BBC Scotland is expected to disappear as a conventional television channel and become an online-only service as part of sweeping cuts at the corporation.
The dedicated Scottish channel, which launched in 2019, is among the services being targeted as the BBC attempts to save £500 million and reshape its operations around iPlayer and other digital platforms.
BBC Three is also expected to lose its place as a linear television channel.
The BBC has not yet formally confirmed the move, with director-general Matt Brittin expected to outline the next phase of the corporation’s savings programme to staff tomorrow (7 October).
The change would apply to the standalone BBC Scotland television channel without impacting BBC One Scotland, BBC Radio Scotland and the corporation’s Scottish news operation.
The channel launched on 24 February 2019 with the aim of creating a dedicated home for Scottish drama, comedy, documentaries, entertainment, sport and news.
Its original centrepiece was The Nine, an hour-long nightly news programme covering Scottish, UK and international stories from a Scottish perspective.
The Nine was subsequently scrapped and replaced in January 2025 by the half-hour Reporting Scotland: News at Seven as the BBC shifted resources towards digital journalism. Ofcom approved the reduction in the channel’s peak-time news requirement in 2024.
BBC Scotland’s linear channel has struggled to attract a large regular television audience, with recent figures indicating that around 12% of people in Scotland watch it live.
By contrast, 54% of adults in Scotland consumed BBC Scotland content across television, iPlayer, radio and online each week in 2025/26.
The BBC has also said requests to watch BBC Scotland content on iPlayer have risen by 250% since the channel launched, while more than one million weekly active accounts were accessing BBC Scotland content on iPlayer during 2024/25.
BBC figures show the Scotland channel had a content budget of £42 million in 2024/25, up from £40 million the previous year. It reached 13% of the Scottish population each week that year and cost 13p for every hour watched.
Brittin has increasingly questioned whether licence fee money should continue to be spent maintaining traditional broadcast services when much larger audiences are watching the same programmes on demand.
Speaking about the wider issue recently, he asked: “When’s the right time to migrate that service fully to being on-demand?”
The expected closure of the linear BBC Scotland channel comes as the corporation embarks on one of its biggest rounds of cost-cutting in recent years, with as many as 2,000 jobs potentially affected across the BBC.
Around 60 posts in Scotland were already earmarked to go under separate plans announced earlier this year as BBC Scotland sought savings of around £10 million.
The corporation has also been reviewing programmes and services produced in Scotland. Coverage of the World Pipe Band Championships is among the output facing the axe from 2027.
BBC continues to commission Scottish drama, comedy and factual programmes, with recent and forthcoming productions including Dinosaur, Granite Harbour, Only Child, Counsels, Grams, The Young Team and a revival of Balamory.