By William Peakin
Scotland is set to receive another boost for its broadcasting sector when the BBC announces a further expansion of its operations outside London.

Last week, Jana Bennett, the corporation’s director of vision, said that 50 per cent of its network shows will be made outside of the UK capital by 2016. Production of Question Time will move to Glasgow in 2010 and Newsnight Review and the Weakest Link in 2012.

At an international conference in the city next month, Caroline Thomson, the BBC’s chief operating officer, is expected to make a further major announcement. It is understood that she will unveil a new multi-million-pound initiative for “regional audio-visual production clusters”.

Under the BBC’s plans, more than one-sixth of its £900m annual budget will be spent in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland by 2016. Around 9 per cent of the BBC’s network television spending will go to Scotland, compared with 3.3 per cent now.

Alan Yentob, who presents the BBC’s arts programme Imagine, is reported to have been approached to be the corporation’s ‘director general of the north’. Imagine is another of the programmes that will be moved to Glasgow, though it is not clear if Yentob would be based there or in Salford, where the BBC’s sports and children’s programmes and Radio Five will be located.

Yentob, the corporation’s creative director, is not certain to take the job and there are other candidates. There is disquiet among senior BBC presenters about the moves; David Dimbleby, who presents Question Time, is said to have expressed “dismay” and may step down.

The announcements follow the BBC controller Mark Thompson’s pledge last year that a target of 9 per cent of network programmes being produced in Scotland by 2016 had been set. His statement coincided with the establishment by Alex Salmond of the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, prompted by a significant decline in programme-making north of the border.

In its recently published report, the commission called for the establishment of a dedicated Scottish channel. Salmond told the Parliament earlier this month that a new strategy for the development of broadcasting in Scotland, building on the commission’s recommendations, will be published by Scottish Enterprise at the end of the year.

Creative Clusters conference preview, see page 55