Axing Scottish Music Programming

Stephen McAll, Constant Follower on the catastrophic cuts to BBC Radio Scotland’s Music Programme content.

This is a long but important read if you value Scottish music and don’t want to see it being gutted in real time, on our own national station.

Since Victoria Easton-Riley took over as Head of Audio and Events at BBC Radio Scotland, she is scrapping most of its most important music shows and curtailing the remainder. The Iain Anderson Show,  The Roddy Hart Show, Billy Sloan Show and more will all disappear this month, replaced by an easy-listening format designed for “broad mainstream appeal”, the kind of thing you hear on commercial ‘hits’ stations everywhere. Passive listening.

Victoria has come straight from Bauer, where she was in charge of content for stations like the Hits/Greatest Hits networks. Nothing against Victoria’s impressive work at those stations, but this is not what BBC Radio Scotland is for.

We don’t need another passive background ‘hits’ station. We need a national station that champions new and emerging Scottish artists and plays the carefully chosen, sometimes difficult records that will never test well in a focus group, but change someone’s life when they hear them at midnight.

These shows are not just ‘programmes’. They are part of the living infrastructure of Scottish music. They are often where artists get their first play and their first quote from a trusted DJ. That is exactly how Constant Follower began. A late-night Radio Scotland play. A presenter who connected. A listener who was really listening.

For new artists, this is devastating.

Streaming isn’t a substitute. Across the main platforms like blood-sucking Spotify, well over 100,000-250,000 (!!!) new tracks are uploaded every single day, and the vast majority of those never reach even 1,000 plays in a year.

Dropping your song into that vast ocean of noise and being told “you have lots of ways to get heard now” is nonsensical. A single play or quote from BBC Radio Scotland instantly lifts an artist out of that morass. It says to promoters, festivals, funders and fans: this music matters.

For listeners, these shows are the opposite of passive listening.

They are where you sit down, because you trust the person on air to bring you something of quality you didn’t know you needed to hear. Iain, Roddy, Billy and Natasha (and their producers) are music lovers first. They join the dots between old and new music, Scotland and the world. They build context. Take them away and you lose one of the last shared spaces where Scottish music is treated with care.

“Radio is in decline so things need to change”.

Yes, casual radio listening is drifting to playlists and algorithms. That is exactly why curated, specialist shows matter more than ever, not less. When everything else is algorithmic shuffle, these programmes are where people actively tune in and find new music.

I’ve read many times that BBC Introducing will be the replacement for these losses. That is not the case because BBC Introducing Scotland treats the whole country as a single ‘region’. All of Scotland funnelled into one slot. In England, BBC Introducing has many local shows, each with their own space. Here, every new Scottish artist is competing for the same tiny window of airtime. It rarely leads to the kind of sustained, UK-wide support that people imagine when they say “but you still have Introducing”.

Most importantly, BBC Introducing is not a long, late-night, presenter-led show. It is a talent-scouting strand. You might get a single track play, maybe once. You do not get the deep, repeat support, live sessions, interviews and context that Iain Anderson, Roddy Hart, Billy Sloan and others have offered for years. Those late-night programmes build careers over time. BBC Introducing, as valuable as it is, simply cannot replace that.

The Scottish Music Industry Association, which represents more than 6,000 members across the sector, has already written to BBC Radio Scotland to call this out and to ask for a pause, proper consultation, and a clear strategy for how the BBC will continue to meet its public service duties to Scottish music. I am posting their letter in full in the comments because it sets out the wider impact better than I can.

I hope I’m coming across very clear on this.

This decision, driven by Victoria Easton-Riley’s commercial radio mindset, is short-sighted and culturally damaging. It rips out nationally recognised spaces that have supported generations of Scottish artists, in order to chase the same ‘mainstream appeal’ you can hear on any number of stations already.

If you are a musician:

– Please sign the petition to save The Iain Anderson Show (and the others) and reverse this decision. Link below.

– Share your own story when you sign. Say which shows supported you, what that first play meant, what opportunities followed.

– Write directly to BBC Radio Scotland and to Angus Robertson for Edinburgh Central MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Culture, whose brief includes Scotland’s creative economy.

– If you can, also write to your own MSP using https://www.writetothem.com, and copy the SMIA letter or link to it.

If you are a listener:

– Please sign the petition as well.

– In the comments there, you can say which artists you discovered through these shows and how they shaped your listening.

– Email BBC Radio Scotland and Angus Robertson. Tell them you do not want yet another wallpaper ‘hits’ station. You want space for discovery, for risk, for Scottish voices that do not fit the algorithm.

This is not about protecting a bit of nostalgia. It is about whether Scotland keeps a national, public service space where its own musicians can still be heard, nurtured and taken seriously.

Petition link and Scottish Music Industry Association letter link below. Please read, sign, and share if you can. And feel free to lift from these words if it’s useful.

Thanks for reading. Let me know your thoughts.

Stephen McAll, Constant Follower

SMIA Open Letter: https://www.smia.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/27_11_25_SMIA-Open-Letter-to-BBC-Radio-Scotland.pdf 

Petition to reinstate the shows: https://www.change.org/p/save-the-iain-anderson-show-reverse-the-bbc-radio-scotland-decision/actions?source_location=petition_page