STV dumps The Bill

Scottish broadcaster STV will axe The Bill from its schedules meaning Scottish viewers will no longer be able to watch the long running ITV series or see its hyped watershed re-launch later this year.

Scottish broadcaster STV has axed another ITV drama series from its schedules and this time the victim is long-running cop drama The Bill. The Scottish broadcaster will pull the Police drama series from its schedules from the end of the month as part of its plan to pull out of prime-time networked programmes. The axing of The Bill from Scottish television is a huge blow to the series as it prepares to move to a later slot as part of a much hyped revamp.

The axing of The Bill in Scotland not only means Scottish viewers will no longer be able to see the police drama but also means they’ll miss out on the chance to see how the revamped series looks. However, its likely fans of the series in Scotland will be able to watch the series via the ITV Player service. STV will replace The Bill with a series of factual programmes based around Scotland. The Bill is the second ITV drama to be dumped from the STV schedules; in March the broadcaster announced it would no longer air the Inspector Morse spin-off, Lewis. However, despite not airing in Scotland the detective drama performed well enough on ITV to secure another series.

Interestingly STV’s own drama series Taggart, which is actually funded by ITV, is in danger of being axed itself due to low ratings. The murder detective series has aired since 1984 and once commanded big audiences but in recent years numbers have dwindled and now the series rarely breaks the five million mark. ITV has yet to decide whether or not to renew Taggart for another season. The axing of Taggart would be a huge blow to STV as the drama is arguably Scotland’s most famous programme, at this time, and a big export to overseas broadcasters.