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BBC Alba is a joint-venture Scottish Gaelic language digital television channel which is broadcast by the BBC throughout the United Kingdom on satellite, online and Virgin Media on Demand. It is also available live on Virgin Media and Freeview in Scotland. The channel was launched at 21:00 on Friday 19 September 2008. The name Alba is the Gaelic word for Scotland and reveals the channel's other owner, MG Alba.

The station is unique in that it is the first channel to be delivered under a BBC licence by a partnership and is also the first multi-genre channel to come entirely from Scotland with almost all of its programmes made in Scotland.^[3][4][5]

On-air for up to seven hours a day, BBC Alba broadcasts nationally on satellite (Sky and Freesat). BBC Alba was added to Virgin Media's cable television service on 18 May 2011 but is only available in Scotland, with select content made available through their on-demand service for users resident in other parts of Britain.^[6] Some programmes from the last seven days can be viewed online on BBC iPlayer and the channel can also be watched live through iPlayer. After being approved by the BBC Trust, it has been broadcast on Freeview, in Scotland only, since 8 June 2011, making it available to all post-switchover households in Scotland.^[7] The channel is funded and operated jointly by MG Alba and the BBC. Whilst the partnership runs the channel, Gaelic programming on BBC Two Scotland will continue at least until digital switchover takes place. The Gaelic Digital Service will also include BBC Radio nan Gàidheal during downtime hours (alongside simulcasts of BBC Radio Scotland & BBC Radio Five Live) and online content.

A study carried out for the channel indicated that 650,000 people watched BBC Alba per week in the first two months of broadcasting, in spite of only being available to around a third of Scots.^[8]

BBC Alba now has an average viewership of 530,000 adults over the age of 16 in Scotland each week. Over 443,000 adults over 16 watch BBC Alba for more than 15 minutes each week. BBC Alba gets over 29,000 iPlayer hits every week as well - over 1.5 million per year. ^[1]

History

In 2007, the BBC Trust opened a consultation for a Gaelic digital service in partnership will the Gaelic Media Service (now MG Alba). Following the BBC Trust consultation in November 2007, the Audience Council Scotland recommended their support for the creation of the service on 7 December 2007, stating that the Trust should peruse carriage of the service on digital terrestrial television and that existing 'gaelic zone' programming on BBC Scotland should remain after the launch.^[9][10] On 28 January 2008, the BBC Trust gave the go-ahead for a Gaelic channel.

Launch night

The channel began broadcasting at 21:00 on 19 September 2008 with a launch video featuring a new rendition of the Runrig song, Alba. The first part of a live celidh from Skye presented by Mary Ann Kennedy was followed by a specially produced comedy drama entitled Eilbheas (Elvis), starring Greg Hemphill as Elvis Presley, at 21:30. The channel's first independent commission, Peter Manuel – Deireadh an Uilc? (Peter Manuel - The End of Evil?), a drama documentary produced by STV Productions, was shown at 22:30 before the opening night closed with the second half of the live celidh from Skye. The launch night was simulcast on BBC Two Scotland between 21:00 and 22:30. There was also a launch event held at the National Museum of Scotland, which was recorded by the channel's news service An Là.

Carriage

On-air for up to seven hours a day, BBC Alba broadcasts in both Great Britain and Ireland on satellite (Sky 168 and Freesat 110) and it was hoped to be on Virgin Media from launch. BBC Alba was made available on Virgin Media, in Scotland only, on 18 May 2011.^[11] During March 2009, BBC Alba programming was made available in Great Britain and Ireland to Virgin Media customers on demand through BBC iPlayer and Catch Up On Demand. Some of the channel's content is also available on the BBC iPlayer website, alongside several third-party internet TV companies.

After being subject to a review by the BBC Trust and a recommendation from the Audience Council Scotland in 2009, a plan was announced to broadcast the channel on Freeview, in Scotland only, from the digital switchover (2010) under the proviso that reach of the service extended beyond the core Gaelic audience to 250,000. This was approved on 27 December 2010 by the BBC Trust^[12] and the service launched on Freeview channel 8 on 8 June 2011.^[13]

Content

BBC Alba combines television, radio and on-line programme content, and is anticipated to have a positive impact at many levels including increasing artistic and technical skills, extending economic opportunities, stimulating parents' interest in Gaelic medium education, appealing to and serving the adult learners and strengthening Gaelic usage in extremely important media. It holds significant potential to assist with the development of positive attitudes to the acquisition and transmission of Gaelic. BBC Alba broadcasts more Scottish sport than any other channel, with over 3 hours a week of football, rugby and shinty. In addition, the station also broadcasts a live news programme for 30 minutes every weekday.

Programming

MG Alba and the BBC have announced that around ninety minutes of television content daily will be new material. Output on the station consists of news, current affairs, sport, drama, documentary, entertainment, education, religion and children's programming, broadcast on most days between 5pm and 12am. Sport programmes began on Saturday 20 September 2008 and news services on Monday 22 September 2008.^[14]

Children's programmes are shown for two hours every weekday, between 17:00 and 19:00. Current affairs series Eòrpa and children's magazine show Dè a-nis? are broadcast on Thursday nights on BBC Alba and also continue to be shown on BBC Two Scotland at their usual timeslots on Thursdays.^[15]

A nightly half-hour news programme, An Là, is aired on weeknights at 20:00 with newsreaders Angela Maclean and Iain Maclean. Radio Personality of the Year, Derek 'Pluto' Murray, is their resident sports reporter. Spòrs on Saturday nights features weekly coverage of a selected SPL match. Rugby Beo broadcasts one live Magners League rugby union game a week, involving one of the competition's Scottish teams. A Gaelic-learning programme, Speaking our Language is re-broadcast on weeknights at 7:30pm. Former Eòrpa reporter, Derek Mackay hosts a weekly chat show, Cnag na Cùise, on Sunday nights. So far 2 series of current affairs documentary ‘Trusadh’ has been commissioned as of 2010, which is sometimes presented by Donald MacSween.

Subtitling

Most of the adult programming on BBC Alba contains on-screen English subtitles. For logistical reasons, live broadcasts (including the news) are not subtitled, although certain events (e.g. the annual Hogmanay broadcast Bliadhna Mhath Ùr) have scripted elements that are subtitled, while interviews and ad-libbed lines are not.

Children's programmes are not subtitled.

Sport

BBC Alba concentrates on three sports: football, rugby and shinty.^[16]

Duruing the 2009-10 season, the station broadcasts one full SPL game every Saturday night.^[17] The game selected was always one not covered by either live Sky Sports or on an on-demand basis by BT Vision and was shown three hours after the end of the match.^[18] The matches only included Gaelic commentary along with English subtitles.

The channel reached an agreement with the Scottish Football League to broadcast live football games during the 2008–09 season. This began with the final of the Challenge Cup, which was also sponsored by MG Alba.^[19] BBC Alba then started broadcasting First Division games, beginning with the match between Airdrie United and Clyde on 22 February 2009.^[19]

BBC Alba also struck a deal with the Scottish rugby authorities to show one live rugby, Scottish Premiership Division One match every weekend.^[20]

In 2010 BBC Alba bought the rights for Celtic League rugby jointly with public service broadcasters from the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Wales.^[21]

Studios

Pacific Quay in Glasgow where BBC Alba is transmitted from

BBC Alba has four studios across Scotland in Stornoway, Glasgow, Inverness and Portree. Continuity and channel management is based in Stornoway while the news services are based in Inverness.^[22] A short pre-recorded information program called Dè Tha Dol is sent from Stornoway and is played out at 7:55pm daily. BBC Scotland's headquarters at Pacific Quay in Glasgow is used to transmit the programmes.^[14] The First Minister, Alex Salmond opened the new BBC Alba studio in Portree in August 2008 where he recorded a message for the launch of BBC Alba.^[23]

Independent production companies

A number of independent companies have been commissioned to produce content for the channel, or have productions currently airing. These include:

• Theatre Hebrides (Lostbost)
• Madmac Productions (Broadford or Bust)
• Caledonia Stern and Wylde (Tìr is Teanga)
• MnE Media formerly known as Meadhan nan Eilean (Seasaidh Lexy, Cuide ri Cathy)
• Tern TV (Slighe gu Biadh)
• Eyeline Media (Air an Rathad, Làrach anns an Fhàsach)
• MacTV (Ealtainn)
• Studio Alba (A' Gharaids)

Funding

BBC Alba is funded by MG Alba, which is financed by the Scottish Government, and BBC Scotland.

The BBC currently spends £3.2 million on radio content and £2.1 million for TV and online. The BBC contributes an additional £2.5 million to the station. (BBC figures exclude distribution costs.) MG Alba will apply the majority of its budget (£12.4 million in 2008/09) to the Gaelic Digital Service.

Criticism

Sports programming

Critics^[who?] have argued that the small number of viewers does not justify the £15m of licence payers’ money spent on the digital television channel each year. Since its launch in September 2008, the BBC Alba channel has lost a third of its viewers, but its number of viewers remains five times larger than the size of the Gaelic speech community in Scotland (just over 58,000^[24]). The historian Michael Fry has argued that many of its viewers only watch it for the football coverage, because "you don’t need Gaelic to watch football", and that in this way the channel is "cheating".^{[citation needed]} The model is, however, both common and intentional as it is on comparable channels such as the Irish Gaelic channel TG4, the Basque channel EITB or the Welsh channel S4C. In Europe, these channels' main mission is not commercial, but the promotion of the minority language.

Freeview

Some criticism had been levied over the channel's addition to Freeview, primarily due to the BBC's original plan (with acceptance from the BBC Executive) to remove all 13 BBC Radio channels from Freeview for Scottish viewers over the period that BBC Alba will be shown on Freeview (between 5pm and midnight); however the criticism has not been directed at the BBC's decision to extend BBC Alba to Freeview in principle.^[12][25] On 19 May 2011, it was reported that the BBC has backed down on the plans, after the BBC had "managed to reengineer facilities" to allow BBC Radio 1Xtra, 5 Live and 6 Music to continue to broadcast on a 24-hour basis.^[26] The three stations were chosen because they have the highest evening audience ratings on digital television of the seven BBC radio stations unavailable on FM radio.^[27]

See also

• BBC Radio nan Gàidheal
• MG Alba
• Bòrd na Gàidhlig
• Audience Council Scotland
• List of Celtic-language media
• TeleG - Former Gaelic Language channel, previously available only on Freeview
• S4C - Welsh-language TV station
• TG4 - Irish-language TV station
• Maori Television
• NRK Sámi Radio
• TV Breizh

References

External links

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