As part of our series on The Future of Scotland on Screen, Alison Rowat looks at the winners and losers at BBC Scotland as it seeks to make programmes that appeal UK-wide and internationally

When the new series of River City starts next Monday, viewers can look forward to the arrival of a fresh face in Shieldinch: baby Teddy, a son to Angus and Amber.

It will be a happy, if fraught, occasion, like most events in the fictional district of Glasgow, and there are sure to be tears before Teddy’s first bedtime. But welcome, little one, to the world of the BBC Scotland soap that was itself hatched 23 years ago.

A word to the wise, however: don’t get too comfy, Teddy, because come autumn next year you, your cot, your toys and everything else your parents can fit into the back of a van, are out of there. It’s a brutal old world, but that’s television kid, or it is the way the new management brooms at BBC Scotland do it.

Monday marks the start of a long goodbye for River City, with this series covering “the last Christmas in Shieldinch”. To be followed by the last New Year, the last orders in the Tall Ship, the last Spring, and so on. Fans’ efforts to save the soap, including raising a petition, have failed to change executives’ minds.

That much was confirmed this week by BBC Scotland’s director,

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