Bernard Ponsonby, STV's former political editor, said he does not think the Glasgow-based station “has a future” after it announced it would cut 60 jobs and axe its north of Scotland news programme. So where did it all go wrong for STV?

STV is in Barney Rubble. Deep Barney. And management at the Pacific Quay HQ in Glasgow could soon be faced with switching off their cameras forever.

That's the opinion of veteran broadcaster Bernard Ponsonby who said: “I don't think STV has a future, simple as that,” he said with all the conviction and authority he brought to a long career as a newsman and political editor.

Yet, ex-STV employee Ponsonby wasn’t playing Nostradamus and picking his predictions out of thin air. He read the recent financial reports which declared the television company to have lost £200k at the beginning of the year. He read the writing on the wall.

And more importantly, he’s old enough to remember the warnings suggested by STV’s origin story. The Castlemilk-born journalist could easily recall the sky rockets celebrations over Glasgow’s Theatre Royal where the station was launched back in 1957 and a gala evening, fronted by Stanley Baxter and Jimmy Logan, which created such excited anticipation that STV was declared by original owner Roy Thomson to be “A licence to print money.”

STV used to make quality shows such as Taggart (Image: STV)

Ponsonby, who joined STV in 2000, would have grown up watching the TV company’s glory days. And how glorious they were. The new commercial rival to the BBC took Scotland by storm, producing programmes that were the perfect fit for the working-class marketplace. Francie and Josie took up home at Cowcaddens when STV moved into its bespoke home. Variety theatre was played out wonderfully on television in the afternoons with The One O’clock Gang. And television soap too proved hugely popular in the form of High Living, Garnock Way and later Take the High Road, a series so successful it would be sold on to South America and Canada.

Advertisers clearly loved this new medium and profits and investment continued, and STV was keen to branch out into the national network with dramas such as Charlie Endell and Taggart........

© Herald Scotland