IN 2014, a lot of people had their eyes opened about the media in Scotland. Today, you don’t have to look far on Twitter or Facebook to find someone furious about the portrayal of Scotland by the BBC, Daily Mail or The Scotsman.

I was and am one of those media critics. Prior to the launch of the BBC Scotland channel, I welcomed an offer from Pacific Quay to talk about the problems with the BBC in Scotland, hoping something better might emerge. I had to try, or they would always be able to say they offered talks but nobody took them up.

Little came of it. The people we spoke to at the Beeb struggled to even understand the problems we thought were glaring and were unwilling to commission the research we suggested might shine some light on their blind spots. I realised then that change was unlikely.

Now, I do as Alasdair Gray encouraged us all: I work as if in the early days of a better nation, and the better nation we seek needs better media. The National and iScot magazine lead the change in the print media and the people behind them are building media businesses around that vision of a better Scotland. The indy blogosphere is alive with opinions and insights. Meanwhile, Broadcasting Scotland has been quietly developing the capacity to be Scotland’s independent broadcaster. I got involved there because I realised it’s much more rewarding to build the future of broadcasting in Scotland than complain about broadcasting in the UK.

Broadcasting Scotland began as Referendum TV during the Edinburgh Fringe in 2014. The referendum made it clear to Broadcasting Scotland’s founder Linda Graham that there was a need for a broadcaster that was genuinely focused on Scotland, instead of having to defer to London. She was often told her goal was too lofty, that nobody could build a TV station with zero budget, but five years later, Broadcasting Scotland is still going and still growing.

Our regular shows are the nightly Scotland at 7 and The Full Scottish on Sundays. Scotland at 7 is something like the long-discussed Scottish Six; a daily news broadcast produced in Scotland, about Scotland, by Scots, for a Scottish audience. From Monday to Thursday at 7pm, the host – usually either Gordon Ross or me – discuss the big stories of the day with our guests. These guests are almost always gender-balanced (in fact, we probably have more all-female panels than all-male) and we seek to amplify a wide range of voices, including socialists, trade unionists, campaigners, academics, business representatives and refugees, along with a host of MPs and MSPs. On Fridays, we take a closer look at a single issue. In recent weeks that has included an examination of Universal Basic Income and another on resilience and wellbeing economics as we emerge from coronavirus; Aberdeen in a post-oil future; Scotland’s role in the Second World War on VE Day, and looking at issues of race and refuge in Scotland in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Full Scottish on Sundays has a similar format but takes in the week’s news as we take a broader view of what’s going on in Scotland and around the world. Guests in recent weeks have included more female professors than you might see on a channel with a thousand times our budget, as well as MPs and MSPs including Kirsty Blackman, Alison Thewliss, Dr Philippa Whitford, Ronnie Cowan, John Finnie, Richard Thomson, Linda Fabiani and Michael Russell, as well as Delyth Jewell, the Plaid Cymru shadow minister, amongst many others.

That’s not all! We’ve covered elections, live indyref and election results, extensive coverage from SNP conferences in Aberdeen Glasgow and Edinburgh, covered the All Under One Banner marches and much more. At one event, a well-known broadcaster raised an eyebrow at our outside broadcast van, saying “that’s a professional set-up”. They were not wrong. Broadcasting Scotland has a small, flexible studio space in central Glasgow from where we broadcast regular shows, equipped with everything a professional studio needs, and the van is capable of broadcasting live from almost anywhere in Scotland … if we have camera operators.

THAT’S where you come in. Broadcasting Scotland needs you to turn social media rants into more than just words. You can help by switching to Broadcasting Scotland for TV news and current affairs. Building an audience is hard work, so please, if you like us, tell your friends and if you can, go to our website and sign up as a supporter. Our target of 35,000 subscribers. That will let us employ 40 full-time staff. If you want to get your hands dirty, if you really want to be part of building that better nation, you can do what I did and get involved. I had never hosted a TV show before. Linda took a chance on me. Now, it’s a highlight of my week and I’m told I do a pretty good job.

The Scotland we want to build will not exist unless we build it ourselves. Let’s spend less time complaining about what we’re leaving behind and instead, build that better future.