Licence fee should fund Scots digital TV channel, argues media panel report

PLANS to set up a new digital TV channel for Scotland should be funded through a "fairer redistribution" of licence fee cash, according to a group of media experts.

A report to be published tomorrow looked at how the proposed Scottish digital network - which would include a TV channel for public service broadcasting and online services - should be paid for.

The study comes after the Scottish Broadcasting Commission called in 2008 for the establishment of such a network, which would cost 75 million a year.

The Scottish Digital Network Panel was chaired by Blair Jenkins, the former head of news at BBC Scotland, who also headed the Scottish Broadcasting Commission. It concluded the licence fee was the "most appropriate" source of funding. Jenkins said: "Essentially what we argue for is a fairer redistribution of the television licence fee income as the best way of funding the Scottish digital network."

With the licence fee frozen for six years, former BBC director general Greg Dyke has said the new channel would have to be a Scottish decision paid for using Scottish money.

But Jenkins argued the licence fee did not just fund the BBC, pointing out that Welsh language broadcaster S4C is to receive 75m a year in 2013-14. He added that the licence fee cash, 3.6 billion a year, was "a very sizeable sum of money and the only issue is what is the fairest distribution of that income".

In light of the report, Culture minister Fiona Hyslop said: "It is now for the UK Government, which secretly agreed a new licence fee settlement last autumn, to commit funding for the network and address the deficit of public service broadcasting north of the Border."