 Good morning and a very warm welcome to the sixth meeting of the Constitution, Europe, Excellency Affairs and Culture Committee in 2023. Our first agenda item is the impact of the digital first agenda and its evidence relation to the impact of the BBC's digital first agenda on Radio Scotland's planned schedule changes to music programmes. We're joined this morning by Professor Tommy Smith OBE, Artistic Director of the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and Head of Jazz at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Billy McDonald, Director of Piping, the National Piping Centre and Professor Simon MacKeryl, Professor of Media and Music at Glasgow Caledonian University. A warm welcome to you all in a packet to have an opening question in 2016, when the BBC Royal Charter and Framework Agreement was reviewed, if I could quote from Fiona Hyslop on some of the objectives at that time. She stated in the chamber that they expected that the structures were expected to deliver better outcomes for audiences and implement commissioning and editorial practices that will support the growth and sustainability of Scotland's creative industries. I would just like to have your reflection on the plan changes and what impact that will have on the growth and sustainability of your particular areas of interest. I could perhaps invite Professor Smith to open. Hi, thanks for inviting us along this morning. I think that reflecting on all of this since that date, Tread and classical and jazz has definitely gone on a trajectory which is going up and it's incredible time for our nation but I think the appalling decision that the BBC didn't seek our external artistic expertise from the vast community of professionals before they didn't actually announce that they were axing these three genres, it was leaked and I think that that process and accountability to the public was flawed and draconian but I think Simon is probably better to answer that question because he's more of a a guru when it comes to the marketing and that initiative. John, the impact I think on the three niche genres, it's devastating. I think that it probably falls into three areas to me really. The first one is the impact on pipeline of talent so the actual talent pipeline in Scotland so these guys here, obviously back in many moons ago, I was also played on the radio when I was an actual musician but I'm not a professional musician but for our professional musicians the pipeline of talent is now simply going to disappear if the BBC is rescinding on broadcasting live sessions for jazz traditional piping and for classical musicians so that's one area of impact. I cannot see how moving or proxying any of these services down to England would have any useful impact for the development of professional Scottish talent. I think the second area of impact is slightly more difficult to put your finger on but there has been this tacit agreement that the BBC gives is essentially acting as a proxy for the national record or the national archive of live performance traditional music jazz and classical music music in Scotland as opposed to Scottish music but they have acted in that way for more than 70 years in terms of linear radio and now obviously on digital platforms as well and so that record that we've got is now substantially under threat and it's never happened before in the entire history of broadcast public service broadcasting in Scotland because I mean if you even way back to the 50s and the 60s and 70s BBC Radio Scotland were broadcasting all of the contemporary dance bands musicians like classical and to some extent at that stage even then they were broadcasting piping so there's an area of impact there which is that they they're essentially saying we are not going to service this record for the nation so there's a cultural value in that which just disappears overnight and I think that's a really significant public service impact and I think also then the third year which really concerns me as well is about non-professional and community music essentially so you've got the impact on the pipeline for professional music making you've got the impact on the actual living traditions in Scotland but you've also got this impact on kids and particularly I think poorer kids who you know we know there's an unmet demand for music education in Scotland and we know that for many of the kids all around Scotland they essentially the only way in which they can contact the wider community of piping and drumming or jazz or or early development for classical music is via radio and whether that's linear or downloadable or whatever that service about putting them in touch with the rest of their community of practice is about is really under threat here so I see it in those terms in terms of those those three areas particularly thank you and mr mcdonalds Simon's actually put that very well I think and put across a lot of the concerns that we have if I can speak to piping specifically piping is now more popular than it's ever been it's been taught more widely across Scotland and not just Scotland across the world and the pipeline show in particular has been absolutely at the heart of that growth over the last 60 years and just backing up Simon's point of the the benefits of the the career trajectory of every piper I can think of who's playing at the top level has developed through for example on live broadcasts which especially now when creating music commercially is becoming so difficult for the traditional arts the bbc contribution in terms of their live sessions for pipers and any musician really is invaluable for pipers careers and I think backing up the the point about the archive of material as a nation we should be absolutely proud and you know putting that archive out there to the world you've got 60 years of recording of the best pipe music of our national instrument and if there's any chance of that stopping then I think we have to do all we can because you know if you think 100 years ahead in terms of this archive of the best recordings we have of the best musicians did it stop in 2023 did people stop playing this music because who's who's then going to take on that responsibility of noting that tradition and keeping that alive and I think it's worth pointing out it's not just about looking back in terms of tradition the only way we develop within our tradition is to have that that knowledge that we have and the the kind of the root of the tree which we then grow from and I think if you look at piping traditional music jazz now we're absolutely on that it's an amazing country to make music in but we have to make sure we support that and keep it going thank you thank you thank you very much thanks for joining us this morning and for those initial comments I'd like to ask about jazz nights particularly yourself Tommy can you give examples of how that programme has helped to support new emerging artists in Scotland sure for decades there's been a programme ever since I was 15 there's been a programme it's been under different names take the jazz stream be up to hip hop jazz house jazz nights still the same two overslot in the dead zone on a sunday which has limited audience nine o'clock and everybody's in their bed preparing for work except the jazz musicians of course but since 2015 about 60% of the artists that appear on that show are Scottish 40% are English or overseas and of that 60% 34% are established musicians the rest are emerging artists who use it as a stepping stone for their career because the first thing you need to do when you're a young musician and you practice the 10 000 hours to get to point a is to become famous in your own town and then famous in your own country and then you go across the border if that is not there you're not going to be able to do it you can't just jump to London and and and become famous you have to start locally and then nationally then globally there are some people who do not go national there's some people who don't go global but what's important is that the people who stay here the indigenous people who work here and don't go across any any boundaries because they're maybe at this level they need to also have a resource to play their their new albums or promote their their new tours because every artist doesn't just make one record and then they're established they make one at least every year i've made 30 records maybe too many but there's more people like me and they need to have a place for their music to be heard by the public who are eager to hear and not miss any new emerging artists or new collaborations from artists at the respect maybe between genres or tours that are promoted they don't want to miss that and two hours a week is really nothing compared to a lot of european countries who have 24 hour channels or even four or five jazz shows a week we're really at the bottom of europe when it comes to this and to eradicate it completely is is completely nonsense for me because i've toured the world and i've always seen scotland at the bottom of everything when it comes to our genre and we're really been working hard to work at the infrastructure having one jazz school compared to norway six we're starting out we've got a lot of fantastic musicians that are winning awards nationally against great competition from england wheels in in ireland and you know music you don't you don't need money to make good music you need passion you need heart but you do need a door that's there to be able to open up so you can really get on that that stage and um i mean i don't know if that's answered some of your question that's that's great thanks i mean i was going to go on to ask you then about the bbc's response um where they've said well you know we've got jazz programmes on radio two uh radio three uh we can incorporate scottish emerging talent into those programmes i did i did have a chance to go back and look at the last month of output um that's currently there on bbc's sounds the jazz programmes i looked at all the track listings i didn't see ffergus mcredi or georgias acil or i don't think any scottish artists in any of those so i i'm just wondering like is there is something problematic about the formats of those programs on on radio two and radio three that makes it hard to reflect that that kind of ecosystem of scottish talent that you're talking about it's it's london centric there are more musicians down there than up here there's more people down there than up here and the the programmes on radio two you with jamie cullum i mean it's not hardcore jazz jazz has many genres within itself you've got noralees and dixieland and swing and bop and hard bop and modal and fusion and then you've got electric and free and avant garde and it goes on and on and you've got the the amalgamation of of local scottish music in jazz and like ffergus does and a lot of his contemporaries do but radio three you've got jazz record requests which is mostly dead music but you have to be requested so you might have to call up and pretend you're someone else and request your own record that's absurd but maybe the people who have good are good at various accents could probably get away with it anyway so yet you've got uh uh free niss which is more of an improvisational avant garde show which is again another niche thing in there and they rarely play uh scottish artists unlike jazz knights they've played 40 percent over since 2015 of english and welsh and irish and overseas artists they don't kind of do it um you'd have to go back to january where ffergus and george the cecile were represented on those shows and over two weeks say 265 hours of listening you would have had one jazz track a day of say three to four minutes it's not good enough but that that's the situation there and and the the uh the forward motion the bbc are are are presenting to us to say well we can move it move the listeners to those shows or we can put some on the afternoon show the janis foresight show and i had a i had a thought about that and i think if if jazz was say uh a sweet raisin end of the in the afternoon show the janis foresight show will say a ball of porridge with one little sweet raisin in the porridge the listeners who like jazz would have to eat the whole ball of porridge to get that raisin but unfortunately uh if janis foresight was to make the porridge it wouldn't be a sweet raisin it'd be a sour plum because she's on records saying that jazz is an earth cup of tea and but she does like some singers um so it's it's kind of if you're if you're leaving it to a presenter to represent your genre you'd have to get the right presenter who's really open-minded and doesn't have you know that kind of vocal um well everybody's got an opinion and they're entitled to it but yeah absolutely um can i just ask you then and i guess there's a question for for all of you as well but i'll go back to you yourself first tommy i mean it with jazz nights i i stumbled across it um i i'm not usually awake at that dead zone on a sunday night you know um and i'm glad that i did but is there is there more that we can do to promote that linear content um through bc sounds digitally because i think there's a lack of awareness about the three programmes that are that are out for um for cuts at the moment and i think that that's a shame because you know we're we're missing something if we don't know that these programmes exist and i think many of us are on a musical journey as well trying to trying to learn about new genres and and you know trying to wake ourselves up to new talent and it's often you know difficult to find these programmes it's not obvious you don't stumble across them that easily i think i think jazz nights on the other shows they provide a a very valuable educational and and entertaining source of um discovery for existing jazz fans and new jazz fans and in the um in the age of streaming where um if you were to compare it to like visiting the uh the world's biggest all-you-can-eat restaurant um these shows are like having like one of the best chefs come and sit beside you and guide you through what is best to eat um you're not just there going well what do i do there's so much what i'll listen to um so those shows really are there to educate even even on the jazz night show they have an educational aspect to it which is great which Michael does that it's done it for for many years um because jazz is difficult to get into but when you're into it you're into it for life not just for five minutes if you don't have a music musical education as i've done so yeah and just on the consumption point i mean the BBC faces a massive shift in consumption habits right so everybody and they've set this out already publicly with their digital first strategy and it's understandable you know they face a huge challenge from music streaming services which they can't compete with like Spotify and apple music and so on um but i think i think the question here is really that if the argument is about um what consumption is changing that is not an argument about um high quality production you know and the platformisation of these programmes so jazz nights pipeline and classics unwrapped niche musical programmes all of these programmes could be platformised if you like you know they could be and in fact they are on on BBC sounds in some respects but the issue is about consumption i think is a is a sort of tangential argument because if the consumption is changing and we know that 90 percent of adults listen to live radio every week but we also know that you know there's been a huge growth in music streaming so the BBC is in a really difficult position because they are seeing you know Spotify come in apple music come in and basically their lunch on terms of music streaming but none of those commercial services have a public service remit so none of those commercial services at all so there's been a so for instance in 2017 music streaming was eight percent of audience time and in 2022 it's now 20 of audience time but that shift that involves these global music streaming companies doesn't actually touch the question of the public service element at all you know i think it's a it's a tangential kind of argument to me so the argument that the BBC is somehow in competition with these services i think is also problematic you know they have a totally different remit and i i feel like this this argument that you know we need to produce more and more talk and talk content for the digital platformisation of the BBC really just it doesn't speak to this argument about the public service remit of these programmes because i can tell you right now Spotify is not going to make pipeline you know or or jazz nights you know or or indeed classic sun wraps necessarily and so i think that's that that there's that question about well consumption is changing but it doesn't really touch this idea about the public value the cultural value of the production of these programmes you know for niche music things that feeling yeah i totally agree and i think i think it is about that the kind of cultural responsibility of nurturing other national music you know so i think timings yes you could look at when these programmes are on but as you say the the more accessible platforms make it accessible it's about what's on that i think is the most important issue and i think you know a dj type radio podcast you know with mostly chat and a few bits of music is nowhere close coming to live sessions from musicians outside broadcasts that cost money and are not necessarily commercially viable but that's the that's the cultural responsibility i think that the BBC have thank you very much thank you dr all thank you a great deal sympathy with what you're all saying and my point was anticipated by professor smith when he talked about european countries how they do this in our core in norway has is i think you've possibly alluded to or another country i don't know several national radio stations for different types of music you can listen at any time of the day to jazz music or classical music or folk music as well as a news channel and all the rest of that i suppose my question is is it is it realistic for pbc scotland to try and shove all this stuff into essentially one frequency and why why are we why are we not looking to have more frequencies with more diversity of music rather than trying to save a couple of hours a week that's exactly what i wrote to them you can't be cutting this you got to be increasing it because we've got the the capacity at the moment i mean i'm my job is saxophone player that's my job sorry 15 years old and the bbc made me i'm here because of the bbc i was on the radio show when i was a kid and it's their fault that i'm sitting here nobody else's but when it comes to excuse me i lost my thought here it's too early in the morning for me multiple frequencies and all that yeah each each year i audition 75 young people to take six seven places at the royal conservatory of scotland the rest go to england or further afield we have more musicians here that meets the eye and the more musicians who become famous and more inspiring who reside here and who are indigenous here they inspire more and it has a rolling effect um you have to these musicians need somewhere to play to present their music in glasgo that's where the scotland's only first jazz school began and there wasn't really a deep scene there now every night you can go on here jazz because the young musicians have created that scene Monday to Sunday sometimes three times three concerts on a Wednesday night um if if the school was in edinburgh edinburgh would have a scene it would grow be exponential um and because we've got artists who are winning all the awards it's going to inspire and the inspiration is going to create like a trajectory which you can't even imagine now many years from now when we're all dead what's going to be left is it going to be ratings is it going to be how much of the discuss is going to be what that person said no it's going to be art and music and poetry and stories and that's what's going to be left so we need to fight for it because we're fighting for the people who we're not playing now we're fighting for the people who haven't even picked up an instrument does anyone else want to come in on that point so no i think again i mentioned this earlier that i think it's we would welcome more you know more diversity and more places to put that music but it's about that support for the creation of it in the first place and the ability to create that that these programmes are provided just to make a point on that you know on on the linear listening i turning on a radio set and listening to the radio live that is dwindling you know that that is disappearing and i mean the bbc have published that stuff themselves about that potentially channels are getting turned off more and more of your both commercial and broadcast ones but in a sense you know that that's not really in a sense at stake they are saying that's at stake you know for the production of these programmes the problem here is we've got a very high production cost for these programmes because they do live recordings they do live sessions and i think you know the idea is you know if you have a platform if it's bbc sounds or whatever all of these programmes you know they are mostly 70 80 music often say for pipeline there would be 12 sessions a year of live invited people into to perform and i think also for jazz nights you know i don't know how many people are going in a year but the point is that costs a lot of money you need the studio you need the technicians you need to you need to pay people to come and perform and to be able to broadcast it so the actual argument to me about platformisation of the material isn't really the key point the key point is actually about the production rather than the consumption and you can chop it up any which way you want but if you're not producing that kind of original content on bbc scotland then who is you know who's gonna who's gonna do that for for you know for the national cultural heritage and i think also if you think let's say someone does manage to get the finance together to make these recordings where's the outlet then you know because it's these co-programs that support our traditional music and jazz and classical music that put that out there the figures that told me it said about the the amount of scottish players on on radio too in the jazz program that's minute and so that there's multi layers to that so it's the creation of the music but let's say we can get funding to create that music which is very expensive who's going to play it on air on these mainstream programs i disagree with you about the very expensive part i don't think it costs that much money in the scheme of things you know with the bbc budget which is public money it's not itv so you know itv can question their ratings and all that stuff but the bbc have uh you know over 600 million not all of it comes back to scotland as you know but it's not i would i would say it's not hugely expensive on the scheme of things even though uh a soul pipe or a soul jazz musician would find it expensive to do themselves the bbc funds from all the various pots can easily afford this so why did they choose to completely eradicate these three genres without skimming some of the other programs which cost one thousand times more than these little programs that we're talking about i mean i just don't see where the ideology is coming from and actually sorry just just to see it for the diaspora point you know things like pipeline is huge overseas you know and i think at one point was the most downloaded program for bbc radio scotland at one point but of course you can't get those figures from the bbc because they're they won't i mean i've tried fois to the bbc they won't give you those figures so the the diaspora point is very important for you know other aspects of Scottish soft power overseas and also tourism and so on like that you know there's many many people who listen to those pro group pipeline for instance that will come you know come to Glasgow for piping tuition come for a holiday and spend an awful lot of money here the world championships brings in a lot of money piping live and so on like that so there's there is a real economic impact as well i know i mean it oversees colleagues pipers and drummers in the states canada, new zeal and australia, britany across europe they are astounded at the idea that the national broadcaster in scotland is about to essentially cut the feet off of live music sessions and outside broadcasts for the national instrument my other question was the bbc in scotland has a fantastic resource in the form of the bbc scottish symphony orchestra is radio scotland making any significant use of this resource is there is a place being given or should more of a place be given to the output that they have i paid with my own money to hire them for three days and they sounded pretty good to me i think the bbc should use them that that's you know we have to apologise for nicola benedeti not being here but she would be the one to really respond to that question she's busy but on on her behalf absolutely it should be utilised they're they're an orchestra that are contracted they're employees so they have a lot of rights musicians usually don't have rights they're all self-employed they it's a very fragile ecosystem you're as good as you are on your next concert you can't rest on your laurels of a record you've done or a concert that got a good review you have to practice diligently and your career has its ups and downs you need every help you can get you know and especially after the pandemic and then the lack of confidence in the audience it's a real tough tough game for anyone thinking about picking up an instrument if you think about all those parents out there they're going to go hmm i don't think you should focus on the trombone johnny because there's no future in it maybe study engineering or or something that can really help the hard economy instead of this word that we keep on hearing from the government soft economy you know it's it's it's it's there the bbc if they wanted to they could have this it's their decision i know nobody can tell them what to do but it's their decision it's the same with when we wanted the jazz course in scotland uh no one could tell any university you have to do this they had to decide themselves and it took people with the right ideology and the right jobs who weren't just accountants um they made that that decision and it's a great decision but we can have more of everything more schools more shows we're definitely got more musicians because of the inspiration that we've had from all the great musicians before us can i start a point in there about you know this this european context as well you know i have had a look internationally across europe at where things and how things are funded in terms of traditional music particularly and every single country we are an outlier in in this continent by not having any state funded national sound archive there is virtually no other country and the reason for that and is as well known by academics for years decades has been that the bbc has by tacit agreement been the national sound archive and i think what we're at this point now is is saying well that tacit agreement that the bbc is going to record the national audio archive essentially is now being broken in scotland where we know that audiences are less happy than in other parts of the united kingdom with the bbc if that's now then going to be broken then it will open up the question about how do we then how do we do what other countries do if they're not doing it how do we do it like iceland finland spain latvia belgium ireland sweden hungary and to sound extent even wales in the uk all have state funded national sound archives and and some some cases have live radio stations as well so it opens up a big question there about well if they're not doing it then how are we going to do it and you know how are we going to pay for it thank you thank you miss boyack thanks very much convener um listen to the evidence and actually having read submissions it does feel like this decision kind of cuts right across the bbc charter four of the five key principles of bbc charter it feels like it cuts it it's the opposite direction of bbc across uk which is meant to be one of the core principles of operation and when you look through the annual plan again it just does not deliver for those two high level ambitions so do you think this is just not being thought through because if you don't have production on the ground in communities in scotland then it's not about which radio program it's on it's just that has gone so have they just not thought through the detail on this and you know is there any sense that there's an acknowledgement that this doesn't deliver what it's meant to deliver as a public broadcasting company decision was taken yeah well i think that the uh the decision i mean as far as i'm concerned it didn't feel robust um i'm director of the scotland national jazz orchestra and if i want to for example buy a microphone for the orchestra i have to go to my board and ask their permission it is just a good idea but it didn't seem to be transparent that there were minutes or a proper systematic process to make the decision to cut these three to cut these three genres without telling anybody or asking anybody's advice um and when we were there we we went uh with uh Alison Thullis um Donald Shaw and Colin Currie the classical musician we questioned them uh from every angle and we felt that we we that they hadn't thought it through and that we were there to actually give them advice and we weren't there to give them advice on how to go forward because first of all i didn't want to be complicit in their cuts i wanted to know how they got to that decision and it seemed to be a kind of smoke and mirrors past the buck there was no um a real systematic approach and and there weren't any minutes of that meeting either that we were at which was an important meeting nobody was taken out so if that's the way the BBC do things um i don't think it's uh uh a flawless uh against systematic approach it's got it's got to be tighter than that for public accountability it's flawed i agree i mean the the thought of replacing live sessions and outside broadcast with you know essentially a dj program doesn't fit that remit in any way i mean the other thing um BBC very big on digital and BBC sounds which i'm totally up for but you still need the productions to actually put on BBC sounds so it feels like a a lack of thinking it through and um in terms of the impact on the core areas you've talked about education you've talked about accessibility there's these three areas of um Scottish culture pipe classical jazz without this there doesn't feel like there's a pipe stream through in terms of live performances and that that's a critical disconnect so it we're obviously speaking to the BBC next week but i think it's useful to get that reinforcement that without this pipe stream there's a major impact on those three areas and has that really been acknowledged at all no i mean it feels very odd the BBC now when when you think about the process itself for decision making when when we've when we spoke to them um the conversation felt to me like it was about audience metrics audience reach audience metrics and that only answers a small portion of the question about how do you how do you understand the charter you know you cannot understand the charter solely through audience reach downloads you know and metrics for and so on geographical or or sheer numbers metrics there has to be some way in the decision process about understanding how you're meeting the public service remit and and the nations and regions remit you know and i think you know if you look across the rest of Europe we are very unusual in that there are no external experts as far as i can tell in any of these committee decisions at the BBC and so you know we've made a bit of a stink about this and we've had a campaign which which has been great and lots of signatures of people have signed up to those petitions but i think we're at a juncture really where the BBC has to acknowledge the fact that the process itself is totally oblique take it everybody agrees with that i think consultation is the key there and certainly i didn't know of any consultation in advance of the proposed cuts that's really helpful thanks you have to look at the the charter that you were mentioning specific points and i looked at it the other day and i picked out a couple of things which are still if if we do go forward with their plans you're going to miss key points like to show the most creative and highest quality and distinctive output services in many genres that take creative risks you're not taking risks if you put on something that has three or four notes on an afternoon show in the middle of a bowl of porridge it's not going to happen it's for me it's it's i don't know if you've ever toured america and stayed in the harbour johnson's hotel but they it's just the BBC is like the harbour johnson hotel they've got 36 flavours of ice cream but one flavour of food that's why i see it's coming on so all becoming homogeneous and you know they're supposed to reflect and represent the entire diverse community of all the united kingdom nations and regions and they're supposed to support the creative economy across the uk and raise awareness of the different cultures and they're supposed to commission and deliver the output and invest in the creative economies they're supposed to do this at the most creative and highest point that means they've got to use all these amazing musicians that are here they're not going to do that they're going to pick some easy listening record that will appeal to the mass and put it on the afternoon show and if you're lucky in in your your i mean the jazz people are not going to listen to a show where they're only going to sit through two hours in here five minutes and it's not going to happen yep that's really helpful finlayd did you want to come in thank you that's good thank you miss mental thank you convener and thank you very much um it's been incredibly informative and um i have to lay my cards on the table i'm an ex bbc scotland employee um and i have to admit that it was steven duffy that introduced me to jazz um it was the bbc scotland symfony orchestra that introduced me to classical music and um i would say the same for piping um with regards to the world band world piping championships so thank you very much for coming along um my question is um i was going to ask about the archive but professor mcaryll i think you've cleared that very very well um there is something about a continuity of archive uh a knowledge as to what's going on um the ability then to make other programmes from that is is very important um slightly been touched upon um clearly the um the content of the programmes are really important but i'm also interested to know your thoughts about how the the backroom staff the experts in the difficult in the different musical genres um how how you feel that could be a loss to um Scottish culture widely and also ensuring that the children can learn musical instruments in different genres as well i don't know um professor mcaryll do you want to start um well yeah i mean i think you know from where i set the bbc has got well since the 1920s radio broadcasting developed a really admirable expertise in backroom staff and and expertise there if you read some of the research that's been done in 1940s 50s and 60s on music programming in scotland at that time the bbc employed directly musicians we still employ musicians directly obviously via the the symphony um Scottish Symphony Orchestra but the producers or like entertainment producers and so on were extremely knowledgeable and and experts in the musical field and that had a huge influence in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s on all sorts of different genres such as how they presented like classical how they presented um dance bands for instance Scottish dance bands you know how they presented and actually even piping as well you know and other areas and i think um my sense is that the bbc still has staff um who who are knowledgeable but nowhere near as many staff as obviously used to have back in days when it had a more substantive budget and so on in relation to to programming so i think i think it's this move is really difficult it must be very difficult for those people who are working at the bbc who are committed to these programmes and one of the reasons that we're all here together and that we went to meet them together is because i think it's essential that this is not about classical piping or jazz separately this is all together they're actually done in the same department you know for for niche musical programming in the bbc and there's great expertise in there and as not least as well also the presenters of those programmes are not direct employees but come in and so i think it must be incredibly difficult for them but it's also indicative of how the bbc operates in the in the commercial digital age that actually there aren't that um there isn't that you know critical mass essentially of highly knowledgeable highly skilled music i mean for instance i'm not aware that any of the commissioners are musicians themselves i don't know whether that that that's true or not or or indeed how musical expertise from the community outside the bbc or anything plays into the commissioning process itself because it's it's it's totally um untransparent how that process works thank you for that um just i was doing a bit of reading as well and the operating licence for bbc scotland says that it must provide content and music of particular relevance to scotland and i think there's something really um i'd like to hear your thoughts on the the difference of hearing uh somebody that is of scotland um introducing programmes and what what that adds perhaps to the content if i could mention that in the pipeline specific topic um you know gary west who's the current presenter and um ian mckinnis before him and and going right back to people like jaws macklewham they're fonts of knowledge on this and it's not as easy as just reading a sleeve note of an album and then seeing what that says there's there's decades of research and knowledge that goes into presenting a show like that and i think again if you read a sleeve note of the back of an album that's one thing but people who have that innate knowledge and understanding of the music actually presenting it makes a whole difference to the whole show and that educational side of it you'll you'll get information and nuggets of information about the music that you can't get in any other way and there's not the albums yeah well exactly and albums are so difficult to produce now that it's um it's not an option i think that's one of the key things about specifically for pipeline the idea that they will be able to move to a DJing show pipe you know and we met with the BBC and they said well piping's still going to be there in a saturday night same slot same show it it's it's a it's not you know if you remove the budget for those 12 live recorded sessions a year plus the the outside broadcasts at piping live and the master's competition the glenn phyllisol with piping championships and so on if that is cut back to the extent that it's essentially a disc jockeying show then it isn't performing the same function you know and the other and as finlay says there isn't this catalogue commercial catalogue that you can lean on for that show which is why the programme has always recorded local musicians across scotland from all over scotland and internationally as well when they visit um so that that whole function just just disappears you know and i think that's that's really a key aspect of this you know if we're saying that it's still going to be there well it's actually it's a bit like saying a head teacher in a school saying do you know what we're actually going to take the library away from the school there'll be no books left in the school but it's okay because you'll be able to go online and download five books a year it's something like it's akin to that okay thank you tommy anything to add no i don't no improvisation then i can do that mr camren thank you very much convenient thank you to the panel a lot of this has been covered already but i just specifically wanted to ask firstly about pipeline and piping and you've been very eloquent mr mcdonald about not just the educational purpose behind it but also it's been referenced to the international reach of the programme i'd like to bring kind of local perspective because representing the highlands and islands there's a lot of interest and in fact a lot of concern about it disappearing and i know that i think six thousand more than six thousand signatories have backed the petition in support of it and i'm sorry but very thank you for the correction ten thousand but i think that that just shows and i suppose i just want your observations on on the kind of local importance of programmes such as that yeah absolutely i mean it's if you look at the the performances that are recorded and put out on pipeline for a start you know you've got people like angus mccall from benderlock we're very much local it's not as if it's just a you know recording in glasgo all the time we the bbc have been brilliant to be honest that going out and recording in different communities and recording people from those communities and i think that's again one of the things for just so desperate not to lose is that fact that you'll hear someone playing from benderlock who plays in a slightly different style than someone from glasgo or from the east coast or and that's that's represented fully on all of these recordings and again if you look at the world pipe band championships for example you know bands from all over scotland all over the world competing and being being broadcast so i think it at the moment it does it does look at that it does deal with the local elements of the music and they'll interview you know the the sessions where the pipers are interviewed they talk about their upbringing and music their their journey through music and whether they be from lewis or sky or woven they talk about their their own area and that's when you know when young people hear that that's i did it myself i remember sitting you know on my grand's table on a sunday i used to be with my dad and my whole family listening to pipeline and hearing the music and listen to these people talk about their lives and music and that was the inspiration for me and i think it's so important to capture that moving on to to young musicians because i think this is is really important um i think it's well known that many established musicians credit these standalone shows as integral to their success and i like all the panel to comment on that you've covered a lot you've covered this a bit already that's the first point and the second point is to the bbc have said and i think we'll say next week that basically their their defence to this is that they will cover all this in other programmes um and i think it's important to i mean it's not my view but it's it's what they will say and um it would be useful just to get you but all on record as as to as to that and what your response is to that so if i could start with finlay please i can speak about my own experience i still remember my first-ever pipeline recording you know going into the queen market drive to do that that was a that's a huge moment in any young piper or any young musicians career being asked to go into that but i think it's also that um you know when you're in a group of like-minded people for me it was a pipe band you know that was the talking point did you hear who was on pipeline this week did you hear whatever performance and it creates that feeling of community amongst the young musicians and you know it's something cool that they all have that maybe their other friends don't have that don't play music it's that it's that way in to kind of to make it their own and you know so there's there's lots of different levels of it and you know it was almost like a you'll remember yourself Simon your first being invited to play on that show for the first time was like a huge moment in your in your musical life you know so it's hugely important for for youth development and creating that community of young people having people inside the BBC who are well connected into those musical communities will disappear and therefore how will they be able to know who the really fantastic young saxophonist in forest is or how will they know who the next best piano player from the hebrides is going to be and i'll invite them i cannot see a producer in Manchester or London being well connected into the regions of scotland to know what's happening in communities around all these areas so it's absolutely vital i think i would also want to just say you know in terms of the linguistic and cultural diversity point about croon lua and the gallic the gallic broadcasting elements of this i mean you know one of the reasons why there is a separate gallic language piping programme is because it serves quite a different audience in scotland you know it serves an audience that are first language speakers of gallic and so therefore it's it's different if you're talking for them they're they're talking about the very very rich heritage of piping and traditional music and song across across all the gallic speaking areas of scotland but then to perhaps you know in some cost cutting exercise to then have you know the main programme translated into gallic or whatever you know that doesn't serve the gallic speaking audience at all you know and i think your point about the local regional differences here is absolutely key for any any of these genres if if they don't know who's out there particularly for the kids you know coming through then they won't be able to hear them and those communities will not hear themselves on our national broadcaster. Professor Smith. It's quite ironic hearing the the differences between the politicians and the commissioners at the BBC because it sounds like the politicians are more aware people like Pete Wishart who was a musician and Alison Thewlis who's vice-chair of the app jag in the parliament and even Miss Minto who's got experience through Stephen Duffie in the various other shows you seem to be very clued in at the heart of the the matter but you know if you're if you're a musician in scotland you're going to be lucky now to be on those shows maybe two or three times every five years that first time like my colleagues have said is the most important time that very first time when you're young because it's so inspiring for you to get on that ladder which is precarious very precarious and you have to do so much hard work to get there if that's not there i don't know where the door is and i've heard that the the youth competitions for trad and potentially for jazz is the avenue the BBC are going to focus on for the emergent artists but you're only going to get one winner and where are the where's the music going to be played what show perhaps if if it's elevated enough that one single musician will be played down south because it's going to be in the news but what about the rest of them there are so many musicians of scotland we're lucky to be on the shows two to three times every five years as it is already so the future is bleak say the least thank you for those answers thank you convener mr golden thanks convener i think we've covered extensively the kind of programming side of things on on radio and that's really helpful for when we can ask the BBC i wonder if there's anything else out with that sphere that you would like to ask the BBC in terms of supporting jazz piping and classical music i was quite interested that professor mcernnell mentioned for example musical experience at a commissioner level and i wonder if there's anything whether it be you know on you know tv or or visual digital formats or in terms of structuring of how these programmes are commissioned that you would like to add so we can then ask the BBC about that well i mean for me i think one of the one of the really interesting aspects is what metrics are they using to measure their delivery because it seems to me that the only metric that they seem interested in at present is you know the stuff that's easily be measurable which is downloads which is audience figures and you can get that stuff you know through the joint radio joint audience research Rajar and the BBC media nation these reports all deal with that stuff but the problem with that those metrics is that they don't really deliver on the public service remit they can tell you you know how are you doing in competition with the commercial broadcasters you know how are you doing and of course the things that are always top of the list for the for commercial broadcasters whether it's on podcasting or in other forms of radio consumption are talk so true crime things like that you know drama and so on so this this this question about really niche musical areas is never going to be covered by the commercial broadcaster there's there's it's too expensive and there's not enough audience figures in it so it really is a question about the public good to me so i think what i would like to see from the BBC is first of all much more transparency about how those those decisions are reached to me they should be publishing on an annual basis you know by programme those metrics but also a conversation i think about how are you actually delivering on the public service in the charter remit as well going beyond simply the downloadable figures and the other thing i would say is it's much harder to measure the linear than it is to measure the digital so it's much easier if somebody signs in and downloads a programme or whatever you can capture the digital and the platform based stuff much easier than you can capture somebody listening in their car in the A9 do you see what i mean so i think for me it's about that question of about how are you actually metricising the charter commitments that's really useful would any of the other panellists like to contribute i think just the consultation and the transparency thing as well you know i don't want it to seem as if personally i'm BBC bashing here but if there had been consultation and transparency then we could have helped you know we we there's a whole industry of musicians that want to see this continue and succeed you know so i think the the transparency and consultation process would be very welcomed that's really useful between the three genres there's over 22,322 signatures and if we took all their license fees and we could make these free shows no problem absolutely although they would not be allowed to watch strictly or any of the other London centric programmes but you know the intention of the the license fee it's there to allow the BBC to make shows which have smaller ratings they it's not there to constantly please the majority like itv it's it's a different and it's a tax i mean the ons classifies it as a tax yeah it's there it's fixed it enables them to make these smaller genre programmes for the entire country and and i and i don't really think they've got a way of measuring who exactly is listening it's an archaic process i mean you maybe you should ask them how do you know that miss jones is listening to the jazz show how do they know yes i think we've got some interesting analogies for when the BBC come before us back to you convener thank you so much i think we've covered most of the areas that the committee wanted to this morning and i think i'm back to that kind of Scottish element of it and the in Scottish cultural identity and the soft power that was mentioned earlier was really important but just a final quick question and it was something that professor smith talked about earlier on and i'm taken by example one of his own concerts i was able to attend which was the collaboration with tam team burn it was delivered as a jazz version of peter in the wolf in scots language which kind of to me summarises all of these collaboration issues that we have but how important are are these programmes to that innovation and those kind of projects that are completely unique to scotland i'm glad you mentioned that because you know the scottish national jazz orchestra is funded by creative scotland and so we reached the entire country and we did pier and wolf on scots we've also done it in japanese and we didn't use any scottish funding for that tour because the japanese could afford every every penny we've done it in norwegian and next month we're doing in doric with an actor called joice falconer from river city and it's that's a very niche language i don't know if any of you speak it but it's it's fascinating for example if i was to say in english i wasn't a bad boy in scots it would be wasn't a bad boy and in doric is a wasn't a course lund so it's a very distinctive language but we are going to go up there and represent that and i think that's important for a national body like scottish national jazz orchestra to do we're not just doing it for commercial reasons we're doing it for the good of everybody thank you um i don't know if you want to comment at all well it's been fascinating evidence session thank you so much for your attendance this morning and i think you know we'll have the the bbc um to committee soon to reflect on some of the issues that we've covered today so thank you very much i mean i'm moving to private session