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BBC Alba

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Samuel88

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What a waste this channel is. I wanted to listen to Radio one but it’s unavailable in Scotland on Freeview until midnight to make way for a channel where the transmission language, Gaelic, less than 1% of the population can speak. Is it time just to scrap this channel completely?
 
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najaB

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Not all the programming is in Gaelic. Personally, I find the obsession with the language to be a bit over the top (e.g. giving all railway stations names a Gaelic translation even in Pict areas) but if its an official second language then so be it.
 

DaleCooper

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What a waste this channel is. I wanted to listen to Radio one but it’s unavailable in Scotland on Freeview until midnight to make way for a channel where the transmission language, Gaelic, less than 1% of the population can speak. Is it time just to scrap this channel completely?

Is Radio 1 not on FM and DAB?
 

krus_aragon

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I enjoy a few of its programs, including some of their folk music programming, and the puntastic Fraochy Bay, despite not speaking a jot of the language.

Mind you, It's been decades since I tuned into Radio 1, so I may not be the best person to ask. ;)
 

yorksrob

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You could try listening to radio 2. It's got so much grating modern pop music nowadays, it might as well be radio 1.
 

thejuggler

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If you have internet to post you should have radio 1.

I also disagree about not having a service because only a few can access it.

Alba, 2 wales and S4C are three channels I can get rugby coverage for free.
 

Samuel88

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If you have internet to post you should have radio 1.

I also disagree about not having a service because only a few can access it.

Alba, 2 wales and S4C are three channels I can get rugby coverage for free.

I don’t have a problem with S4C as Welsh was the majority language before English supplanted it. In Scotland Gaelic has always been a minority language, confined to Strathclyde and Dumfries and Galloway. Really the BBC should have a ‘Welsh’ Scottish channel as that is the closest language to Pictish...
 

GusB

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I don’t have a problem with S4C as Welsh was the majority language before English supplanted it. In Scotland Gaelic has always been a minority language, confined to Strathclyde and Dumfries and Galloway. Really the BBC should have a ‘Welsh’ Scottish channel as that is the closest language to Pictish...
I think you'll find Gaelic was far more widespread than just the areas that you've mentioned. For a start you've completely omitted the Highlands and Islands where most of the native speakers will be found today. While it may be considered as a "minority" language now, Gaelic speakers have as much right to have their own TV channel as the Welsh do. I'd like to see a similar channel focused on the Scots language, which arguably is more widely spoken today, if not in its purest form.

https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/gaelic/where-is-gaelic-spoken-324.php

During the eleventh century, Gaelic was the main language of most of Scotland (including parts of the North East), as Gaelic place-names evidence. Since this period the language has receded. Geographically, a ‘Gaidhealtachd’ region emerged around the late fourteenth century. Today, the Highlands and Islands region accounts for 55 percent of Scotland’s 58,652 Gaelic speakers. It is the island communities of Skye, the Western Isles and, to a lesser extent, the Argyll Islands, which are now regarded as the ‘Gaelic heartlands’.

Emigration from the Gaidhealtachd has been commonplace since the eighteenth century, when Gaelic-speaking communities were established in the urban towns and cities of Glasgow, Greenock, Paisley, Edinburgh, Dundee and Perth. Today, all Scotland’s cities have vibrant Gaelic-speaking communities.

The number of emigrants in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were so large that Gaelic communities were also established in other countries. The largest and most well-known of these was in Canada. There is still a notable Gaelic presence in Canada, most especially in Nova Scotia, where there is still a small community of native speakers and a larger group of people who are learning the language. In contemporary society, the Gaelic community is increasingly global in its membership.

I don't see why people should be denied programmes in their own language simply because you need your Radio 1 fix which, as others have pointed out upthread, is available via other channels.
 
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Butts

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I used to like the program about Highland Airports on BBC Alba !!!

There are more Polish Speakers in Scotland than Gaelic so perhaps Radio McWarsaw should be created :E

I'd rather listen to either Gaelic or Polish than Radio 1 - even though I don't understand all three.
 

Essan

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I don’t have a problem with S4C as Welsh was the majority language before English supplanted it. In Scotland Gaelic has always been a minority language, confined to Strathclyde and Dumfries and Galloway. Really the BBC should have a ‘Welsh’ Scottish channel as that is the closest language to Pictish...

Before the Irish invaded, the language in Strathclyde (Ystrad Clud), Dumfries and Galloway was early Welsh. Indeed, the area is known as Hen Ogledd, the old north. The Picts also spoke a related Brythonic language. English arrived (via Northumbria - which included Lothian) around the same time Gaelic started to expand from it's small foothold in parts of Argyll and the Hebrides (and it's from this that the modern Scots "language" derives)

I like BBC Alba - not least for the music programmes. But the indigenous language of Scotland is not Gaelic. And back translating placenames like Haymarket into Gaelic makes less sense than translating them into Polish.
 

dosxuk

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BBC Alba gets around 600,000 viewers each week and is only minority funded by the BBC itself - most comes from Government funding for minority language services.
 

Jordan Adam

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You could try listening to radio 2. It's got so much grating modern pop music nowadays, it might as well be radio 1.

Radio 2's main focus is the "Adult Contemporary" demographic, so it's not really a surprise that some pop songs get played on it. Quite honestly i don't listen to much radio anymore, perhaps it's because i'm younger and time are changing, but i'd much rather open my Spotify account on my phone and play the songs that i want to hear.

***Separate reply***

To the original poster, i get what you're saying, i don't see the point in signs over here in North East Scotland being in Gaelic as no one here speak it. But at the same time it doesn't really bother me. As for the TV channel, i don't speak Gaelic so i don't watch it, but i don't have any issue with it existing.
 

yorksrob

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Radio 2's main focus is the "Adult Contemporary" demographic, so it's not really a surprise that some pop songs get played on it. Quite honestly i don't listen to much radio anymore, perhaps it's because i'm younger and time are changing, but i'd much rather open my Spotify account on my phone and play the songs that i want to hear

Bah 'adult contemporary' since when. The primary focus of radio 2 has traditionally been classic pop and other genres. Defining it as 'contemporary' sounds like a modern BBC fixation.
 

Jordan Adam

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Bah 'adult contemporary' since when. The primary focus of radio 2 has traditionally been classic pop and other genres. Defining it as 'contemporary' sounds like a modern BBC fixation.

'Adult Contemporary' isn't a modern BBC fixation, it's a category that's pretty much always existed (well since radio became popular anyway). Many music charts even have a AC genre and many pop songs (particularly by older artists) would be categorised as AC. I'm not going to argue over what music radio 2 should and shouldn't play (if it bothers you then don't listen) the point i was making is that Radio 2s main focus is AC, just like how Radio 3s main focus is classical. If a current song is popular with the AC demographic (generally those in the 35-60 age group) then it gets added to the Radio 2 playlist.
 

yorksrob

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'Adult Contemporary' isn't a modern BBC fixation, it's a category that's pretty much always existed (well since radio became popular anyway). Many music charts even have a AC genre and many pop songs (particularly by older artists) would be categorised as AC. I'm not going to argue over what music radio 2 should and shouldn't play (if it bothers you then don't listen) the point i was making is that Radio 2s main focus is AC, just like how Radio 3s main focus is classical. If a current song is popular with the AC demographic (generally those in the 35-60 age group) then it gets added to the Radio 2 playlist.

I'd be quite surprised if some of the current songs on the radio 2 playlist, are popular enough amongst the 35-60 age group to justify the amount of airplay they get.

And the playlist rarely includes the sort of indie- type music that I used to enjoy when listening to Radio 1 in the 90's. The BBC make a big thing of shifting old farts like me off of Radio 1, but then they don't back it up with the actual music on Radio 2. Where is 'Sounds of the Nineties' ?
 

Jordan Adam

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I'd be quite surprised if some of the current songs on the radio 2 playlist, are popular enough amongst the 35-60 age group to justify the amount of airplay they get.

And the playlist rarely includes the sort of indie- type music that I used to enjoy when listening to Radio 1 in the 90's. The BBC make a big thing of shifting old farts like me off of Radio 1, but then they don't back it up with the actual music on Radio 2. Where is 'Sounds of the Nineties' ?

I'd somewhat agree as there have been times when i've been listening to radio 2 (normally if i'm in an older family members car) and a current song will come on that has surprised me.

Indie music is hard to define these days as 'popular' music is quite a wide spectrum in itself and many indie artists with enough of a following to warrant being on radio are known to some extent or would be regarded as pop. Although somewhat irrelevant it should be noted that "pop" music (it is a genre/style) isn't what's popular at the moment, it's rap and hip-hop that's popular among the younger audiences. The reason you won't fine indie-type music on Radio 1 is because it's not what's popular, whereas in the mid-late 90s there was a period where rock orientated indie music (Alanis Morissette for example) was quite popular.

Back to Radio 2 however, i do think that it seems to lack when it comes to 90s and early 00s music and focuses too much on current music and pre 80s music.
 

yorksrob

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I'd somewhat agree as there have been times when i've been listening to radio 2 (normally if i'm in an older family members car) and a current song will come on that has surprised me.

Indie music is hard to define these days as 'popular' music is quite a wide spectrum in itself and many indie artists with enough of a following to warrant being on radio are known to some extent or would be regarded as pop. Although somewhat irrelevant it should be noted that "pop" music (it is a genre/style) isn't what's popular at the moment, it's rap and hip-hop that's popular among the younger audiences. The reason you won't fine indie-type music on Radio 1 is because it's not what's popular, whereas in the mid-late 90s there was a period where rock orientated indie music (Alanis Morissette for example) was quite popular.

Back to Radio 2 however, i do think that it seems to lack when it comes to 90s and early 00s music and focuses too much on current music and pre 80s music.

I take your point about Radio 1. Thank God I grew up in the 90's, is all I can say on that.

It seems to do 80's, but there doesn't seem to be that much 60's and 70's any more either. I love 60's and 70's music, which is why I loved the old Radio 2, but nowadays. Sarah Cox seems to do a good mix though.

If it was up to me, no more than one in four songs on Radio 2 should be contemporary. The remaining three quarters should be spread from 60's to noughties.
 
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