The People

Would we lose the BBC?

Q: Would we lose the BBC?

Nobody's telly goes dark - BBC channels are carried in Ireland today, because selling programmes to willing customers is a business. The sharper question is what's happening to broadcasting under the current arrangement, where every rule is set at Westminster and local coverage is being withdrawn from communities that can do nothing about it.

The short answer

Nobody's telly goes dark on independence day. British programmes are watched across borders every day of the week, because broadcasting is a business and businesses like customers - the proof is one short flight away, where Irish households channel-hop between RTÉ and the BBC and have done for generations.

The sharper question runs the other way: what is happening to broadcasting in Scotland now, under the arrangement we're told protects it? The evidence of the last few years is of regional and local coverage being steadily withdrawn - news programmes merged, studios closed, a soap watched by half a million Scots cancelled - by institutions answerable to a charter, a regulator and a parliament, none of which the affected communities can reach. This page sets out both halves: why the scare story fails, and why the status quo deserves more scrutiny than it gets.

The Irish living room

Start with the precedent, as usual. BBC channels are carried on Irish television platforms today - on Virgin Media Ireland's cable service and Sky Ireland's programme guide, where BBC Three was added as recently as 2022 (Virgin Media Ireland channel list; The Irish Times). Irish viewers watch EastEnders, Strictly and Match of the Day in an independent republic, alongside a home broadcaster, RTÉ, that has run since 1926.

Nobody negotiated a constitutional miracle for this. UK broadcasters carry their channels abroad and sell their programmes worldwide because that is what content businesses do - BBC Studios exists precisely to sell BBC programmes to other countries. An independent Scotland would be a market of 5.4 million English-speaking licence-fee-hardened telly watchers next door. The idea that the BBC, which sells Doctor Who to Norway, would refuse to sell it to Scotland is not a risk anyone in the industry has ever taken seriously.

The retreat from the regions

Now the half of this question that rarely gets asked. While the constitutional debate worries about whether Scotland could keep British telly, broadcasting has been quietly withdrawing from Scotland's own communities.

In September 2025, STV announced plans to merge its two regional news services - STV Central and STV North - into a single programme produced and presented from Glasgow, with around 30 news jobs cut. In June 2026 Ofcom approved the change, despite recording some of the strongest viewer opposition it had seen in a consultation of this kind. From summer 2026, the north's own evening programme, made in Aberdeen, is gone; in its place, a Glasgow-produced bulletin of which 70% is shared with the central belt (Press and Journal; Prolific North).

The BBC's ledger is not better. In 2024 it sought and won Ofcom's approval to cut the news quota on the BBC Scotland channel, axing The Nine - the channel's flagship hour of Scottish news - in favour of a half-hour programme (Scottish Parliament committee papers). In 2025 BBC Scotland cancelled River City - Scotland's only homegrown continuing drama, a training ground for two decades of Scottish acting, writing and production talent, watched by around 500,000 an episode - and announced the closure of the Dumbarton studios that made it, a decision debated in the Scottish Parliament and condemned by the STUC as "short-sighted, regressive" (Scottish Parliament, 24 April 2025). The BBC says drama spend in Scotland will rise to around £95m over three years, and that is worth recording too. But note what the pattern optimises for: network drama that plays UK-wide, made in Scotland when the quota calls for it - while the programmes made about Scotland, for Scotland, are the ones that go.

Be precise about who decides what here. STV is a Scottish company making commercial decisions under pressure every regional broadcaster faces. But the floor beneath those decisions - how much regional programming a Channel 3 licence requires, what counts as serving the north, whether viewer opposition matters - is set by Ofcom under rules made at Westminster. The BBC's obligations to Scotland are set by a royal charter negotiated between the BBC and the UK government. At no point in either chain does anyone answer to Aberdeen, Inverness or Dumbarton. The communities losing their coverage were consulted, their opposition recorded, and the decisions taken anyway. That is not a conspiracy. It is a system working exactly as designed - just not for them.

What Scots pay, and who decides what it buys

Licence fee income raised in Scotland was £297m in 2023/24, and let's state the counter-fact plainly: BBC spend in Scotland has risen sharply, reaching 99% of the licence fee raised here in 2023/24, up from 77% two years earlier, with network spend exceeding the 8% quota (Scottish Parliament committee papers on the BBC Annual Report). The old grievance that Scotland pays in far more than comes back is, on the current numbers, out of date - and this site won't pretend otherwise.

Where the argument actually sits is what that spend buys, and who decides. The money flowing in is quota-counted network production - programmes made in Scotland for UK schedules. The money flowing out is programmes made for Scotland: The Nine, River City, Aberdeen's evening news. Rising spend and retreating service can both be true at once, because the quota measures where cameras stand, not who is served.

The design question underneath - what should public money for broadcasting in Scotland actually be for? - is one nobody in Scotland currently has the power to answer. Broadcasting is wholly reserved under Schedule 5 of the Scotland Act 1998: the charter, the licence fee and its successor, Ofcom's remit, regional quotas, community radio licensing and the small Community Radio Fund that supports it. A Scottish media policy that put local and community broadcasting - local news, community radio, Gaelic, the north - at the centre of the design rather than its margins is neither radical nor expensive by broadcasting standards. It is simply not on offer, because the people who want it and the people who decide are in different electorates.

The choice on the table

What would replace the current arrangement is, as ever on this site, a choice for after independence. The 2013 white paper proposed a Scottish Broadcasting Service built from BBC Scotland's staff and assets, funded by Scotland's licence fee revenue, operating in a joint venture with the BBC - keeping the network programmes flowing both ways (Scotland's Future, Chapter 9); the current Scottish Government's position is set out in Building a New Scotland. Others would design it differently, and the argument would be worth having - in Scotland.

The scale is not fanciful. Ireland, Norway and Denmark - all Scotland-sized - run serious public broadcasters that make their own drama, cover their own regions and buy the international programmes their audiences want. None of their citizens lost access to British television. All of them gained a broadcaster whose first duty is to them.

What streaming already changed

Honesty requires saying that this whole question is smaller than it was in 2014. iPlayer, Netflix and YouTube have redrawn the map regardless of the constitution: rights are licensed by territory, subscriptions cross borders, and the under-40s barely watch scheduled television at all. Cross-border access to iPlayer and to sports rights would be genuine items in the negotiation - Irish viewers use British streaming services under commercial terms, and Scotland would too. And a Scottish broadcaster would cost real money at a time when every public broadcaster in Europe is squeezed.

But the biggest instability sits inside the union. The licence fee itself is guaranteed only to the end of 2027, when the BBC's charter expires; the UK government's charter review is openly considering replacement funding models (gov.uk). And in July 2026, ITV agreed to sell its free-to-air channels and the ITVX streaming service to Sky - owned by America's Comcast - for up to £1.6 billion, subject to regulatory approval (STV News, 6 July 2026). British broadcasting's furniture is being rearranged wholesale, by boardrooms and regulators in which Scotland holds no seat. Whatever broadcasting looks like in 2030, "no change" was never one of the options - the only question is whether Scotland's interests are weighed in that redesign by people who answer to Scottish audiences, or people who don't.

So what's the real question?

Not whether Scots could still watch British programmes - Ireland settles that daily, and the BBC's own commercial arm exists to sell them.

The real question is who broadcasting in Scotland is for. The record of the current arrangement is Aberdeen's news programme merged into Glasgow's, Dumbarton's studios closing, communities consulted and overruled - under rules written by a regulator and a charter that no Scottish voter can touch. An independent Scotland would argue about how to fund and shape its media, as every country does. But it would be Scotland's argument, held within reach of the places the cameras are being packed away from.

Take it with you

Facts for sharing - each button copies the line, with its source and a link back to this page.

BBC channels are carried on Irish television platforms today - Sky Ireland added BBC Three as recently as 2022. Leaving a state does not mean losing its telly (Virgin Media Ireland; The Irish Times)
In 2026 Ofcom approved STV's plan to merge its north and central news into one Glasgow-produced programme, cutting 30 news jobs - despite what Ofcom's own consultation recorded as the strongest opposition from viewers (Press and Journal; Prolific North)
BBC Scotland has axed River City, Scotland's only homegrown soap, watched by around 500,000 an episode, and is closing the Dumbarton studios behind it (Scottish Parliament debate, April 2025)
Broadcasting is wholly reserved: the charter, the licence fee, regional quotas and every regulatory lever over what Scottish viewers see are set at Westminster (Scotland Act 1998, Schedule 5)