Official Report 579KB pdf
A warm welcome back. For our second panel, we are joined in the room by representatives of Ofcom. Cristina Nicolotti Squires is group director of the broadcasting and media group, Glenn Preston is director for Scotland, and Stefan Webster is the regulatory affairs manager. A warm welcome to you all. I invite Cristina to make a short opening statement.
Thank you for inviting me back; I was here in May last year. We are of course happy to answer questions on anything by way of taking part in your inquiry, but I want to acknowledge our open consultation on the proposed changes to STV’s news output, which I know is of great interest to the committee and to people across Scotland.
I am perhaps a bit biased as, after 35 years in broadcast and digital journalism, I believe that the provision of duly impartial and accurate news that reflects the worlds of everybody is probably the most important part of public service media. As we said in our recent PSM review, the public service broadcasters
“remain the most trusted sources of news”
among audiences. Regional news plays a particularly important part in keeping audiences informed about life in their areas.
As you will be aware, in December last year we consulted on proposed changes to STV’s regional news production. We believe that audiences in Scotland will continue to receive high-quality regional news, with a distinct regional character, while the changes will allow STV to move towards what we call a content-led newsroom, rather than one that is built around the supremacy of the 6 o’clock news. That is similar to what all newsrooms are undergoing—they are becoming digital first or platform neutral, rather than focusing their needs around one particular piece of output.
STV came to us in the autumn of 2025 with a set of proposals that we did not feel went far enough to preserve the distinctiveness of regional news for audiences in the north of Scotland. We had a pretty robust back-and-forth that resulted in the revised proposal, which we think puts STV’s news on a sustainable footing while ensuring that the audience has access to trusted regional news on television as well as online—which is where people are increasingly getting it. That is a compromise, which was reached because we have to be realistic about the pressures that STV is under.
We need to be realistic in recognising that STV is not alone in having to make difficult decisions about how to remain sustainable and thrive, rather than just survive. As you know, ITV is in talks with Sky over a potential sale, and we are likely to see more of that kind of consolidation in the future. Even the biggest global players are having to adapt. Just last week I had the general counsel of Paramount Skydance explain to me why that organisation thought that it ought to buy Warner Bros.
10:30
Coming back to our role here, our job is to deliver on the objective of public service broadcasting, so that people can continue to enjoy high-quality programmes that are of interest across the UK. We strongly believe, as we set out in the report “Transmission Critical—the Future of Public Service Media”, that our regulation should not stifle innovation or prevent broadcasters from adapting; rather, regulation should support them so that they can continue to serve audiences in this increasingly challenging and constantly evolving environment. I was very taken by Mr Adam’s comment that someone who works in his office does not watch STV news and gets everything from YouTube. That is a real example of how audiences’ behaviour is changing.
Our consultation is open until 9 February. Once we have examined the range of views that have come in, we are hoping to publish a statement this side of Easter—we want to make it timely.
Our response will be based on evidence. It is really important to look at how audiences are behaving. Eighty-eight per cent of Scottish people tell us that they prefer to get their local news and information from online services such as websites and apps. The average weekly reach of “STV News at Six” fell to 18 per cent in 2022 and was just 14 per cent last year.
Like ITV, STV faces challenges to its financial sustainability. Our regulation needs to enable them to adapt to the modern model of consumption and provide flexibility to all PSB broadcasters in Scotland to meet those challenges, while supporting the provision of trusted news content to audiences where and when they want to receive it. That is crucial, because audiences are migrating and their behaviour is changing.
My colleagues and I are happy to answer questions on that issue and on any of Ofcom’s wider work.
Thank you for that introduction. In your letter of 16 December, you stated that you are
“proposing to approve STV’s request.”
Does that mean that the decision has already been made and that the consultation is no longer—
The consultation is open until 9 February. We have not alighted on a firm decision. As I said, we will examine the full range of views that are given in response to the consultation, and we aim to put out a statement before Easter. Our minds are not made up.
In terms of our broadcasting inquiry, what are the main challenges facing the broadcasting sector in Scotland? What aspects of its work in Scotland could the BBC improve on with the charter renewal process that is in progress?
I will say a little bit on that then hand over to my colleagues. We would probably agree with the other witnesses who have been before the committee. However, the most important thing—I have not heard this said an awful lot—is the changing behaviour of audiences. When regulating, we cannot pretend that audiences are still consuming content in the same way as they were 20 years ago. That is the biggest challenge.
As far as I can tell, audiences have never had it so good. There is a huge range of content to watch on many different platforms at the time that they want and in the manner that they want, whether that is on their iPad in a hotel room or on the TV in their sitting room.
However, that gives the broadcasting industry challenges, particularly in the PSB sector and in the commercial PSB sector, whose financial model is based on advertising. As the audience fragments, that creates a real challenge.
The biggest challenge to the broadcasting industry in Scotland is to ensure that great content is still being made that represents people across this nation and is available on a platform that people are accessing and using.
I will add a few thoughts. The sector in Scotland has really positive elements to it. We have seen growth in successive years dating back to 2010. At that time, spend on external productions was around £119 million. In 2022, which is the most recent year that we have figures for, spend was up to £225 million. That was a substantial change in that 12-year period.
We have local and global companies that see Scotland as a place where they can make high-quality programmes across the range of genres that the committee discussed in today’s earlier evidence session.
David Smith from Screen Scotland made a very good point about the well-developed infrastructure that is in place. The Scottish and UK Governments are both committing spend on the development of studio spaces. We have a skilled workforce, which might be an issue that you want to return to.
We also know that the situation has been quite challenging, certainly for the past three or four years, for a range of reasons. There are inflationary pressures and there has been a significant slowdown in production, not just in Scotland or the UK but globally. There are still wins to celebrate in that context. The mixed production ecology that I mentioned is seeing drama and daytime TV being made here; there are returning series and other popular formats coming from our public service broadcasters and the major streamers.
We heard from stakeholders in the past couple of years that not enough original drama was being made in Scotland—the committee talked about that in the first evidence session this morning. That situation is changing: in the past year or so, a number of limited-run series have been commissioned and broadcast, such as “Coldwater”, “Summerwater” and “Half Man”. There has been reference to “Counsels”, which is a returning—I hope—series that is being filmed on the shores of Loch Lomond; some of our colleagues have visited that in the past few weeks. There are also hugely popular returning series such as “Shetland”, which is now on series 10. We were particularly pleased to hear that Netflix’s “Dept Q”—it had just launched in May last year, which is when we were previously in front of the committee—was renewed and that we can expect a season 2 in the next 12 months or so.
News plurality remains quite strong. Audiences are well served with content at a network level, from public service broadcasters and the likes of Sky News, alongside regional news provision from BBC Scotland and STV, which Cristina Nicolotti Squires touched on. ITV Border is also very active in that space. We recognise the need for that provision to change as audience habits around news evolve, and we recognise the growing importance of having that trusted and accurate news content in digital spaces.
I will end on radio, which was not touched on with the first panel. It remains really popular in Scotland—each week, 87 per cent of adults tune into live radio. Commercial radio is doing particularly well; it reaches more than half of people in any given week. You may want to ask us about or refer to the launch of STV Radio, which is a nationwide digital offering that is part of the transformation that STV is committed to. We have seen plans from Bauer Media, for example, to move to and invest in a new studio for Clyde 1 in Glasgow city centre. That is a really positive picture.
I will stop there, convener.
I will move to questions from the committee.
Good morning, everyone. I continue on the subject of changing audiences. Although audiences and the ways in which they access news are changing—the audience for STV is a classic example—when STV journalists come to this committee, they say that they do things for STV news but that they also direct people to STV news by using short-form media in places such as TikTok. We heard earlier that the legacy broadcasters are trying to use that as a way to get people to look at that content. I am interested in that.
I am concerned that there has been a long-term reduction in locally produced hours on commercial radio in Scotland and, now, there is the potential approval for changes to STV North’s “STV News at Six”. I am looking for assurances from Ofcom about how you are acting effectively as a regulator in Scotland, rather than simply ratifying the decisions of broadcasters.
We are not ratifying the decisions of broadcasters. As I said, we did not accept STV’s original proposal and we had robust conversations with them—
The mix that you have got could be taken up by weather and a bit of sport from Aberdeen.
As I said, that is still open to consultation. We will hold STV to account on whatever we end up approving.
I went to Aberdeen just before Christmas and met all the people in the newsroom. I have worked in the same situation as they have; I know how much regional news is loved by communities and by the people who make it. It was interesting to me that the people in that room—there must have been about 30 staff—were keen to ensure that they were not delivering for only a decreasing, linear audience. They all wanted to make sure that their stories—the stories from their area—were given more prominence in STV’s overall news and digital output.
At the moment, the delivery of every story, whether it is on TikTok or Instagram, involves it having to go through a bottleneck in Glasgow. STV is committed to making sure that that is removed, so that the journalists keep gathering their news across the northern belt.
Rather than spending the whole day thinking about the story that they are doing for the 6 o’clock news, they are actually doing a story that may well appear on the six but will also appear in places with far bigger audiences, such as TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. We do an annual report on the BBC’s performance and have made it clear that it must put the news where people are watching it.
I joined Ofcom two years ago after five or six years at Sky, where we did exactly that pivot. There were concerns about that because of the old idea that people would come only to a company’s own platform to consume its news. That does not work now: organisations have to put their product on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram or wherever everyone is, although with attribution to their own brand, because the legacies of those brands are really important.
I will bring you back to what we are talking about here today. You said in your opening statement that you deliver on public sector broadcasting, which is really important to you, but that you should not stop broadcasters adapting.
I am getting to the stage where I do not blame broadcasters for asking, because they seem to get everything that they ask Ofcom for. What practical purpose does Ofcom actually serve for the audience as a regulatory presence in Scotland? The audience is the most important thing, but a whole part of the north-east of Scotland literally will not be getting STV news that is tailored to the audience there.
The audience will not get as many minutes of a linear programme at 6 o’clock tailored to them, but the number of people consuming that content has been going down and down.
That is the key show in the STV line-up.
It is the key show in STV’s linear line-up, but the audience will be getting more news in the places where it is consuming news. That is the difference.
We seem to be getting to a point where, whatever local broadcasters or others ask for, Ofcom tends to allow them to do that. In radio, we know that Clyde 1 is a screaming success, but there was a Clyde 2 and a Forth 2, and they no longer exist. Capital Scotland started running network content that came from down south and that station lost its audience, so they brought everybody back up and they now have Heart Scotland and Capital up here in Scotland. That is one of the few times that things have gone the other way; most of the time, the network goes down south.
I will let my colleague Stefan Webster answer specifically on the radio matters. However, the idea that Ofcom just waves everything through is simply not a fact. For example, the BBC recently asked for five variations to its licence and we said no to two of those. We do not always just wave things through; we do push back.
Particularly in the case of STV, we said that we would not approve what the company was asking for unless it adapted the idea. The original proposal was far from what is being proposed now.
I ask Stefan Webster to pick up on the radio thing.
Radio is a slightly different matter. We have been in front of the committee before and explained that deregulation was a legislative intervention from the UK Parliament that allowed for things such as formats, or the number of hours of content being made in particular local areas, to fall away. Those were UK Parliament decisions that we then had to follow through.
The Capital example is a really good one. The way in which things are going means that any decisions made by broadcasters, about either TV or radio, must be audience led. When it came to Capital and Heart, Global realised that it had made a wrong decision in vacating the space in Scotland and putting out network content that did not work for its audience, so it brought the Scottish content back. That is how it should work.
STV has seen an opportunity to do something similar by having a radio station that is for Scotland and broadcasts across the nation. That launched last week and we wish it well, but it must be audience led. If there is a market for programmes that are locally based here in Scotland, that is great and we will support it. Regulation must allow the audience to take the lead on where services come from.
Part of the problem with the situation that we are in now is that the timing is absolutely lousy. There are regulated hours that have to be given. The news content covered by the licence for STV North, which was previously Grampian Television, is in effect being cut, and STV Radio is now being launched. The unions, and others, have argued that journalists’ jobs are being taken away to pay for an STV radio station.
There are a couple of things to comment on. It is not for the regulator to tell any public service broadcaster how to spend its money; that is a matter for the STV board and leadership to decide.
But the STV North licence is your responsibility.
10:45
Of course, and that is why we are consulting on changes that we think are right for audiences. There is a narrative that journalist jobs are being lost at the expense of a radio station. That is not quite true. If you look at our consultation, STV has set out that it is trying to make quite difficult efficiencies across the organisation—of about £8 million over the next few years. News is a small part of that, but STV is also making savings across studios, central functions and other parts of audiences.
That illustrates the bigger challenge that all media companies are facing as they have to adapt and find audiences. That is particularly the case for commercial public service broadcasters, which have to try to find business opportunities that they can generate revenue from and grow from. Those opportunities will help them as a business first and foremost, but they will also help to cross-subsidise the more expensive obligations that are really important, such as trusted and accurate local news. We think that STV is getting there with the proposals that we are consulting on.
Do you believe that we are losing local news for STV North, even with your revised situation? As I said, the few extra minutes that you have got could be taken up with the weather in Aberdeen and who Aberdeen FC has signed that day. If the proposal goes through, there will in effect be a loss of local news.
There is perhaps a loss of local news on a linear television programme that fewer and fewer people are watching; there will be more news on the platforms that people are using to consume news. That is what the outcome should be.
If the proposal goes ahead, we will be monitoring STV to ensure that the programme that comes out of Glasgow contains a good range of material that is of interest to people throughout Scotland, and we will be holding STV to account on that. Yes, there may be less specific news for people in a programme on STV North that fewer and fewer people are watching every year, but there will be more news on the platforms that people are increasingly turning to.
Finally, it is only about a year ago that STV applied for the licence. Is it a concern that, a year later, that has all changed? Your role in this, as a regulator, is for the audiences, and at the same time to ensure that you do not put companies into a position in which they are unprofitable or could go under. There have been issues for STV, but it is nowhere near going under.
I really hope that it is not—it does not seem to be in that position at the moment. However, sustainability, and the ability to continue to make and broadcast news, is really important. Our decisions have to be based on the needs of the audience, which I have already demonstrated. Audiences are not watching news on linear television; they are consuming it on digital. That is a really key thing, but so is sustainability. ITV, which is a much bigger organisation, feels that it cannot carry on making its news without the help of Sky. That deal has not gone through yet, and let us see what happens if it does. Like all broadcasters, STV is facing really big challenges. Our regulation needs to enable STV to flex itself. If it thinks that a radio station that carries news is a good idea and gives it more financial opportunities—the radio sector is doing better than the linear sector—we have to enable it to do that.
It is a balancing act. I would love it we were be able to say, “You can do everything. You’ve got the money—you can do all these different things”, but in the UK and across the world, public service broadcasting is really under threat.
Just for the record, I am a big fan of STV Radio, because I seem to be in the key demographic that it is looking for.
I, too, am a fan of STV Radio, and am in the demographic that it is aiming for.
The question about licence renewal, and changes quickly thereafter, is understandable. It is worth saying that there is a kind of quirk to the process for that. Quite a lot of the negotiations on the relicensing position started back in 2021 and were largely concluded in 2023—that is already two to three years ago. The way in which the statute is set out does not allow us to revisit the terms of the licence at the time. It can be renewed only on the previous basis, once we have done what is called the sustainability test. However, that is already a number of years old. That is the reason that we are now in this position. We had renewed the licence on the same terms as previously, but over the past two or three years, as the circumstances have changed for STV, it has come to us to request the revision.
And also because of the big fall in audience over that two-year period.
I have a quick question on the demographic issue. Yes, audiences are changing and there is a different view of the licence fee for the BBC and so on. However, is there a responsibility on Ofcom to ensure that everyone has access to BBC, STV and Channel 4? For example, the older demographic, and people who are digitally excluded, should still have an opportunity to access those news programmes.
We can look at what happened in the north-east in the past week: above Aberdeen, the weather situation was completely different from that in the rest of the country. Is localised news broadcasting for Aberdeen not, therefore, absolutely vital?
I would expect that, in the circumstances that we saw a couple of weeks ago with the weather, the majority, or a lot, of the programme out of Glasgow would focus on the situation in the north-east because it is a good story—it is a big national story rather than being specific to the north-east.
Digital exclusion is a really important issue, but it exists not only in television; people cannot make a doctor’s appointment these days without having to use an app. I am very mindful that older audiences want to watch those linear programmes—they are the audience. However, we must not stereotype people above a certain age; I am 60, so I am hardly a spring chicken. Our own research shows that the biggest growth in the numbers of those who are turning to YouTube on the TV set in their living room is among people who are older than 50. It is important to make sure that older people are getting the news where they get it, but what I have described is increasingly the case.
As I said, we are minded that the proposal that we have had so far, subject to what other people put into the consultation, does achieve that balance.
Okay. I think that the north-east members who have given evidence to the committee might have a different view, given the correspondence that they have had from their constituents, but that is already on the record, so I will move on to Mr Bibby.
Good morning to the witnesses. I agree with what you said earlier about local news being the most trusted news, and the fact that it has never been more important, in particular in a time of misinformation online. It is also important to our democracy; we have a Scottish Parliament election coming up shortly, and local news is really important in that respect.
You just mentioned, in response to the convener’s example, that you anticipated that stories affecting the north-east would still be on the national news programme. One of the issues that has been raised is that, while there are clearly major concerns about the impact that any proposals on access to STV North would have on the north of Scotland, if there was a move to a national programme out of Glasgow, there would be a dilution of news for other areas of Scotland. There would be an impact on Glasgow and the west and Edinburgh and the east. To what extent have you considered those issues alongside the axing of STV North?
Stefan Webster might want to come in with some of the detail on that. The short answer to the question is that we have considered that. You have to bear in mind that there is a series of requests from STV that relate to both licences. There are provisions for opt outs, for example, for the central licence, which—as you rightly point out, Mr Bibby—previously required the service to do stuff for Glasgow and the west and Edinburgh and the east, that STV has also asked to remove from its licence obligations.
There are two or three elements to the proposal; it is about not just the minutage that relates to the STV North licence element, but how the licence functions in the central belt, too.
The crucial part, which is really important—more so than where the programme comes from—is where the news-gathering resources are. STV has been quite clear—this ties into the question of how it can demonstrate that those programmes are made in both areas, which will be a licence condition for it going forward—that it has significant news-gathering resource across both central and north Scotland.
News can work pre-recorded from a studio as long as the stories are being gathered in the areas that are being served; that is the important part. That has perhaps been a bit lost in the discussion, but it is as true for central Scotland as it is for the north of Scotland. There will undoubtedly be a change in how the news programme looks and feels to audiences, but, in our view, that is necessary in order for STV to modernise its news-gathering approach and continue to move to serving audiences where they are, increasingly, getting their news from.
On the process, you said that you are not waving things through, but you also talked about the need to compromise. Why compromise when STV is a profitable business? It is investing in entertainment and drama and, as we have just heard, in a new radio station. Why is there a need to compromise on the issue?
The cuts that STV is proposing are not at all confined to news. Stefan Webster probably knows the figures better than I do, but it has been making significant cuts right across all its different genres and outputs.
Yes, that is right. As I mentioned earlier, STV said in our consultation that it is looking to make £8 million of savings in the next couple of years. News is a proportion of that but it is certainly a minority proportion. We are not in a position to second guess STV’s leadership over its financial position. Obviously, we have looked at the numbers and we recognise the challenges that it faces.
You say that it is not your job to second guess. However, STV is a profitable organisation. It makes a profit. That is not second guessing but fact.
Currently, yes.
That is right. However, the level of profit went down significantly in the last reporting year, so this is a reaction. I think that the operating profit level was in our consultation.
The point is that we recognise the reasoning that STV has come to us with—that news needs support from other profitable parts of the organisation. That is all laid out in the consultation. Those are areas in which we are interested and on which, as part of that consultation, we are keen to hear from people about where they think that we might have erred.
I think that the figures were in our submission. STV’s linear revenue was £99 million in 2021, dropping 15 per cent to £84 million in 2024. Its digital revenues were largely unchanged at around £20 million. Its regional news costs have increased by seven per cent between 2021 and 2024 and are forecast to increase by another seven per cent between 2024 and 2027.
Can I ask—
I will come to you next, Mr Kerr.
It is about the numbers.
I am happy.
Are those numbers for STV Group?
I suspect that they will be.
Okay.
Mr Bibby, do you want to come back in?
The fact is that STV is still a profitable organisation. We have an Ofcom regime and regulation and potential amendments to the licence that has been granted in order to prevent any significant failure in public service broadcasting, not to allow profitable organisations to make cuts to potentially boost their share price. When it comes to the making of savings and the need to compromise, will Ofcom require STV to ring fence those savings to reinvest in Scottish journalism, or is there a risk that they could be used to bolster shareholder dividends or executive bonuses?
A financially sustainable STV is good for Scotland more widely. What you have described is not the model of regulation that we have and I do not think that there is any model under which we could allow STV to do that. Significantly, we can ensure that it maintains significant news-gathering resources across both its licensed areas. That is part of its licence and we will continue to look at that.
When we had STV news here, I found it hard to understand the claim that a significant reduction in the number of journalists who work in the organisation, and a dilution of regional news, would result in more content. That has now been repeated: Ofcom believes that there will be fewer journalists but more content. I could not understand that statement when STV news made it and, given that Ofcom appears to agree with it, I am interested to know how having fewer journalists results in more content.
From a production point of view, if we are making a television package to go out on a linear programme, we have to involve a reporter and a camera person, although they can often do the same thing, and then somebody has to edit it although, again, the same person can do that and quite often does. There also has to be the technical infrastructure for the linear feed. Somebody who is uploading a story on TikTok can do all that themselves more efficiently. Delivery of digital news requires fewer people—I think that that does stand.
Stefan Webster can remind me how many journalists there are now from the north-east.
11:00
There are six staff, and maybe three journalists.
Yes. There are six staff in total and three journalists from the north-east. Any journalist’s job is important, but that is not a huge number. More content can be delivered with fewer people if more of it is done on digital.
I am interested to hear your analysis of what would happen if more journalists were cut. At what point would that mean that less news would be produced? Has there been any investigation of that?
The important point is that STV will still have licence obligations for delivery placed on it and it will have to report against them. We will have to make an assessment of those things and hold STV to account publicly for that type of change. For example, STV is under an obligation to produce something that is called a statement of programme policy, which might include the type of information that will allow us to interrogate it or to use our information-gathering powers to ask for it once we make a decision about what the licence should say and look like.
I go back to the published results, which show that STV—I am talking about the listed company—had revenues of £188 million in 2024 as reported in early 2025. After tax, profits were £13.1 million, which is up from £5.3 million in the previous year. Those are the published figures. I do not know where the other figures have come from or what part of STV has been separated out and chosen for reporting. I would have thought that the STV listed company owned those two licences, no?
Yes.
Yes, so I do not understand why we have two sets of numbers.
I think that it is a question of the margin. I am sorry; I do not have the details in front of me but I can come back on that.
Cristina Nicolotti Squires said that STV is under all sorts of pressure at the moment. I do not know what the 2025 numbers will look like. STV might have given you advance sight of some provisional numbers but I do not know that. It also has 2026 ahead of it and that should be a good year for commercial broadcasters in this country because of the world cup and because people enjoy watching sport on live TV above everything else. On the back of Cristina’s point that ITV cannot now do the news without Sky, are we just saying that STV is too small to survive?
That is not the point that I was trying to make. I was saying that public service broadcasting is struggling with financial sustainability right across the board from BBC to Channel 4, ITV and STV. I want to make sure that STV not only survives but that it thrives and continues to deliver the news, but to the places where people are consuming it, that it is not tied to a legacy model of doing everything for a programme that fewer people are watching and that it has the ability to take its production and strategy to a more digital world.
Because of the changes in executive leadership at STV in the past months, and the fact that we know that talks are being held between STV and ITV—that is what we were told at last week’s meeting, if I remember correctly.
It was ITV and Sky.
I beg your pardon. You will understand that there is a concern in Scotland that STV will be absorbed into ITV and then into the bigger global corporation that is known in this country as Sky. Do I understand it correctly that Ofcom would not take a view on which parent company owns the licences?
We take a view on the ownership of the licences. At the moment, no one has put anything on the table to suggest that the ownership of licences should be changed.
ITV and Sky have confirmed that they are in talks, but no proposal has been made. If a proposal is made, Ofcom will play a role. If the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport decides that there should be a public interest test, various procedures will take place.
The people who own the licences are very important to us. If someone comes along and says that STV wants to sell to whoever, then of course we will take a view on it, but I am not going to speculate on something that has not actually happened.
But can you understand our concerns?
I totally understand your concerns, yes.
We are talking about two licences. Effectively, you have changed the conditions for both of them, but I am particularly interested in STV North. Just to give us some idea of precedent, have you ever told a licence holder that it can stop broadcasting local news as it is going to be absorbed into a neighbouring licence’s news programme, and its news programme is also going to be diluted?
Not during the time that I have been here, but I am trying to remember when I was in ITV. The situation in ITV at that time was that there were many regional hubs for the production of news. When I started at ITV, which was a very long time ago, the central licence had Nottingham, Birmingham and one other place, I think.
But have you done that on licence areas?
No, this is probably the first licence variation of this type. Glenn, am I correct? I am also mindful that others might want to do something similar down the line—I do not know.
There are a couple of points to make. One is that we get requests from licence holders for variation all the time from across the licensing regime. That includes television broadcasting and radio as well. They come to us all the time for all sorts of different reasons. They might change a format request for the type of music they have on a radio station, for example.
Yes, but that is slightly different.
I understand, but I am saying that it is not uncommon for somebody that owns a licence to come to us about variation. I understand this is more fundamental than that, but that type of thing does happen regularly.
There is another point that is worth making here as well, specifically in relation to the two STV-owned licences—the central licence and the north licence. There is nothing that would prevent any licence holder, whether it is STV or anybody else who happens to own the central and north licences, from coming to us and saying that they do not think that the licences are sustainable anymore and handing them back to us.
That is one of the factors that we would have to weigh up when thinking about the future sustainability questions that we have been talking about as well. So, whether it is STV or another commercial company, it is feasible that a company could say to us that it does not think that the licence is sustainable anymore.
So, did STV say that?
No, it has not said that at all, but those elements that are in our mind when we have to make an assessment about sustainability.
But what I am hearing is that, at least in your knowledge, there is no precedent for what you have done with STV North.
There are a couple of aspects to that. So there is no licence requirement for where the studio and presentation comes from. You heard that from STV as well. So there are examples from elsewhere in the UK where the studio presentation for one licence is done in another licenced area.
But it is not diluted?
No, perhaps not.
So, the dilution of local news content—
I am sorry to cut you off, but the dilution of specific content from the northern belt on one programme has been diluted.
It is a very important programme, though. In Scotland, the news—
It is a very important programme, which decreasing numbers of people are watching. Also, people are telling us that they want to get their local news from digital sources. So I would not characterise it as a dilution on the whole. Instead, it is a dilution of a specific programme.
I understand the point that you are making, but I am trying to make the point to you that you have effectively merged those two licences, so there are not two licences now. You have de facto decided that STV North and—
We have not made a decision yet.
I think that you have.
Well, I am very happy to say that I have not made a decision.
You have signalled that you are favourably disposed to the proposition.
That is subject to what people say in the consultation.
That was the one area in which we pushed back on STV. The need for a balanced level of regional distinction between the two licence areas was not in the original proposal, but it was in the second proposal, which was important to us.
Do you understand why I might conclude that you, in effect, merged the two licence areas when it comes to local news content? You have basically said that STV does not have to have local news content and it will all be done out of Glasgow.
That is not what we have said. We still have to get the consultation responses in as part of the process, and we will have to make a decision based on the evidence that has been put out in our consultation and that has been presented to us. At the end of the process, if we were to go with the proposal that is up for consultation at the moment, there will still be two licences, and distinct content will still be prepared. I understand your point that, with less minutage—
It is not the same programme.
No, I understand that.
It is not the same though, is it?
No, but, as we have said, it is our expectation that there will still be a news-gathering resource in each of the licence areas, and STV has already committed to continuing to have journalists on the ground in Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee, for example.
Fewer in Aberdeen.
Absolutely, and that is STV’s choice. There will be two licences with distinction in them, and what we expect to see—we will hold STV to account for this—is that regional content will be available on those other platforms, which STV has committed to doing.
You will forgive me if I say that I think that you are struggling to justify what you have done, which is to bring together the two licences, in effect. If considered in any other business context, we would say that you have merged two things together.
Actually, we have not, because it is not a merge. There will still be two separate licences.
I am only giving you my view, which is based on your answers.
That is of course entirely your right.
I will bring in Mr Harvie.
Convener, I wanted to come on to some of the wider issues in the broadcasting inquiry, so I do not know whether you want to allow anyone who wants to ask about STV to come in first.
I know that Mr Brown wants to come in, as does Mr Halcro Johnston. Everyone wants to come in, but we will come to you last if that is okay, Mr Harvie. If you could be succinct, Mr Brown, that would be good. I know that it is difficult, and I am sorry about the timings today.
I have just two questions. One of them is on STV, but the first one relates to the discussion that there has been on whether Sky might be taking over ITV.
This might not be central to our questioning so far, but I am interested in Ofcom’s view on the absolutely atrocious “Press Preview” that is on Sky every night, in which you get a vaguely leftist or Labour-supporting journalist and an avowedly right-wing journalist to give their unbiased views on the unbiased print media to an unbiased interviewer. How that serves Scotland or anywhere else, I do not know. Has Ofcom ever looked at that or taken a view on it? Given Cristina’s previous experience at Sky—I do not know how long ago that was—I am interested to hear her view.
It came under my remit. Like all other programming that Ofcom licences, that bit of programming is subject to due impartiality rules, which we enforce. If we get major complaints about a particular item, we will investigate those. I have not watched “Press Preview” for a while, and it has been a couple of years since I left Sky, but, from my experience, I think that there is generally a pretty decent balance and range of views on the programme. Broadcasters have the freedom to come up with formats of programmes as they see fit; as long as programmes are duly impartial and duly accurate, that is as far as our views go.
I cannot see how anybody could say that it is impartial, but we will leave that aside.
On the substantive question about the STV licence, when you first spoke, you quite rightly talked about various pressures in relation to how audiences are moving. I understand that point and do not disagree with it.
However, the point is that the licence was agreed months before STV sought to, in my view, completely change it. Glenn Preston provided a bit of an explanation for that, saying, “That might’ve happened two years ago, but it doesn’t matter what the licence renewal is; you are obliged to agree to what was previously agreed”, or words to that effect—I do not know exactly what the phrase was. Can you see why the public has absolutely no trust in the process? I am not saying that it is necessarily Ofcom’s fault, if the way that the Government has set it up is that you can only agree what was previously the licence.
On what you said about the way the audience is changing and trying to make sure that STV is sustainable, I note that that change has not just happened in the past few months; it has been going on for years—everyone has seen that. Do you understand why there is a complete lack of trust in the process among the public, who will expect that, when a licence is agreed, that will be that for the 10-year period, or at least a substantial part of it, rather than for a few months before it is completely changed?
11:15
I understand the point that you are making. I can do the chapter-and-verse bit either now or in writing to the committee, if that is easier, to explain the process behind renewal and why we are allowed to renew only on the basis of the provisions that were in the previous licence. I am happy to explain to the committee in writing why that is the case.
The other point to make is that a licence holder can come to us as the regulator at any point in the process.
I hear what you are saying, that there might be a public expectation that, when you renew a licence, there will not be any substantive change within the first handful of years, for example, for a licence with a 10-year duration. However, that is not how the legislative framework or our regulatory duties are structured. Any organisation that owns a licence, whether it is STV or another organisation, can come to us at any point in the licence process or for the duration of the licence and ask for changes, and that is essentially what has happened in this circumstance.
Looking at how fundamentally STV is seeking to change it, and given what the public has a right to expect, I cannot see how you can do anything other than reject, at least substantially, what STV intends to do. Otherwise, you will just lose public trust.
I know that we are short of time, convener, so I will leave it at that.
A lot of issues have been covered and I do not want to repeat them. However, earlier in the meeting, Cristina Nicolotti Squires said, “Our minds are not made up”. The letter that we have received from you says:
“We are proposing to approve STV’s request. In our view, STV’s proposals will ensure that audiences continue to be served with high-quality, regional news provision on a sustainable basis for STV.”
That sounds as though your minds are pretty made up.
It is subject to consultation. Perhaps those words should have been put in that letter.
Well, possibly so.
What could make you change your mind?
In all consultation processes, we take into account the range and volume of views provided. We will perhaps go back to the licence holder on this occasion and say that we might have further discussions with it. However, we think that its proposal is the best thing for audiences across Scotland and for the sustainability of the STV licence.
It does not sound as though there is much that will change. You are not telling me about anything that you would really change.
I have not personally seen any of the consultation responses yet.
If I were thinking of replying to the consultation, I would probably think, “Well, they have made their minds up, so there is not much point in me replying, anyway.”
You are entitled to say that—
Have you had many responses, do you know?
Yes.
We have, yes. There was a big reaction both before and after the consultation on this, as you would expect.
If the responses were almost universally negative, could that change people’s minds, or is it just a question of analysing the responses?
It is a question of analysing the responses.
We asked people to answer specific questions to help us build the evidence base.
We have presented an evidence base in relation to what we have received from STV, but also in relation to things such as our own audience research. There is a lot of content in the consultation that flows from Ofcom’s engagement with audiences across Scotland, which we do qualitatively and quantitatively every year as part of things such as our “Media Nations” work.
We have asked consultees to come back to us on specific questions about what is being proposed here, with evidence as to why we should do a particular thing. We will be doing the analysis after the consultation—
I am sorry to cut in, but we are obviously short of time. I appreciate that, but virtually everybody we have heard from, bar STV management—and I think that colleagues would probably say the same—such as journalists, people who were formerly with STV and audience members or watchers, are opposed to this. Their feeling is that it is a diminution of service. Do you suggest that the service that is going to be provided will be as good as it was before?
Yes, and that is fundamental to the decision. There will still be a high-quality form of regional news, available for audiences on linear television for viewers across Scotland. It will look and feel a bit different, but it will still be high-quality regional news.
But there will be people who will miss out, and there will certainly be local news that it will not be possible to cover in the same ways that it has been.
We keep hearing about “they”, meaning the audience, but the audience are not one group. In the Highlands and Islands region that I represent, it is vitally important that we have news that is as local as possible. That is why there are such high listening numbers for local radio.
What is happening will mean that a lot of older people, as the convener highlighted, will see a reduction in the service that they are getting. Would you accept that?
I think that the word that was used was “dilution”—the news programme will look and feel different, and there might not be as much in any half hour at 6 o’clock as there has been previously. However, we hope that that gives STV the flexibility, over the totality of what it is doing, to serve audiences increasingly in digital spaces on top of delivering a high-quality linear news programme.
Sometimes there are stories on the two different programmes that are, in a sense, the same story, but they are done by two different people in two different places. It is important—and this is STV’s responsibility—that high-quality local journalism is still kept on the programme.
The point was made, perhaps by Glenn Preston, that STV has said that it is committed to local journalism and covering local issues, but it signed a licence that placed obligations on it pretty much a year ago, and that is already being changed.
How can we, therefore, have any real faith in those obligations when STV can just come to you and say, “Well actually, we’re sorry, but this is going to be too difficult and too expensive”?
There is not anything to actually stop that, but with all these licences, as Glenn Preston explained, they can be handed back—anyone can hand them back.
But STV is not handing back the licence. It has come to you and said—
No—rather than handing back the licence, it has asked for a variation.
So, what is to stop it coming to you for another variation when things become a little bit too difficult and too expensive?
There is nothing to stop that.
So, this might not be the end of variations of the licences.
The BBC comes to us with variations of the licence probably about every three months, so I imagine that that will continue. There is nothing in the current legislation to stop STV coming back to us to ask for another licence variation, but we take each licence variation separately and give it equal scrutiny.
I am conscious of time, so I will hand over to Mr Harvie.
As I have said on previous occasions, I strongly share the concerns that members have expressed about STV, but we also have the inquiry into broadcasting, and we are now left with very few minutes to explore some of those issues. I suggest that, after the session, we might follow up in writing with some additional questions on that area.
In the time available, I ask you to respond to the suggestion that we are all—Parliaments, Government, the regulator and industry—currently having far too narrow a conversation about how the regulation of our media landscape needs to change. The reason I suggest that is because we are talking about whether, or how, to continue or adjust arrangements that have their origins in a time when public service broadcasting was utterly dominant in the media landscape. It set the tone and the agenda for the rest of the industry, set audience expectations profoundly and shaped the media landscape in a way that is no longer the case.
The public service broadcasters remain very important, but they are players within a much wider landscape, some of which is, to be frank, the wild west and is much less significantly regulated. We are moving into an area—as you have said in response to other members—in which some of those public service broadcasters will be specifically trying to put their content on to completely unregulated platforms. Their content may be produced in a regulated way, but it will be completely intermingled with opinion presented as fact, conspiracy theories, extremist content, AI slop, rage bait and AI-generated images.
While it seems that the rules on the creation of intimate AI images are now going to be enforced, we have no similar rules on the use of AI to propagate conspiracy theories, damage people’s reputations, manipulate share prices or affect election results. Public service broadcasters’ content will be entirely intermingled with all that wider content, in every sense. The regulatory arrangements, which were designed to ensure that people have a media landscape that they can broadly trust, will remain utterly ineffective. I ask you to respond to the suggestion that we need a much broader approach to regulation of the media landscape.
I agree with a lot of what you said. It is not a good idea to have a narrow conversation. In fact, we called for a review of regulation in our report into the public service broadcasting sector. At the moment, we have a consultation that is asking people to input into what should change. Some of that change would be within our gift, but some of it would not and would require legislative change.
Yesterday, we published our proposals on the prominence of social media on smart TVs, as per the Media Act 2024. If those proposals go through—of course, our minds are not made up on such things—they would guarantee for the first time that, when you turn on your Samsung telly or whatever it is, there will be an absolute right, for no money at all, for the public service broadcasting apps to be on the first rail that you land at.
Social media is becoming prominent on smart TVs, but how do we get good-quality, trusted and regulated news to be prominent in the soup—if you like—of the internet? In our report—which is now being discussed—we focused on the video sharing platforms. We chose to focus particularly on YouTube, because it is increasingly being used in sitting rooms and it is increasingly the place that people are turning to. We are in discussions with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and stakeholders about what such prominence on YouTube would look like. We do not have all the answers, and we need people to input into that.
We made a nod to the question whether PSBs can be given prominence across a range of social media. I do not have the answer to that question. If anyone does, please talk to us. It is all so different.
However, we and the Government recognise the importance of making sure that good-quality, trusted and regulated content, which people know that they can trust—whether it is from the BBC or STV—is discoverable. Allied to that point—because there are all different algorithms and different systems—is the issue of media literacy, or what I prefer to call critical thinking and digital citizenship. That is something that I feel strongly about, and I am pleased that the Scottish Government in particular has made moves in that regard. It is about knowing the difference between the slop and the good stuff. Our research shows that, if you ask young people how they verify what they see on TikTok or whatever, they will often say, “Well, I’ll go check it out on the BBC or STV.” Media literacy is key to addressing some of these issues.
However, you are right that we need to have a much wider discussion about what regulation should look like for this kind of content. Forget broadcasting; it is about certain types of content, how we regulate them in the world that we now live in and how we will increasingly do so in the future. We are having those discussions and we have done a call for evidence. As I said, some aspects of the issue are in our control and some will require legislation.
I agree with the point about the importance of media literacy in the broader sense, however we frame it.
It is hugely important—not just for kids, but for all of us.
I also agree on the value that media literacy can bring. However, it is only one element of the protection that we need. Let us consider the issue almost in a public health sense: if individual choices to wear a mask in public or something like that were to be the only protection that we would have in place during a public health emergency, we would utterly fail. It will not help for public service broadcasters’ content to be discoverable on a platform that is still riddled with all the evils that I described earlier. Surely, if we want to achieve what previous generations achieved, which is a media landscape that is broadly trustable rather than one in which you can seek out and find trustworthy content, the platforms themselves must be regulated.
Who comes under what regulatory remit is a discussion for Governments, because that requires legislation.
I will make one additional point, which was also touched on when we were at the committee in May last year and the convener—I think—asked us in broad terms about our duties under the Online Safety Act 2023. Those duties are relevant in answering your question, Mr Harvie. However, what you said about whether we need to go further is very fair. The UK and Scottish Governments have been actively considering whether they need to legislate to create the type of framework that you have just described.
Okay—thank you.
I will squeeze in a final question. Cristina Nicolotti Squires, in relation to STV, you mentioned that you are looking at what would be better for the whole of Scotland. However, should the issue not be about the people of the north-east and the impact that the decision will have on the STV North licence? As Mr Kerr said, you seem to have homogenised those people in the way that you would not do in, say, Newcastle or Birmingham.
I would not expect people in Cornwall to get news that is made in London—quite rightly. Sorry, I may have misspoken. When I talked about people in all of Scotland, I was talking about making sure that STV is sustainable and able to exist, and that it will not just survive but thrive.
It is important to say that we are not talking about a licence for the north-east; it is a licence for the north of Scotland in its entirety. Anecdotally, a couple of weeks back, with our online safety hat on, we had an interesting conversation with a stakeholder who said that they felt that STV North news is too Aberdeen-centric. That was only one stakeholder’s view, but it was an interesting anecdotal point about the types of things that we must consider regarding the licence, and that distinctiveness might mean something different in Inverness.
Wait until they get their news from Glasgow.
I am sorry, but we are up against time. There may be some questions that the committee will want to come back to. Thank you for your attendance at the committee this morning.
Meeting closed at 11:31.
Air ais
Scottish Broadcasting