BBC Scotland viewing figures: The revolution with The Seven and The Nine is being televised, but hardly anyone's watching

Last Wednesday, the audience was just 1,700 – about 0.1 per cent of those watching the box at the time

Among all Beatles songs, “Revolution 9” is the difficult one. A jumble of weirdness, sounds crashing into one another, while a lone voice, seemingly trying to restore a semblance of order, robotically intones: “Number nine, number nine, number nine … ” Possibly it’s best appreciated on LSD.

Now, among all BBC Scotland’s output, The Nine is the difficult one. A jumble of news, local and national crashing into one another. While “Revolution 9” is the Fab Four’s longest track, The Nine runs for a hugely ambitious hour. But, just as “Revolution 9” is the one most likely to be skipped on car journeys, after Dad has blasted a few seconds to annoy the kids, so The Nine is being rejected in favour of almost everything else on TV.

Last Wednesday, the audience was just 1,700 – about 0.1 per cent of those watching the box at the time. How’s this going down at Beeb Scotland’s HQ? It’s tempting to imagine Head of News Gary Smith running along the corridors of Pacific Quay shouting “The Nine! The Nine! The Nine!” in a frantic attempt to shore up confidence in the programme.

A general view of the BBC Scotland headquarters at Pacific Quay. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

But, challenged on the figures – and 15-minute Sunday bulletin The Seven on January 7 pulling in just 200 viewers – the defence was robust. “Against a background of declining audiences for all linear channels in recent years, the BBC in Scotland continues to provide market-leading services,” a spokesman said.

The BBC Scotland channel’s reach in 2023 was 13.5 per cent – 701,000 viewers, which is more than any other digital channel in the country. OK, but specifically what about The Nine? A reach weekly of 106,000, apparently. And Beeb Scotland’s news online is growing – 5.6 million unique visitors weekly, a year-on-year rise of 18 per cent.

So maybe last Wednesday’s edition was just an unfortunate night of not much news or too much horrible news or too many more enticing diversions on other channels. The Nine that evening, after all, was up against The Traitors on BBC1 and the start of ITV’s big new drama of the week, After the Flood.

This is pretty much the situation in which The Nine finds itself every night – facing off against prime-time entertainment and the prestige programmes on the other networks with news which for some time now – pretty much Covid-19 onwards – has been relentlessly grim.

It’s true that viewers don’t stick to the schedules anymore and make up their own. But while you might record a drama for later, who would do that the other way round: watch the drama at 9pm, followed by The Nine at, er, ten o’clock by which time the national bulletins are running on BBC1 and ITV? News is the immovable object amid the irresistible force of all the TV available to us now. You tune in when it’s on – or you don’t.

I was delighted when the BBC Scotland channel launched, five years ago next month – and half-impressed by the prospect of The Nine, half-nervous for it. This was going to have to be good. No, unmissable. A programme not just recording the national conversation, but very often leading it.

It was going to have to change viewing habits. It was telling Scots – you might have seen the teatime news, you might want to catch the headlines at 10pm, but you simply must see this. The Nine, The Nine, The Nine. Can’t do without it.

Unfortunately I have, tuning in for the first time in a while on Monday (not on LSD). There don’t seem to have been many, if any, changes or tweaks in response to criticism. It’s still two presenters on the mezzanine at Pacific Quay, this particular night Laura Maciver and Graham Stewart, switching between a perspex podium and a corner sofa in a shade you might call Thatcher Blue.

It’s not a magazine on the mezzanine. It’s not Nationwide (no skateboarding ducks). Or, thank God, The One Show. The news is – mostly – hard and the lead item would have been more of an attention-grabber if it wasn’t merely following up on the report into bariatric tourism featured in Disclosure just an hour earlier.

From there the edition went to Yemen. A “kilt” was supplied by the SNP’s Stephen Flynn posing a question in the Commons about what happens next in the Middle East given previous UK intervention in the region, far from glorious.

There was weather, there was sport, there were drag queens (Beeb Scotland loves them). All of it fair enough, but not exclusive, not special, not stuff that strikes at the very core of our existence – until the show got round to potholes, anyway.

The best item was the touching interview with Glenn Campbell, the BBC Scotland political editor stricken by brain cancer, but refusing to be beaten by it. Always a gratifyingly tough inquisitor of Holyrood, he allowed one tear to fall then composed himself, revealing he would be cracking on with the Munro-bagging.

The channel have tried to scale a few peaks with The Nine. Campbell’s rigour and avoidance of the twee is sometimes missing from it and in the report on Andy Murray’s loss at the Australian Open, I was worried someone was going to utter the less-than-immortal words: “Och, it’s a wee shame!”

Now, folk in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. In the reduced state newspapers find themselves, who are we to criticise TV which, doubtless in part because of stretched resources, cannot be all it wants? That said, this show, even just by dint of the important-sounding title, persuaded us to believe – if not indeed hope – it might succeed with a bold aim.

The Nine wanted revolution, just like John Lennon. But as viewers, we seem to want everything to be in its usual place, just like the reliably jaunty choruses of “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da”.