Fewer than one in eight adults in Scotland watched the BBC Scotland channel each week last year – despite having cost licence fee-payers more than £160million.
The controversial channel reached only 13 per cent of the Scottish population, a similar figure to the previous year, and was watched for only an hour and 34 minutes a week by the average viewer.
According to the latest BBC annual accounts for 2023-24, the cost of the channel, paid for by the licence fee, rose from £35million a year to £40million – and the cost per ‘user hour’ for the BBC Scotland channel and BBC Scotland content on iPlayer was 43p.
Last night media commentator and former BBC editor Professor Tim Luckhurst said: ‘The BBC’s mainstream channels are watched or listened to by 95 per cent of British adults every month.
‘Despite this evidence of loyalty, the number paying the licence fee has declined and the BBC faces financial challenges that can only be met by making staff redundant.
The BBC’s Scotland channel, launched in 2019, reached only 13 per cent of the Scottish population
‘For BBC Scotland to spend millions of pounds on a channel that attracts a tiny minority of the Scottish population in these circumstances is truly unreasonable.
‘The BBC Scotland Channel should close immediately – it costs money the BBC cannot afford.’
The report said £162 million had been spent on programming at the channel since its launch in 2019, including ‘news, drama, comedy, documentaries and sports, bringing investment and content across Scotland’.
The accounts also revealed that 44,000 fewer licence fees were paid in Scotland in 2023-24 than in the previous year, meaning a loss of £7million in estimated income from Scotland, a drop from £304million to £297million.
The broadcaster was accused of a ‘deplorable waste of money’ in January after it emerged only 200 people watched The Seven, a 15-minute news programme on BBC Scotland, on Sunday, January 7.
Three days later only 1,700 viewers about 0.1 per cent of those watching television at the time tuned into The Nine, its flagship hour-long news show.
The following month, BBC Scotland axed The Nine after persistently low viewing figures.
The entertainment news show The Edit and the weekly news review Seven Days were also cut.
Analysis by Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, indicated a decline in the average audience from approximately 17,000 viewers in 2020 to 10,000 last year.
Reflecting these trends, Ofcom approved plans in May which halved peak-time news programming on the BBC Scotland channel, from 250 hours to 125 hours annually.
These changes included regularly extending Reporting Scotland on BBC1 and boosting investment in online news services.
The BBC said these proposals would not impact costs or jobs, with any savings redirected into news and current affairs output for Scotland.
Overall, BBC services reached 84 per cent of adults in Scotland each week, down from 87 per cent the previous year, according to the report.
Steve Carson, the director of BBC Scotland, announced three weeks ago that he would be stepping down after seven years in charge.
He is set to take up a new role with the Irish broadcaster RTE in Dublin.
Last year, he earned a salary of £178,000, as disclosed in the annual report.
A BBC Scotland spokesman said: ‘The BBC remains the most used brand for media in Scotland used by 84 per cent of adults in Scotland on average per week.
‘We do not take these stats for granted and remain committed to delivering content for audiences which informs, educates, entertains, and provides value for the licence fee.
‘In line with general viewing habits, with a move towards watching on demand rather than “live”, viewing of Scottish content on BBC iPlayer has more than doubled since the launch of the BBC Scotland channel, (and iPlayer views are not reported in the channel’s live reach figure.’
