from Scotland’s Gaelic television channel would clearly not be considered a “very good idea” by Maggie, who says of the question: “It’s boring, that is the first thing I would say, and secondly it’s not for 55,000 people, it is for 500,000 people (BBC Alba’s average weekly viewers) as you can see. We are talking about austerity but we are also talking about identity in lots of different ways and Gaelic is core to Scotland.

“If you look back at our history, it is the only place in the world where Gaelic is an indigenous language. I am very pro language-learning and very pro supporting people coming to live in Scotland and bringing their own indigenous culture, but basically Gaelic is the indigenous culture of Scotland. It is so fundamental to everything we are trying to preserve that nobody would challenge that we preserve Edinburgh Castle or the Wallace Monument or some of our great paintings, so why challenge the importance of keeping a language alive?”

It is four years since BBC Alba was launched and now that it is available on Freeview it is attracting a healthy audience of 500,000 per week, with nine out of ten viewers unable to speak Gaelic but drawn to the channel’s mix of documentaries, the occasional drama and, most popular of all, sport. Yet Cunningham is concerned that viewers will begin to switch off unless the channel can offer more than just 90 minutes of original programming each night. “Why will it be hard to hold on to that audience? Well, unless we can get additional funding we cannot sustain a channel on an hour and a half (of original programmes) every night. I don’t think an hour and a half a day is enough to hold an audience over time. The last four years, it has started well, it has exceeded expectation but once you start exceeding expectations, the expectation gets greater so the audience will keep wanting more. They have been happy to have what they have, but people will want more. I do think that at an hour and a half over a long period, the channel is unsustainable, basically.

“What we require is more origination (original programming) and maybe different ways of looking at the schedules and more content. How that plays out over the next four years, God knows, but we do need more original content. Ideally by 2017, if the BBC charter gets renewed, I would like to see us having three hours of original content per night, double where we are just now. On the same budget or finding clever ways to enhance the budget. There is no getting away from the fact that people want to watch the telly, and the big challenge is ‘How do we get people to stay watching us?’ They do watch us: 500,000 is good. The challenge is ‘How do we continue to deliver?’”

My other brilliant idea is that BBC Alba develop a new detective series, since the chattering classes are happy to watch murder if it comes with subtitles. We agree that subtitles are no longer the barrier they were in the past. “If you look at the success of The Killing or Montalbano. I’m just back from Sicily and part of the reason I went was Montalbano. If we could do something maybe like Montalbano, it would be universal.” The channel is already in discussions with Chris Young, the producer of The Inbetweeners, the comedy series which became a monster hit when released on the big screen. “I am not responsible for commissioning, but I know that our guys are talking to Chris Young. He is based in Skye and video-conferences with LA, who are now doing an American version of The Inbetweeners. He doesn’t see the point of flying over all the time. He is very keen on Gaelic. His wife is pretty fluent and he himself is learning. The key is to use talent and also to allow the creativity to come through and not say ‘we need to have a drama and this is what it needs to be’. We want to see what we can do if we put a few creatives together.”

BBC Alba is unique in that it is a partnership between the BBC and another company, MG Alba, and could, in an independent Scotland, be the core around which any new post BBC channel is formed. But any discussion about independence makes television executives nervous, particularly in the BBC, who must maintain their neutrality and Maggie is not different.

“I don’t want to say anything about whether there should be independence or not. However, what I would say is that I think we have created a good prototype between MG Alba and the BBC, which is the first time the BBC has gone into partnership with another organisation to deliver a channel. So I would say that whatever happens there is a good prototype there to build. The partnership between MG Alba and the BBC has grown since it started and there is a great deal of trust now. The channel works as one team although some people are employed by MG Alba and some people are employed by the BBC, so what I would say is that there is a good prototype whatever happens.”

Why not comment on independence? Is there a feeling within broadcasting that you are tip-toeing through a minefield? Is there a fear of saying the wrong thing?

“No, I am not afraid of saying what I think,” she says, “but I genuinely don’t think that I am in a position to opine one way or another on what might happen but I do think that there is a strong prototype there. I would hate to think that if there is independence, someone would try to re-invent the wheel or create a whole new infrastructure for something that works pretty well already.”

What she will say is that she is pleased with BBC Alba’s autumn schedule of programmes, particularly Lorgan Linda (Linda’s Story) which is a moving account of how John and Lorna Norgrove coped following the death of their daughter, Linda, a kidnapped aid worker killed in Afghanistan by a rescue attempt by US Navy Seals in October 2010. The film-makers followed her parents as they travelled to Afghanistan from their home on Lewis to set up a charity in their daughter’s name.

“It is fantastic. The way that the team worked with Linda’s parents has been really good as they are obviously not the type of people who want to make a big deal of their emotions, and the way they got the local people in Afghanistan to open up about Linda is a great tribute to the team. It was a very difficult thing to do. When you get the best talent working together you can produce really great stuff.”

Like Farpaisean Chon-Chaorach with head cams and in 3D.

• BORN in July, 1955, on the small island of Scalpay, Maggie Cunningham, a fluent gaelic speaker, attended secondary school in Stornoway and went to Glasgow University before returning to teach on Tiree. In 1979 she returned to Stornoway for a job at Radio nan Eilean and then later joined BBC Inverness. In 1981, she married Johnda Byrne, a university graduate and accountant from Plockton, and the couple have two children, Fionnlagh and Sandra.

In 1992, she was appointed head of BBC Highland and deputy editor of Radio nan Gaidheal, where she fought a behind-the- scenes battle to save BBC Highland before it was scrapped in 1993. In 1999 she became head of features, education and religion at BBC Scotland, and 12 months later took over at Radio Scotland. After becoming head of programmes and services at BBC Scotland in 2005, she left the Beeb after 20 years’ service to set up as an executive leadership coach. A music fan, she is also a board member of Sistema Scotland which supports children’s orchestras.