Scotland's current programming reflects the evolution of Britain's broadcasting ecology, offering viewers a choice of four channels and a mix of British networked television and Scottish national and local productions. A brief history of its development sets in context both the present state of television in Scotland and some of the prevailing debates about its nature.

     The first television service in Scotland was introduced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 1952. To a large extent, the constitution and character of this new medium was determined by its existing radio system. John Reith, the architect of the BBC and himself a Scot, was determined that the BBC should provide an essentially British service. The consequent emphasis placed on the centralization of public service broadcasting led to a downgrading of other forms of more local production as well as to the BBC's oxymoronic categorization of Scotland as a "national region." This decision was not simply an organizational choice but, as McDowell suggests, reflected the dominant ideological belief in the superiority of "metropolitan culture." The BBC's early television broadcasts consisted of largely the same programs as those of London. What was produced in Scotland received considerable criticism in terms of its nature and quality; the Pilkington Report of 1962 noted that the few programs produced by BBC Scotland often "failed to reflect distinctive Scottish culture."

     The arrival of independent, or commercial, televi­sion in Scotland offered a new source of programming. Like the BBC, the independent companies broadcast a mix of network provision and more local, opt-out, productions. Franchises were awarded to Scottish Television, covering central Scotland; Border Television, covering the Scottish and English borders; and Grampian Television, serving the north of Scotland. The enthusiasm of some for the new medium can be gauged by the notorious comment of Scottish's first proprietor, Canadian magnate Roy Thomson, that an independent franchise was "a license to print money." In these early years, perhaps unsurprisingly, Scottish program schedules, too, were heavily criticized for their poor quality and parochial outlook. The 1970s and 1980s saw both the BBC and Scottish Television upping the level of their local programming, improving its quality and diversity, and beginning to form a stronger presence on the network through programs such as the long-running police drama Taggart and the popular soap Take the High Road.

     The past 25 years have brought significant changes, diversifying the type and origins of programs produced in Scotland. The introduction of Channel 4 in 1982 and quotas for independent production in the 1990 Broadcasting Act have led to the emergence of numerous independent companies, as is the case across the United Kingdom as a whole. While they have undoubtedly broadened the production base and often pioneered innovative forms of programming, the vast majority of these companies are relatively small and powerless in their ability to affect broadcast policy.

     In the 1990s, extensive lobbying brought government support of £9.5 million for the production of television programs in Scotland's minority indigenous language, Gaelic. Unquestionably a welcome move, it nonetheless demonstrates (as does the support of Siana) Pedwar Cymru, the Welsh Channel 4) that it is easier to gain recognition for linguistic than for cultural differences.

     These moves in television are indicative of wider cultural shifts. For some years, debate has been growing over Scotland's constitutional position in the United Kingdom, manifested in some quarters by demands for political change in the form of self­ government or independence. More widespread, however, has been a transformation in cultural activity in Scotland over the past two decades-most notably in literature but also in theater, music, and film­ which many see as a form of cultural nationalism.

     This climate of cultural and political contention has led to a new attention to questions of representation and national identity. In Scotch Reels (1982), critics Colin McArthur and Cairns Craig exposed and deconstructed the dominant representations of Scottishness, identifying two central rhetorics that have informed representations of Scotland-the associated discourses of tartanry and kailyard. While tartanry harks back to a romantic celebration of lost Scottish nationhood and draws on the emblems of a vanished (and imagined) premodern Highland way of life, kailyard celebrates the virtues of small-town life through genial homilies. These discourses are seen to run through heterogeneous productions from Hollywood cinema and Brigadoon to indigenous programs such as Dr. Fin­ lay's Casebook and The White Heather Club.

     This deconstruction of what Murray Grigor terms "Scotch myths" has become widely circulated, and in­ deed parodying the cliches of Scottishness has become something of a trope in contemporary Scottish television productions (although it has yet to penetrate a Hollywood increasingly enamored of Highland heroes such as Braveheart and Rob Roy). Scottish television offers its audiences antiheroes such as Ian Pattison's comic creation Rab C. Nesbitt, a gloriously loud-mouthed Glaswegian drunkard and member of the underclass who exaggerates to comic excess, accepted notions of nationality and class. A more sophisticated and ambiguous demonstration of this parodic process is to be found in BBC Scotland's police series Hamish Macbeth. Set in a picturesque Highland village populated by bizarre characters, it simultaneously sends up the stereotypes of Highland life while embracing their more marketable forms.

     Much of the debate about television in Scotland . in academic and popular circles, has concerned itself with analyzing and often attacking the dominant images of Scottishness that have been produced, while comparatively little attention has been paid to questions of production and policy. In Scotland, questions of cultural identity and diversity and of independence and control reverberate through television production at both a symbolic and a material level.