Why BBC's "stale" stalwart is set for the chop

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SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
Why “stale” radio stalwart is for the chop | Who won the Nobel Peace Prize? | Time for a bunker? | The new kitchen “essentials” | Buy an island, live with seals

🍸 The news that BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland (GMS) might be replaced after more than 50 years on the air sent tongues wagging. One quote in the Times (£), which broke the story, particularly piqued some. It said BBC Scotland’s new audio boss was “on a mission to ditch all the po-faced middle-class stuff and attract a new audience”.

The BBC is, of course, perpetually interested in new audiences, and plenty of you will share Alex Massie’s view that in scrapping GMS they’d be kneecapping “one of the few remaining more-or-less grown-up programmes they have”.

Others, however, take the view that GMS is past its best: stuck between serious and light, the “serious” too often equating to various civic voices demanding more public cash, the “light” meaning single-paced sport and weather banter.

Fresh criticism in The Times today (£) says it had become “stale” and “parochial”, fixated on parroting “uninformed comments” from listeners. A Scottish Today programme, this is not, they say.

What might replace it? One suggestion is it should sound more like BBC Radio 5 Live - faster, more phone-ins, more updates. BBC Wales Breakfast might also be a template: an hour shorter, more magazine-like, with “proper” news, sport, weather and travel on the hour, and features, interviews and - yes - intra-presenter banter. It’s a programme which, if yesterday’s episode was anything to go by, was still pretty serious, and more comfortable in its skin than GMS.

If the BBC announces plans to replace it, expect a huge political row: politicians love to appear on it, even though, in private, they admit they don’t listen. We’ll see if, in time, that elusive “new audience” is drawn in.

Upgrade to read the full Party Line, which picks out the highlights of a strong weekend for fresh TV, asks if we should all dig a bunker to prepare for AI’s victory, discovers a Scottish island on sale for less than a modest flat and tells you what should be in your kitchen, if you’re following the modern trends. Warning: it’s bad news for your Aga, and Smeg fridge.

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