BBC ALBA Celebrates Fifth Anniversary

BBC ALBA, the broadcaster's Scottish Gaelic division, celebrates its fifth anniversary this year with news that the channel continues to grow.
MG ALBA, which operates BBC ALBA in partnership with the BBC, has published its annual report.
Maggie Cunningham, chairperson of MG ALBA, said: "BBC ALBA has been an undisputed success since it started broadcasting five years ago in September 2008. The channel can take great pride in its achievements and we must ensure that this progress continues.
"We have been inspired by and admire the global success achieved by Danish dramas Borgen and The Killing, and, looking ahead, we will continue to share experiences with our fellow minority language broadcasters such as S4C and TG4 to inspire our commissioning and funding strategies. While indigenous language crime programmes have been a success we will be looking at all options for developing drama for the channel."
MG ALBA was boosted by the injection of an extra £1m funding from 2015/16, as announced by Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander in last week's UK Government Spending Round.
Ms Cunningham maintained that MG ALBA would not "sit on its hands" following the announcement and would strive to further develop creative funding initiatives.
She said BBC ALBA had matured as a channel and its coverage of the Independence referendum would demonstrate its value as a Scottish broadcaster.
Donald Campbell, MG ALBA Chief Executive, said: "2012-13 was the best ever year for audiences for BBC ALBA. Weekly reach Scotland-wide grew from 10.6% (436,000) to 15.6% (637,000). Interest in Gaelic-speaking communities also grew and the average reach of 79% in Quarter 4 was the highest recorded reach since the launch of the channel in 2008.
"This was also a record year for iPlayer viewing of BBC ALBA content with 4.1m views of our programming, almost double the amount of viewing we received in 2011-12. This year also saw a significant shift from traditional PCs to mobile devices as a popular way to access iPlayer content, especially for younger audiences."
www.mgalba.com
(IT/JP)