Media In Scotland
Newspapers and magazines
Keeping in touch with friends while in Scotland | News Media in Scotland
The main British daily and Sunday newspapers are widely available in Scotland and some of them publish special Scottish editions, among them the Scottish Daily Mail, Scottish Daily Express and Rupert Murdoch's notorious scandal sheet, The Sun.
The Scottish press produces two main 'quality' newspapers, the liberal-leaning The Scotsman, published in Edinburgh, and The Herald, published in Glasgow, which is the oldest daily newspaper in the English-speaking world, dating from 1783. The biggest-selling daily is the Daily Record, a tabloid paper (or red top as they are known).
The Sunday equivalents of the dailies are Scotland on Sunday from the Scotsman stable, the Sunday Herald and the Sunday Mail, published by the Daily Record.
Provincial newspapers are widely read in Scotland. The two biggest-selling titles are the parochial Press and Journal from Aberdeen and The Courier & Advertiser, published by Dundee's giant DC Thomson group, who also produce The Beano and Dandy kids' comics. DC Thomson publish Scotland's most successful Sunday newspaper, the Sunday Post, famous for its Oor Wullie and Broons cartoon charaters.
In the Highlands the main papers are the weekly Oban Times and the radical, crusading West Highland Free Press published on Skye. Visitors to Glasgow and Edinburgh should buy a copy of the fortnightly listings magazine, The List, with lively features and previews, and reviews of all events in both cities.
Foreign newspapers and magazines, including USA Today and the International Herald Tribune, are available in larger newsagents, especially in central Edinburgh and Glasgow. Time and Newsweek are also available in larger newsagents and bookstores.
TV and radio
There are five main television channels in Scotland; the publicly funded BBC 1 and 2, and the independent commercial stations, Channel 4, Channel 5 and ITV. The ITV network in Scotland is formed by STV, which serves central Scotland and parts of the West Highlands, the Aberdeen-based Grampian TV which produces a lot of Gaelic programmes, and Border TV which covers Dumfries and Galloway and northwest England.
The BBC network also broadcasts several radio channels, most of which are based in London. These include: Radio 1 aimed at a young audience; Radio 2 targeting a more mature audience; Radio 3 which plays mostly classical music; Radio 4 which is talk-based and features arts, drama and current affairs; and Radio 5 Live which is a mix of sport and news.
Radio Scotland (92-95FM, 810MW) provides a Scottish-based diet of news, sport, current affairs, travel and music. It also provides a Gaelic network in the northwest, and local programmes in Orkney and Shetland. There are also a large number of local commercial radio stations, stretching from Shetland in the north to the Borders. The local Glasgow station is Clyde 1 (102.5FM), while in Edinburgh it is Radio Forth (97.3FM).
