These are difficult and worrying times for all of us. For staff at the BBC, like everywhere else, there are constantly escalating stresses and strains, both at work and in our personal lives.

In BBC Scotland we are acutely aware that what we do each day has never been more important to our audiences than it is now. The quality, accuracy, clarity and trustworthiness of the public service broadcasting that we are producing has a vital role to play at this moment of national jeopardy.

We know it's vital because people in Scotland are turning to the BBC in record numbers, more than to any other broadcaster, because they trust us to give them the facts.

A few examples: Over the past couple of weeks audiences for Reporting Scotland on BBC One at 6.30pm have topped 700,000, figures we haven’t seen since the Beast from the East swept through the country two years ago.

On the day when the Prime Minister and First Minister announced lockdown, a special live programme, produced by The Nine team, was watched by more than a million people.

And hundreds of thousands are tuning in to our special additional Politics Scotland programmes each day to cover the Scottish government briefings on Coronavirus. These usually go out live on BBC One Scotland, the BBC Scotland channel, Radio Scotland, and are streamed live on the BBC Scotland News website.

The Nine on the BBC Scotland channel has recorded the highest ever audience since it launched just over a year ago.

On Radio Scotland, we’ve had loads of appreciation for our new schedule of news programmes across the day, starting at six every morning with Gary Robertson and Laura Maxwell on Good Morning Scotland. We’ve added in - for our radio audiences across the whole day - updates on breaking news, even on our non-news programming.

And our BBC Scotland News website, with its live pages, analysis and context, has doubled its readership.

But the BBC - not surprisingly - is not immune from the impact of the virus. More than ten per cent of BBC Scotland’s workforce is either self-isolating, shielding or actually unwell, and sadly we can only expect that figure to grow.

We’re making changes to the way we work - for example, reducing the numbers of people in our TV and radio studios, so that we can comply with the two metre social distancing rules. Most of our interviewees appear via Skype. Our radio presenters, including Gary Robertson and Laura Maxwell on Good Morning Scotland and Drivetime host John Beattie, are presenting many of their programmes from home - from sitting rooms, attics and kitchens. Even Judith Ralston and the rest of our weather team are, for some of their time, working from home.

Although our reporters and technical staff are designated as key workers and are able to move around legally to do their jobs, we are limiting their movement as much as possible. Last week we ran a story on Reporting Scotland about the effect of the virus on Arran without any of our staff travelling there: All the material was filmed for us by the local residents.

We’re moving staff from other production areas into news, while still trying to protect as much of our non-news programming as possible: In the absence of live sport and other programmes, we’ve discovered huge audience enthusiasm for classic comedy and sport.

In the space of just a few weeks, our business has been transformed. And the effect of our staff shortages means that something has had to give. We’ve had tough decisions to make about where we cut back. I never want to lose any output, but we just don’t have the people now to carry on with everything we do.

So yesterday we’ve stopped - temporarily - our short Breakfast TV bulletins. It’s a decision we’ve reluctantly had to take across the whole of the BBC in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in order to protect our output through the rest of the day. The Breakfast programme will of course still be on the air, but without our brief inserts of news from Scotland, the other nations and the English regions. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

For our legions of regular viewers at breakfast time in Scotland a full news service can still be found on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio nan Gaidheal (for Gaelic speakers), and the BBC Scotland News website.

In addition to pausing the Breakfast bulletins, we are also having to reduce the length of some of our Gaelic news programmes; we’ve temporarily stopped making The Edit and Seven Days, our weekly news review on the BBC Scotland channel. We may need to look further at what news output we need to stop doing while Coronavirus is at its peak.

So the suspension of our Breakfast bulletins is not some conspiracy, as a few people on social media have suggested over the weekend. It’s about the realities of coping with high levels of sickness, realities also faced by network news teams in London, who are having to cut back and simplify their output; and by our colleagues at STV, who have announced cutbacks to what they can do. Coronavirus is affecting everyone and everything we all do.

In these anxious days and weeks, what we do at BBC Scotland News has never been more important to our audiences across the country. I’m very proud of the dedication and commitment of our news teams in providing the information that everyone is crying out for. And very grateful to the millions who are trusting the BBC to help them make it through the biggest national crisis most of us have ever known.

A version of this article appeared in The Scotsman

Last night (Wednesday 9 May 2018) the RTS Scotland Awards 2018 were held at a ceremony at the Old Fruit Market in Glasgow.

BBC people and programmes took home awards in 17 categories. Notably, Ewan Angus the outgoing BBC Scotland Commissioning Editor, Television was given the The RTS Scotland Award 2018: an industry award for outstanding contribution to television in Scotland.

All the BBC winners are listed below: 

• Documentary and Specialist Factual, Sighthill: BBC Two Scotland
• Documentary and Specialist Factual: History, Brian Cox's Russia, BBC Scotland
• Documentary and Specialist Factual: Arts,  Terry Pratchett: Back in Black, BBC Scotland
• Documentary and Specialist Factual: Science and Natural History, Trust Me, I'm A Doctor: Mental Health Special, BBC Two
• Drama, Queers – The Man on the Platform, BBC Four
• Current Affairs Programme, Football Abuse: The Ugly Side of the Beautiful Game, BBC One Scotland
• Sport: Programme, Glasgow 1967: The Lisbon Lions, BBC Scotland
• Comedy, The Dog Ate My Homework, CBBC
• Children's, Gudrun The Viking Princess, CBeebies
• On Screen Personality: Iain Stirling The Dog Ate My Homework, CBBC
• Director: Biança Barker A Family Divided, BBC Scotland
• Professional Excellence: Camera: Glen Milner  Handmade in Hull, BBC Four
• Professional Excellence: Sound: Kahl Henderson Accidental Anarchist, BBC Four
• Professional Excellence: Post Production Editing: David Arthur Sighthill, BBC Two Scotland
• Professional Excellence: Post Production Graphics and Tilting: Playdead, Trust Me, I'm A Doctor, BBC Two
• Innovation Award, Kidder, BBC The Social
• The RTS Scotland Award 2018: Ewan Angus

A full list of winners is available at the RTS website. 

BBC Scotland Director Donalda MacKinnon reflects on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the BBC’S Scottish HQ at Pacific Quay in Glasgow on 20 September.

If a week’s a long time in politics, imagine what 10 years feels like in broadcasting.

This week, 10 years ago, the Prime Minister (then) Gordon Brown officially opened our new Scottish HQ on the banks of the River Clyde at Pacific Quay.

Like most “flits”, the move from our much-loved studios at Queen Margaret Drive in the bustling west end of Glasgow was an emotional one but one borne out of a desire to move with the times beyond a less than fit for purpose HQ to a new building which would avail us of the latest digital technology to offer improved quality to audiences.

Many of our staff loved working in the west end so although our new base was little more than two miles away, it did seem like a cultural chasm for some.  Glasgow south-siders frequently used to mock their west-end colleagues by pondering whether they got nose bleeds whenever they crossed to the other banks of the Clyde.  As a south-sider myself, the move was most welcome.  The avoidance of the Kingston Bridge in the mornings was a welcome trade off from my point of view.

In broadcasting terms, 2007 was a very busy year, and to put it into context, digital switchover was just about to begin in November that year, with Whitehaven the first area to have its terrestrial TV signal turned off.

When we came to cut the metaphorical digital ribbons on PQ, a number of very big stories had already been covered by our news crews who had moved across the river several months earlier as part of a phased transition.

While Gordon Brown had replaced Tony Blair in Number 10, Alex Salmond had just been elected First Minister of Scotland, the first from his Scottish National Party to hold that office.  Interest rates had recently risen to the giddy heights of 5.2% while agreement on updating the Trident missile system had just been forged.

Just a few months earlier our radio news teams at PQ had responded to the Glasgow Airport terrorist attack while the search for the missing toddler Madeline McCann was continuing in Portugal.

But some things don’t change and the UK had once again stuttered to second last in the Eurovision song contest!

The BBC was also in the headlines itself when our Middle East correspondent Alan Johnston was abducted and held hostage for more than three months. BBC Scotland staff were among those who had held regular vigils for his release and one of our happiest memories over the last 10 years was welcoming Alan and his Lochgoilhead-based parents to Pacific Quay when he made an emotional thank-you to staff for keeping his plight in the public eye.

While moving to our new home was a wrench for some, the opportunities to work in the most advanced state-of-the-art broadcast centre in Europe was a gift-horse to be grabbed on two fronts.

Firstly, it allowed everyone to share any filmed material which was a boon in particular to our news teams as they could significantly enhance our story-telling using new desk-top editing and much quicker turnaround processes.

Secondly, it allowed us to branch out and use different parts of PQ as broadcast spaces. That brought us live music at The Quay via our intimate pop-up studio in reception; Jeremy Vine live from The Street with his latest graphic gadgets during the Scottish Independence Referendum; Election Results programmes from across the building; wonderful radio drama production in their new purpose-built premises and of course the hugely successful sitcom filmed in our main television studio, Mrs Brown’s Boys.

And who can forget the memorable Royal visit when Prince Charles toured PQ and tried his hand at doing the Reporting Scotland weather forecast – complete with specific information on whether it would be raining in various Royal households throughout Scotland. And of course, as it was mid May in Scotland, it was accurately forecast!

My own particular favourite memory, however, was when the building truly came alive during the Commonwealth Games in 2014 when real collaboration between BBC Scotland, BBC Sport and many other parts of the BBC brought the very first reaction direct from successful stars of the Games like boxer Charlie Flynn (the mailman who always delivered), gymnast Claudia Fragapane and swimmer Adam Peatty.  It all came live from our reception - with a little help from Clare Balding and not forgetting restaurant staff member and cocktail mixer to the stars, Hugh McDonald. And while all that was happening inside PQ, our staff pulled out all the stops to create fantastic live events daily outside in Millennium Square for thousands of visitors.  

As I’ve often heard said on some of our entertainment shows, "it’s been an emotional journey" – and not without its challenges.

The novelty of unisex toilets; the occasional blip getting to grips with our new technology; debating the artistic merits of our famous red sheds and even our opening night celebrations playing out in the background of our first news bulletin were hurdles that we skipped over enroute to today – maybe not quite with the grace of Colin Jackson but we did so nevertheless.

And throughout those 10 years, our staff and colleagues across Scotland have continued to produce programmes, services and major events which have informed, educated and entertained audiences. That desire to put our audiences at the heart of all we do continues to underpin all our activities and remains our ambition for the next decade and beyond.

Donalda MacKinnon is BBC Scotland Director

• Find out more about BBC Pacific Quay

Factual Entertainment 

Wil, Aeron a'r Inca/Wil, Aeron and The Inca - S4C

Comedy 

Still Game - BBC Scotland

Factual Series

Scotland’s Game - BBC Scotland

Kieran Hegarty Award for Innovation

Voices 16 - BBC Northern Ireland

Drama series

Line of Duty - BBC

Radio Documentary

Aberfan - BBC Radio Cymru

Radio Magazine Show

Rhaglen Aled Hughes/Aled Hughes Programme - BBC Radio Cymru

Radio Music Programme (Live)

Blas Ceoil - BBC Radio Ulster

Radio Sports

Spòrs na Seachdain/Weekly Sport - BBC Radio nan Gaidheal

Radio Station of the Year

BBC Radio Cymru

Single Documentary

Dunblane – Our Story - BBC One

Sports Documentary

Crash and Burn - BBC NI and RTE

Spirit of the Festival & History

Eoin Mac Néill: Fear Dearmadta 1916/Eoin MacNeill: The Forgotten Man of 1916 - BBC Two NI and TG4

For the full list of winners visit the Celtic Media Festival website.

The BBC was involved right from the outset and I’ve found a recording from that first Festival year of A recital of Scottish Lowland Songs (Burns etc) given by the soprano Marie Thomson and tenor John Tainsh with Ian Whyte on the piano. The BBC Scottish Orchestra (sic) also makes an appearance with Ian Whyte as conductor and Cyril Smith on the pianoforte playing the first performance of the conductor’s own concerto. Clearly it was a good year for Ian Whyte.

• What have been some of the standout BBC broadcast moments since the International Festival began in 1947?

This is a question I have asked various people including former Artistic Directors of the Festival and we are lucky to have had some truly historic moments from over the past 70 years captured forever thanks to Radio 3 and our predecessor The Third Programme. Today I discovered a recording of the famous tenor Fritz Wunderlich singing Schumann’s Dichterliebe at the 1966 Festival, literally days before he tragically died in an accident. I was also particularly excited to find a number of great composers had attended the Festival to perform their own works. There are recordings of Francis Poulenc and Pierre Bernac (who premiered so many of his songs at the Festival) performing the song cycle Le Travail du Peintre and the great Hungarian composer Ernő Dohnányi performing a solo piano recital of his own works. Benjamin Britten of course made several appearances as have other great luminaries including Pierre Boulez. Some of the greatest artists of the last 70 years have been captured on tape at the International Festival including singers Maria Callas, Kathleen Ferrier, Jessye Norman; instrumentalists including cellist Pierre Fournier, violinist Moskowsky (also famous as a composer of many showpieces), violinist Isaac Stern, the Amadeus Quartet, the Orpheus Choir and…the list goes on.

• Can you talk us through an average day for the Radio 3 team during the International Festival?

It’s quite a conveyor-belt of production as we are a fairly small team with usually two producers alternating concerts every day for three weeks. The team arrive at the Queen’s Hall at about 8am to re-rig and check the equipment and the communications to London. The presenter, (either Donald Macleod or Jamie MacDougall) arrives at around 9am to meet the producer, check over the script, make any last minute changes that have occurred recently. The trickiest thing here is when the repertoire changes at very short notice, which creates a flurry of activity including changes to the online and digital radio information and not least some speedy re-scripting to introduce the new piece. The producer meets and talks to the artist to finalise any last details that affect the broadcast including when they might come off stage between pieces, any changes or concerns and often a short interview for inclusion in the broadcast.

Before the concert begins we’ve normally tweeted, Facebooked and shared stories and pictures about the concert. The producer keeps in close touch with Radio 3 via telephone and ISDNs to make sure we dovetail into the morning's programming. This often includes a short ‘two-way’ conversation between our presenter and the presenter on-air before the concert begins. At 11am the presenter and concert go live on air whilst we monitor the performance and audio. We make notes for future reference and are ready to take action in case something happens like a string breaking or in case anything happens inside the hall that disrupts the concert. In the interval we stay on air with script, conversation or music and we finally hand back to Radio 3 as the applause comes to an end.

• What can listeners look forward to in this year’s Radio 3 coverage of the International Festival?

Radio 3 continues in its role as partner with the International Festival, broadcasting live, fifteen morning concerts from the Queen’s Hall and recording six Usher Hall concerts for later broadcast. There will also be live editions of programmes such as Breakfast, Record Review and In Tune from the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals hub and two documentaries looking at the history and founding of the festival – one which will use archive recording and new interviews to trace an oral history of the early years of the festival, and the second, which will tell the story of how after 1945 arts festivals such as Edinburgh were created across Europe to re-establish a spirit of international co-operation. We’ll also be delving into our archive, looking back at some of the great moments captured on the radio over the past 70 years – these moments will include twelve concerts featuring some of the finest artists to appear at the International Festival.

In a year in which both the Festival and Radio 3 are 70 years young it’s set to be a brilliant three weeks of music making and recording - stay tuned!

Lindsay Pell is Senior Producer for Music at BBC Scotland.

• Listen to BBC Radio 3 and keep up to date with the station on twitter and facebook.
• Find out more about the Edinburgh International Festival 2017.
• Watch Donald McLeod at work at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2015. 

Today BBC Writersroom officially launches their BBC Scotland office. Development Producer Angela Galvin explains why this is great news for Scotland-based writers and a few of the upcoming plans and events.

The 20th of January 2017 is a date that has been playing on loop in my mind for many months. And no, it’s not because a certain reality star becomes the 45th US President on that day but because of something much closer to home. It’s the day BBC Writersroom Scotland launches.

Now, I know our small event won’t compare to the all singing…well maybe not singing …all dancing shindig happening across the sea but I think it is a BIG deal. Why? Well, I have to come clean and admit I have a vested interest. I’m the Development Producer tasked with the exciting job of setting up the new Scottish base for the BBC Writersroom, alongside my colleague Audrey McFadden, the Development Co-ordinator for Scotland. But it should be even more important to any writer or person working in the creative industries across Scotland.  Again, why?

Well if you are reading this blog you know how brilliant the BBC Writersroom is. On our website we have scripts, blogs, vlogs, tips and tricks of the trade - everything you need to help you get down to the difficult task of writing when a blank page is giving you a hard stare. Writersroom Scotland’s aim is also to champion new and experienced writing talent. We want to support and develop writers so that they can go and create brilliant stories for the audience. And, it’s not a pipe dream. Look at the amazing TV, radio and digital content coming out of the UK today. Our programmes are winning awards right, left and centre, they are championed as the best there is and are sought after and replicated by broadcasters around the world. But, at the heart of many of these projects are UK writers. Writers that started writing just like you and that is where we come in.

Writersroom Scotland will feed into all the pan-UK Writersroom schemes but will also create bespoke opportunities for writers from or living within Scotland. The Continuing Drama Scheme will now include River City and will place several writers and directors at the heart of production. We will have talent searches including BBC Three’s The Break which will see series three shot at the River City Dumbarton site in winter 2017. We will have the annual Scottish Writers’ Festival in April 2017 which was attended by over 200 participants last year. It will have sessions from key writers working in TV and film and master-classes on developing and creating narrative content. There will be residential events for writers where they have the time and space to develop ideas alongside industry professionals and the Scottish writers group will have bi-monthly events and access to a writing space at BBC Scotland. I could go on and on but I’ve been given a word count.

Watch this space…

This blog originally appeared on the BBC Writersroom website, where, all next week they'll be featuring Scottish productions and scripts to celebrate the great work being done in Scotland and to highlight some of the opportunities for writers.

Last night (Sunday 6 November) the Scottish BAFTA ceremony was held in Glasgow. BBC programmes fared extremely well being awarded prizes in nine categories.

BBC One's Shetland earned Best Drama Series and its star Douglas Henshall took home the Best Actor in a TV Series Award. Douglas Mackinnon was awarded the Best Director Film/Television for his work on Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.

Meanwhile, CBBC's All over the Workplace was named Best Children's Programme, This Farming Life won Best Factual Series and BBC One's Dunblane: Our Story (pictured above) was the Best Single Documentary winner.

All the BBC winners are listed below: 

• Best Actor TV, Douglas Hensall, Shetland
• Best Children’s Programme, All Over The Workplace
• Best Comedy/Entertainment, Mrs Brown's Boys: Christmas Special 2015
• Best Current Affairs, BBC Scotland Investigates: Britain's Puppy Dealers Exposed
• Director Film/Television, Douglas Mackinnon, Sherlock: The Abominable Bride
• Best Factual Series, This Farming Life
• Best Single Documentary, Dunblane: Our Story
• Specialist Factual, Imagine...Richard Flanagan: Life After Death
• Best TV Drama, Shetland

Congratulations to all the winners, a full list can be found on the BAFTA website. 

Today sees the launch of our online drama for iWonder as part of the BBC’s World One Season. Footballers United is an ambitious project commissioned by BBC Learning and is one of the final pieces of digital content we will launch in this first year of the BBC’s four-year centenary season. This pilot follows BBC Learning’s first experiment with an online drama - an interactive episode of Our World War for BBC Three.

With Footballers United, we wanted to find a new and interesting way to tell the true story of a community surrounding the Heart of Midlothian football team from 1914-1919 in Scotland. It’s a very moving story that follows both the men and women, in Edinburgh and around the country, whose lives were forever changed by World War One.

By hosting this drama online, we were able to combine new fictional content, that is the drama itself, with factual archived content; giving our audience the chance to learn more about the history and background of the story they’re watching, as they’re watching it. We’ve done this by having an interactive timeline in the drama that prompts you when there is archived content available for you to see, such as video, audio, images and text as well as social media elements.

By signing into Facebook the timeline maps events in WW1 to your social media graph; showing how your friends and a modern day social community would have fared throughout the war. For example, when you pass the first day of the Somme in the drama, a social media item will appear that shows how your friends would have fared had they been in the battle at the time.

This project has really given us the chance to explore a new way to tell stories online and I hope that people will enjoy the combination of new and archived content, that it will give them a deeper understanding and knowledge about WW1 yet still entertain them, and more importantly, move them.

We have been thrilled to work with Gemma Fay, Captain and Goalkeeper of the Scottish National Women’s Football team, who presents the archive content which precedes each chapter. The extraordinary (and mostly unknown) story of women’s football during WW1 is one of the main themes of the drama and I am really excited to see how our audiences will use the ability to delve into actual photos and documents from the time as the drama plays out.

Our main ambition for this season was to re-introduce audiences to a war they thought they knew. Our digital content has been a key way of reaching younger audiences with a much broader story of the war that changed everything. We started the year with the launch of  iWonder and the release of a range of interactive guides, telling stories as varied as the vital importance of the pigeon in WW1, to the war in Tongo and how Lord of Rings was inspired by Tolkien’s experience on the Western Front.

In June we collaborated closely with BBC News to re-tell the events around the assassination or Archduke Ferdinand as if they were happening today. Our first set of online learners have just completed our pilot set of WW1 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in partnership with four leading universities in the UK, and used our social media platforms to help mark some the key anniversaries of the Great War.

The breadth and scale of the BBC’s activity in this first year of this centenary season has only been possible because of some fantastic partnership working across the BBC, including teams in Future Media, Nations and English Regions, BBC News and colleagues across our global news services as well as a huge range of external partners including the Arts and Humanities Research Council, Imperial War Museums and the RAF Museum (to name just a few).

We will continue to mark some of the key moments in WW1 right to the end of the season in 2018 – I hope it will continue to stimulate your interest in such an important moment in our all histories.

Tim Plyming is the Executive Producer in Knowledge and Learning and has been overseeing the digital content as part of the BBC’s World War One Centenary Season

• Watch Footballers United
• Visit the BBC's World War One portal
• Read Tim's blog Our World War gets interactive
• Find out more about iWonder

She’s the longest-serving presenter on the longest-running programme in Scottish television history. Jackie Bird, who this week celebrates 25 years as anchor of the BBC’s Reporting Scotland, has achieved that rarest of feats in the media: on-air longevity.

As a result, she’s perhaps the most famous face in Scotland.  If you think that’s an exaggeration, consider that Reporting Scotland is one of the most-watched TV programmes north of the border with an average audience of half a million viewers on any given night. Taken across a whole week, the various editions and bulletins combined reach more than half the adult population of Scotland. Multiply that over 25 years and it’s little wonder that Jackie Bird is a household name.

As someone who’s grown-up watching Jackie I thought it would be fascinating to see her in the guest seat for once. So this week I recorded an in-depth interview in the Reporting Scotland studio at Glasgow’s Pacific Quay.  Among other things, she tells about the changes she’s seen in TV news over 25 years, how women in journalism have combatted male chauvinism and what the secret behind her success is.

One of my favourite quotes from the archive is an interview she did for the Radio Times just ahead of her Reporting Scotland debut in October 1989:

“I have paid my dues by chasing fire engines and knocking on thousands of doors, but there has just been a very fortunate progression from radio to newspapers and then television.  I’m still quite young though, and television is a big world, so goodness knows where I’ll end up.”

I doubt if even Jackie Bird could’ve predicted she’d be in the same job 25 years on — and still at the top of her game.

Graham Stewart is a Broadcaster and Journalist, BBC Scotland

• Read about Jackie’s story on the BBC website. 
• Join Jackie Bird for her 25th anniversary edition of Reporting Scotland on Wednesday night at 6.30 on BBC One Scotland. 
• Later that same night she takes over the reigns of Scotland 2014 to look back on 25 years of news.

As I write this there are only 83 days until the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games open, the sun is shining and the BBC will be delivering a fantastic summer of sport including the World Cup, Wimbledon and the Games. The Queen’s Baton Relay is nearing its arrival into the UK on the 11th May and the cultural events across the summer are being announced. The Radio 1 Big Weekend line-up looks amazing and the Radio 1 Academy the week before promises to deliver exciting experiences in Glasgow,. These will really kick off our cultural and event programming around the Games. 

Today we launch the BBC at the Quay programme of brilliant radio, television and online events that will be coming to the BBC’s 16 day pop-up festival based at Pacific Quay near BBC Scotland’s headquarters on the River Clyde. After several months of logistical and detailed editorial discussions with programme teams right across the BBC and many external partners, we can now share some of the highlights that will be happening from the 19th July to 3rd August. It is a free site with tickets for special events, and programmes will be on our website from the 30th May. Whether you are in Glasgow for the Games and want to come along and be a part of the festival or whether you want to watch, listen or interact with our radio, television or online content there will be something for everyone. That was key for me I really wanted us to create a site that you could bring your mum, your dad, your friends, your children, your auntie, your uncle or just be a part of it yourself, remember, this is your BBC. Amazing music from great artists like Texas, Paloma Faith, Simple Minds, Maceo Parker, Raghu Dixit to name a few, live radio from all our networks, television programmes and events, and some very special golden ticket events to give you the chance to meet some of the biggest names in sports and entertainment.

It is a great privilege to lead and co-ordinate an event on this scale and there is a small brilliant core team behind this – Andrew, Debbie, Laura, Charlene, Emma P, Joanna, Emma B, Lisa and Charlotte, Jennifer, Niall and Stuart– who are pulling it all together. There has been well thought out collaboration right across the BBC to make something like this happen, from all the radio networks, Radio 1, 1XTRA, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, 4XTRA, Radio 5 Live, Asian Network, Radio Scotland, Radio nan Gaidheal, Radio Wales, Radio Ulster, and the English regions, to different areas including The One Show, Children’s, Learning, Sport, Gaelic, Interactive, and some very special one off events produced specifically for BBC at the Quay.

It is important for us to showcase some of the other exciting events that Glasgow will be offering during this time so we are working collaboratively with many of the other cultural organisations in Scotland, for example Culture 2014 and Festival 2014. We will be running a number of BBC hosting events where you will get the chance to see what Scottish Opera and the National Theatre of Scotland will be doing amongst others.  

Music, sport, family and diversity will be at the heart of the content over the 16 days and with over 70 programmes, shows and events already confirmed I hope that you will all be a part of it. I’m delighted that we are working with DF concerts who will be delivering the event management of the site, the Glasgow Science Centre (regarding the location) and a one off event with the Waverley - the world’s last sea-going paddle steamer.

The excitement of the sport during the Games will be amazing but the cultural diversity of all the Commonwealth countries shown through music, history and the spoken word is very powerful and our ambition is to create a site and event that reflects this. So if you are in Glasgow come and visit us if you're not please listen, watch and interact with us on all our content during this period. I look forward to welcoming you and all the BBC programmes, external organisations to the site in July. And if someone can bring the sunshine that would be very helpful!

Sharon Mair is BBC Project Executive for the Commonwealth Games.

• Read more of Sharon's blogs about the Commonwealth Games on her author page.
• Find out how to volunteer at BBC at the Quay on the About BBC Scotland website.
• Follow BBC at the quay on twitter.

As BBC Scotland gears-up for one of the biggest years in its history, with the independence referendum and the Commonwealth Games, journalist and presenter Graham Stewart offers a sneak preview of Pacific Quay’s redesigned news and sports studio, which launches on-screen on Monday.

I recall when we moved to our new purpose-built headquarters on the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow in 2007, it was hailed as one of the most modern, state-of-the-art digital broadcasting facilities in the world. Since then however, we’ve seen the move of network BBC News to New Broadcasting House (NBH) in London, and BBC Sport to MediaCityUK in Salford, both with their impressively futuristic-looking studios. In juxtaposition with our Scottish output, Studio C at Pacific Quay was in danger of looking a bit dated. So, with a big year ahead of them, the bosses here decided now was the ideal time to bring the visual look of their flagship news and sports programmes up-to-date. No sooner had I finished reading one of our weekend bulletins at the end of the festive period, than the designers and technicians came in to take the old set apart — and for the past three weeks we’ve been decamped from our familiar home.

When you consider that Studio C is in almost constant operation — from our bulletins on BBC Breakfast, through to Politics Scotland on a Wednesday afternoon, the main lunchtime and teatime editions of Reporting Scotland, the 8pm, the 10.25 and Newsnight Scotland, not forgetting Sportscene across the weekend — you get an idea of how potentially disruptive the upgrade could have been.

To make the transition as seamless as possible, the existing set was carefully taken apart piece-by-piece and transported four floors down, where it was re-built in Studio B — normally home to network productions such as Eggheads and Nina and the Neutrons. The idea was that the viewers would be oblivious.

Of course, behind the scenes it was all planned like a military operation; Will Smith, the lead designer, has been working on the logistics for months. "We spent,” he says, “around six weeks off-site making a kit of parts, so that when we came to install it in the studio the turnaround was as tight as physically possible.”

Will was brought in from BDA Creative, the same design company responsible for the new sets at NBH and Salford. In fact, Scotland’s new Studio C is loosely modelled on Studio B at NBH, home to Newsnight, The Andrew Marr Show and Sunday Politics. Like its London counterpart it has two areas — a so-called 'hard set', with the traditional news desk, for programmes like Reporting Scotland; and a more relaxed 'soft set', with comfortable chairs and a coffee table, for sports and discussion programmes. It’s very much like the set used by our colleagues at Wales Today.

Will explained to me his philosophy for the new look: "The idea was to create a set which would be fully flexible for lots of different programmes. It made sense to use the longest wall in the studio and make use of the depth. That way you can create a linking shot from one end to the other, making full use of the available space."

It’s certainly captured the imagination of Andrew Browne, the newly-appointed editor of Reporting Scotland, who’s been thinking about how best to use that space during this week’s intensive rehearsals. “It gives us much more flexibility,” he told me. “So in our forthcoming referendum coverage we could, for example, have a presenter cross from the news set to a specially-branded referendum discussion area."

Attention has also been paid to the visual aesthetics. While Studio C has always been HD-ready - indeed, it was the BBC's first HD news studio -viewers were unable to benefit from the improved picture quality until transmission facilities were upgraded and BBC One Scotland moved to HD in January 2013. According to Will Smith that, in turn, has informed some of the studio's new features: 

"The light-boxes we've installed give a deeper, richer saturation of colour, which will hopefully differentiate the various programme brands more successfully. We've replaced the old rear-projection screens, which weren't in HD, with ten high-end 103-inch HD plasma screens. That will make the background pictures and graphics, such as the weather maps, much sharper. In addition, the studio also has a touch-screen monitor which can be used by presenters and reporters."

“The screens,” says Browne, “can help us tell stories more clearly to audiences, with improved graphics and the ability to move around the set to make it all more visually interesting. It’s going to be an exciting year for news and sport in Scotland and our new set is only going to add to that. The team here have been really energised, so I think our viewers are going to appreciate the change come Monday.”

Graham Stewart is a broadcaster and journalist with BBC Scotland

• Join Jackie Bird for the new-look Reporting Scotland on Monday 27 January at 6.30pm.
• Other programmes from Studio C include Newsnight Scotland, Sportscene, Politics Scotland and Sunday Politics Scotland.
• Read Graham's blog 40 years of Good Morning Scotland.

The perceived parochialism of the speech content remained a problem. The BBC received hundreds of complaints and the letters pages of the Herald and Scotsman newspapers were full of criticism. News of the protests even reached the BBC’s chairman, Michael Swann, who asked the managing director of radio, 'Is it really as bad as they're making out? I had better start listening in earnest.'

Not everyone was dissatisfied though. BBC Scotland’s Controller, Robert Coulter, reported that 'the Scottish National Party, not unnaturally, is euphoric'. As the 1970s progressed, and black gold flowed from the oilfields of the North Sea, nationalism was flourishing and the ambition of the nation's broadcasters seemed to fit the prevailing mood. With a Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh seemingly inevitable, Good Morning, Scotland, along with the rest of the radio newsroom in Glasgow, moved to the capital in 1978. Just weeks later, Radio Scotland would finally establish itself as a separate station from the shadow of Radio 4 — with Good Morning Scotland (the comma had now been dropped) as its flagship programme.

A view of Good Morning Scotland on 24 August 1978 with John Milne, Jack Regan and David Findlay, from the BBC TV schools’ programme, The Business World.

Despite the failure of 1979 referendum, the radio newsroom remained in Edinburgh for some time, during which the Queen Street studios celebrated their 50th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Good Morning Scotland took part in a unique broadcasting experiment. For the first week in December 1980 the programme was simultaneously broadcast on BBC1 Scotland, with TV cameras filming the studios and the behind-the-scenes operations. The big problem was clothing radio in pictures at short notice. It needed ingenious juggling with maps, photographs and film that had already been shown on TV bulletins. The results were considered in a feasibility study being undertaken by the BBC into the prospects for breakfast time television, but the experiment was really more a publicity stunt than anything else. It does, however, provide us a fascinating visual record of the programme.

Highlights of the Radiovision experiment, filmed at the BBC’s Queen Street studios.

As Good Morning Scotland entered the 1980s and 1990s it was increasingly covering UK and international stories from a Scottish perspective and sharpening-up its reporting of news closer to home. During this era its reputation was cemented in no small part by the formidable talents of the late Kenny McIntyre, one of BBC Scotland’s most-respected reporters. Kenny, whose dynamic style and distinctive voice became a favourite with listeners, would arrive for work at 6 o’clock each morning and immediately begin ringing his contacts, ever ready to break the latest exclusive to listeners. Good Morning Scotland soon became the programme of record, holding the decision-makers to account and setting Scotland’s news agenda.

Good Morning Scotland on 5 January 1989, with presenters Neville Garden and Joanna Hickson.

From such shaky and uncertain beginnings forty years ago, Good Morning Scotland has firmly established itself as the nation’s most important radio programme. Nearly half a million listeners tune in every week — more than any other Scottish radio programme — and it continues to be a must-listen for many of Scotland’s leading decision-makers. Regardless of the result of next year’s independence referendum, it seems inconceivable that Good Morning Scotland won’t be there to cover the next exciting chapter in Scotland’s remarkable history, just as it has for the past four decades.

Graham Stewart is a broadcaster and journalist with BBC Scotland

• Good Morning Scotland is broadcast Monday - Saturday on BBC Radio Scotland and available via BBC iPlayer Radio. 
• Follow Good Morning Scotland on Twitter 
• Read Graham's post about BBC Scotland at 90.

When we first piloted the project in the West Midlands and in the West of England, we were worried we might not find enough stories. We need not have been concerned; the quality so far has been incredible and we think they’ll surprise, shock, inspire and delight you.

As we prepare to launch them early next year (the stories will go out on the BBC’s Local Radio stations, with highlights on Regional TV in England and on national TV and Radio in the Nations), our ambition is for World War One at Home to shine a new light on a devastating war which changed the course of world history. I hope you will come away with new insight into its impact right on your own doorstep too. 

Craig Henderson is Head of English Regions Programming.

• Read Adrian Van Klaveren's blog 'Introducing the World War One Centenary on the BBC'.
• Details of the launch of the World War One Centenary are available in a press pack on the BBC Media Centre website.