Scotland and the Borders

Abstract

The Central Scotland franchise, held by Scottish Television (STV), presented peculiar problems. Coverage extended to 80 per cent of the population of Scotland including Glasgow, the commercial capital, and Edinburgh, the administrative capital (whose mutual jealousies were of long standing). STV was therefore a national, although not a network, company. Scotland had its own educational system, its own legal system, its own national Church, its own football leagues, and above all its own sense of distinctive national identity and a touchy pride, so that the ITV contractor was expected to offer a much wider range of programmes than those produced by the English regional companies of comparable size. In Scotland there was, too, the widest of gaps between the expectations of opinion-formers and those of the population as a whole. Intellectuals did not subscribe to the belief that, because for many Scottish viewers life was austere, television needed to be primarily a source of relaxation and recreation.