Review of BBC Alba Analysis of Public Consultation Final Report 23 February 2010 By Helen Mather Public Knowledge Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION 4 PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS 7 COMMENT ON PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS 9 2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 12 Part 1: How well is the channel performing? 12 Part 2: How should the channel be made available in the future? 15 3 MAIN REPORT 18 Part 1: How well is the channel performing? 18 3.1 Question 1: How often do you watch BBC Alba? 18 3.2 Question 2: When you do watch, how long do you watch it for? 19 3.3 Question 3: BBC Alba aims to serve Gaelic speakers, those learning the language, those that might wish to learn, and those interested in the language and culture. It aims to reflect and support Gaelic culture, identity and heritage. Does BBC Alba meet these aims? 20 3.4 Question 4: BBC Alba is supposed to appeal beyond existing Gaelic speakers to those who are learning the language, or who are interested in the culture. Do you think the channel appeals beyond just Gaelic speakers? 26 3.5 Question 5: BBC Alba is supposed to work with other Gaelic organisations to help raise awareness of the language and support plans to get more people learning the language. Do you think the channel is contributing to this wider educational strategy for Gaelic? 32 3.6 Question 6: Is enough emphasis being placed on attracting new speakers to the Gaelic language by the channel? 37 3.7 Question 7: BBC Alba is the first BBC television channel to be delivered in partnership with another organisation. MG Alba, the BBC’s partner, is funded by the Government to provide television content in Gaelic. Do you think the partnership is working well? How do you believe the partnership could be enhanced? 44 Part 2: How should the channel be made available in the future? 50 3.8 Question 8: In Scotland, on Freeview only, between the hours of 17:00 and 23:00 each day, would you prefer to have either BBC Alba or all of the following: BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 live, 5 live Sports Extra, BBC 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network, 2 BBC Trust Review of BBC Alba © Public Knowledge February 2010 BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 7, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and BBC World Service? 50 3.9 Question 9: Should Gaelic television programmes continue to be shown on BBC Two in Scotland instead of the programming received in the rest of the UK? 51 3.10 Question 10: Are there other ways in which we could put the channel on Freeview that you believe we should consider? 57 3.11 Question 11: Do you think giving people the chance to watch the channel on the internet is an alternative to Freeview? 63 4 MAIN REPORT – Freeform responses 70 4.1 Responses by letter or e-mail 70 3 BBC Trust Review of BBC Alba © Public Knowledge February 2010 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 About the review and public consultation The BBC Trust is the independent governing body of the BBC representing the interests of licence fee payers. The Trust’s role is to get the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers and to secure effective promotion of its public purposes. The Trust is required to represent the interests of licence fee payers, assess their views carefully and appropriately, and have regard to the competitive impact of the BBC’s activities on the wider market. It must also ensure that the BBC observes high standards of openness and transparency. Each of the BBC services has a ‘service licence’ which details the remit for that service, outlining the overall format and particular characteristics the output of the service should embrace. The licence also indicates how the specific service should contribute to the overall delivery of the BBC’s public purposes. As it is our responsibility to get the best out of the BBC for licence fee payers, one of the ways we do this is through the Public Value Test. We used this to approve the launch of BBC Alba in September 2008. One of the conditions we set was that after a year of operation we should examine how well the channel is performing. We are now beginning this review and this report will be considered as part of the initial review of this service. As part of any review, the Trust considers a range of different types of evidence including asking licence fee payers to respond to a number of specific questions about the services through an open public consultation. This consultation was open from 26 October 2009 to 18 January 2010. 4 BBC Trust Review of BBC Alba © Public Knowledge February 2010 BBC Alba is a Gaelic language television channel currently available on satellite, via limited cable suppliers and via BBC iPlayer. It aims to serve Gaelic speakers, those learning the language, those that might wish to learn, and those interested in the language and culture. It aims to reflect and support Gaelic culture, identity and heritage. The review is in two parts. Part 1 will look at two key areas: whether the channel is achieving wide appeal to existing Gaelic speakers and learners, as well as non speakers, thereby contributing to the broader educational strategy for the language. Part 2 of the review will consider whether to make the channel available to more people including the option of putting it on Freeview (it is currently only available via satellite and limited cable suppliers). There is only a limited amount of space on Freeview that the BBC can use. The BBC Executive has suggested a way it could find room for BBC Alba: they would do this by removing the BBC’s network radio stations from Freeview in Scotland-only when BBC Alba is on air (usually between the hours of 17:00 and 23:30 each weekday and from 16:00 at weekends). This would allow BBC Alba to be on air at this time instead. The radio stations that would be affected are BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 live, 5 live Sports Extra, BBC 1Xtra, BBC Asian Network, BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 7, BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gàidheal and BBC World Service. These stations would still be available as usual via a combination of FM/AM/LW, DAB and online. A decision will also be made as to whether the current Gaelic zones on BBC Two should remain in place. There were two main methods for people to respond to the consultation. Firstly, respondents were able to reply to the 11 questions, via a special web form on the BBC Trust’s website: www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust in order to encourage a range of licence fee payers to voice their opinions about the service and to comment on BBC Alba. Some of the questions had a ‘yes/no’ 5 BBC Trust Review of BBC Alba © Public Knowledge February 2010 option, followed by a text box where respondents could add further comments if they wished. Secondly, the BBC Trust also received a small number of free-form responses (by e-mail or by letter) which were sent as contributions to the review by members of the public. Where possible these responses have been incorporated into the online consultation and summarised along with those responses. Please note that a brief summary of the free form responses is included at the end of the report. Information about the profile of respondents was collected via the online consultation, but not from the freeform letters/e- mails received. The consultation was promoted using on-air trails and there were also links on bbc.co.uk guiding people to the consultation. 1.2 About this report This report has been prepared by Public Knowledge, an independent research company, on behalf of the BBC Trust, as an input to its review of BBC Alba. This report contains an overview summary of the views of the 4,421 responses to the BBC Trust’s online consultation and provides an analysis of the responses and summarises the key themes expressed by the public. This report covers replies from individuals only - a summary of responses from stakeholders and organisations can be found separately on the BBC Trust website. The replies to the 11 consultation questions have been summarised in the main body of this report. 6 BBC Trust Review of BBC Alba © Public Knowledge February 2010 The number of responses received is presented here to give an idea of the strength of feeling on different questions. However, the reader should note that the responses represent the important views of those who chose to take part in our consultation and may not be representative of the population as a whole. As part of the consultation, respondents were asked to indicate how frequently, if at all, they watched BBC Alba and each section breaks out responses according to this information where relevant. It should also be noted that respondents were free to answer as many or as few questions as they chose. Therefore for each individual question there will be a number of respondents who have not answered. Tabulations are based only on those who have answered, so base sizes will vary. In Section 2, there is a summary conclusion for each question. In Section 3, the detailed tables are based on all responses given (rather than all respondents). PROFILE OF RESPONDENTS The BBC Trust is committed to ensuring that it listens to the views of a wide range of licence fee payers and therefore the consultation also gave respondents the opportunity to indicate their gender, age, location by nation of the UK, disability and ethnicity.