Visiting Hours
There are people in London who now think I believe in the Loch Ness Monster. You see it's been quite a week for vistors here at the ±«Óãtv's revamped studios in Inverness and yesterday I was being interviewed by Sally Hillier. She a reporter with the ±«Óãtv's in-house newspaper Ariel and this was her first visit to the Highlands. She told me how her EasyJet pilot had flown over Loch Ness on his final approach. I made the obligatory joke about The Monster. That was a mistake. I can imagine her back at her desk in London telling colleagues that we still believe in Nessie up here. Yes, and we hunt haggis on the hills too.
The Ariel article has been prompted by the imminent launch of , the new TV channel. A new television studio has been built here in Inverness and, as I explained to Sally, this building really has become a microcosm of ±«Óãtv Scotland. At different times we're producing programmes for ±«Óãtv Radio Scotland, ±«Óãtv Radio Nan Gaidheal, Gaelic Television, ±«Óãtv News, ±«Óãtv Radio 4, plus podcasts and split-frequency coverage of sport.
The place looks quite small on the outisde, but it's a bit of a Tardis once you get through the door. There's now a reasonable space for outdoor performances which we hope to exploit with audience shows next summer.
Another new visitor was John Maxwell Hobbs. He's the Head of Technology at ±«Óãtv Scotland and declined my offer of a coffee by rummaging in his bag for his own special tea-bag and asking for a cup of hot water to dunk it in. Perhaps he thought we don't have teabags in Inverness. Just wild haggis. And monsters.
John is, I believe, a New Yorker, and so we had a good talk about internet radio and the convulsions happening in the U.S. market. New copyright charges on that side of the Pond are threatening to decimate the number of online stations...meanwhile the two big Satellite radio comapnies - XM and Sirius - have merged. And we thought we had it bad here trying to predict whethere DAB will be overtaken by Wifi Internet!
The great thing about giving the Head of Technology a tour of the building is that he's interested in all the stuff that other people find too dull. We must have spent a good five minutes talking about the cabling in the roof-space.
Oh yes, it's all glamour here. But no monsters.
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