The future of the BBC if Scotland became independent is likely to be one of the major issues in the referendum campaign – not because its costs are great or lives depend on it, but because the BBC is seen as one of the great British institutions.

The national broadcaster is identified by critics of independence as a great unifier for the UK's nations and regions, an institution that helps bind Britain's citizens into a common family. Indeed, the corporation's father figure was a Scot, Lord Reith, who established it as a public service broadcaster.

While critical about its programming about Scotland and lack of control by the Scottish parliament, the Scottish National party is sensitive to the BBC's iconic status and popularity. It insists that, after independence, Scottish audiences would continue to see Strictly Come Dancing and EastEnders as they do now. It wants to put the BBC on a similar footing to the issues of keeping the Queen as head of state, sterling and the Bank of England.

In its recent manifesto for independence, Your Scotland, Your Future, the SNP suggests the BBC would continue in Scotland, but under Scottish control:

BBC Scotland's services would continue with the same staff and assets, but with a management that would be charged with responsibility for reflecting Scottish life, culture and interests. [But] it wouldn't operate in a vacuum – far from it, in fact. We will be able to access programmes from around the globe, just as we do now, including the BBC, ITV and the many cable and satellite channels, meaning Scottish viewers will continue to receive popular programmes such as EastEnders, the X-Factor and Strictly Come Dancing. These programmes are all available in Ireland, for example.

But this raises numerous questions: how would the BBC take on a new role in an independent Scotland? Could it be split up and its Scottish assets given straight over to a new Scottish broadcasting service? How would it be funded? What about Scotland's share of UK-level BBC assets and programming outside Scotland? What would happen to the BBC's local coverage and its website? How would Scottish audiences see all the BBC's channels and programmes, such as Strictly, or BBC3, or the Today programme, not made in Scotland?

The Scottish government's current policy is to set up a wholly new Scottish public service broadcaster. It is drafting detailed proposals on all aspects of broadcasting for publication in a white paper on independence in November 2013.

In 2009, in its National Conversation document on independence, it said:

An independent Scotland should not lose the range and quality of broadcasting options received currently... [For] example, Scotland should continue to access BBC and other broadcasters from the United Kingdom and there should be no obstacles to Freeview, satellite and cable services being available in Scotland on a similar basis to now.

It was more equivocal than the SNP document, saying the new national broadcaster would be based "initially" on BBC Scotland's existing staff and assets. There are several funding options: the Scottish Broadcasting Commission, which in 2008 looked at total devolution of broadcasting to Scotland but not at independence, said a new Scottish digital channel would be not-for-profit but funded with mix of licence fee, advertising and state subsidy.

But so far there has been no agreement between the Scottish and UK governments, or with the BBC, the regulator Ofcom, or the broadcasting unions, on whether these plans for the BBC are feasible or how they would work. The Scottish government says there have been discussions between it and the BBC and Ofcom, but has not provided details.

The BBC operates four distinct services in Scotland: it has Scotland-only opt outs for BBC1 and BBC2, which includes programmes such as Reporting Scotland and Newsnight Scotland, River City, Sportscene and Gary: Tank Commander, and Beechgrove Garden, and the BBC Alba, the Gaelic TV channel run in partnership with MG Alba. It has BBC Radio Scotland and the Gaelic radio service Radio nan Gaidheal. In addition, it runs a large BBC Scotland online news and entertainment service on its website.

We asked the BBC for the costs and size of its operations in Scotland. It said its Scotland-only budget is £102m, to be cut to £86m by 2017 because of the licence fee freeze. This covers a staff of 1,000 people and 250 on fixed term or casual contracts. That figure does not include the £70m to £75m of "network business" that it generates from the rest of the corporation or outside it.

The BBC has relocated the soap Waterloo Road to Glasgow, bringing 200 jobs and £20m of general spending, as well as Question Time. It said the "network spend" in Scotland is now 8% of total BBC spending, exceeding a 6.1% interim spending target for 2012 set by BBC director general Mark Thompson, after Scottish government complaints about poor investment in Scotland.

The £102m does not include BBC Scotland's recently built £188m digital broadcasting centre and headquarters at Pacific Quay. It also controls offices across Scotland. Nor does not include the costs of other BBC channels and programmes made outside Scotland, such as general BBC1 programming, BBC3, BBC4 or the main radio stations, and new services like Radio 6Music or 5Live. The BBC is viewed and listened to widely in Scotland, but it did not provide Scottish audience figures for these channels.

What could the options be?

The most far-reaching would be for an independent Scotland to sever its links to the BBC entirely, and set up a new state broadcasting network. That would mean BBC audiences would have to subscribe to Sky or cable services which included BBC channels in their packages. Scotland would raise its own licence fee, and operate its own spectrum, transmitters and broadcasting authority.

But the Scottish government says its favoured model would be similar to Ireland's relations with the BBC. In 2010, the UK and Irish government's signed a new memorandum of understanding which agreed that BBC services would be available with Ireland via new digital channels, while the Gaelic Irish TV channel TG4, and RTE channels would be available in Northern Ireland in a not-for-profit joint venture.

However, the BBC has said that BBC services in Ireland are supplied on a commercial basis, and are not free to air:

We have commercial agreements in place for the distribution of BBC channels in the Republic of Ireland as we do in other countries, but details are confidential as they are commercially sensitive. In order to ensure all licence fee payers can receive BBC services, some element of signal overlap in border areas into the Republic of Ireland

is inevitable.

So many of the proposals the Scottish government has made have not been tested or even agreed on by the BBC or the UK government. What is the best way forward, for the BBC and for Scottish voters? Could the BBC continue to be the "national" broadcaster or all parts of Britain after independence?

Questions about the BBC's future role or relations with Scotland, as well as the output of a future Scottish broadcasting corporation, must also focus on the increasingly significant importance of iPads, tablets, smart phones and the internet in modern broadcasting.

So any deal by a Scottish corporation (I'll call it the SBC for simplicity for now) with the BBC, either to share BBC services or buy them in, must tackle that question to.

So, in part answer to posts by ArseneKnows and Rclayton, here's the information we have so far:

The BBC says that its iPlayer app is geo-blocked, in other words, audiences outside the UK – including in the Republic of Ireland - have to buy a subscription-only and more limited global iPlayer app. It is currently available in Ireland and 10 other EU countries costing 6.99 euros a month or 64.99 euros a year. In Australia it costs Aus$89.99 for a year and Can$84.99 in Canada.

The BBC said this:

Rather than a seven-day catch-up service, it will offer a showcase of BBC shows, old and new. Examples given include Fawlty towers, Only Fools and Horses, Sherlock and Doctor Who.

The BBC's UK news and entertainment website too is geo-blocked by IP address: passengers on the EastCoast rail service experience this. They get the BBC World news service.

The ITV version of iPlayer blocks Scottish viewers in a different way: iPad users have to enter a postcode to register for it. It will block access to ITV1 programmes if you have a Scottish postcode, because STV is separate to ITV1. It does allow Scottish viewers to see ITV2, ITV3 and CITV programmes.

It seems that STV currently only has iPhone and Android phone apps, STV Live and STV News, with limited programming; it can be used too on iPads but in iPhone format. It allows tablet and computer access to the most popular shows such as Coronation Street and Downton Abbey on its web browser-based player at http://player.stv.tv/ which shows many popular ITV1 shows such as Downton Abbey and Dancing on Ice. I'm confirming the iPad position with STV.

In answer to Maroonfever, sneekyboy and others, we asked TV Licensing for the facts on licence numbers and revenues for Scotland but were only able to get limited information.

They said there were 2,197,000 licences in operation in Scotland in December 2011, but were unable to say how much that earned. They said:



This number includes households and businesses, as well as concessionary licences for the blind and free licences for the over 75 but does not include residential care licences (ARC). Because different licences have different cash values and because the number of licences in force varies from day to day, we are unable to provide you with the total cash value per year for the nation.

I'm not sure that position will be sustainable when the independence debate gathers pace close to voting day, since it'll be of significant importance to the funding of any putative SBC. However, the SNP's opponents would expect the Scottish government and SNP to stump up much more detail on its proposals; an issue the Scottish government says will be addressing in November 2013.

What we do know is that there are 25m licences in force UK-wide, earning £3.7bn in revenue. So dividing that figure by the number of licences, a rough rule of thumb gives an average of £148 per licence, implying that Scotland's 2,197,000 licence holders raise £325m a year.

That suggests the BBC spends £200m on output not directly linked to BBC Scotland. Presumably that makes dis-aggregating BBC services and resources which the Scottish government could want to claim if it wins the referendum much more complex.

But there are related issues here the Scottish government has, as far as I'm aware, not yet addressed: would Scotland have its own TV licensing enforcement operation? TV Licensing said it made 4.2m visits in 2010/11 to check viewers were paying their licence, adding that "Enquiry officers together catch an average of over 1,000 evaders every day."

Across the board, the agency has 1450 staff and spends £124.4m a year. That implies Scotland would need to spend about £11m, employ around 125 people and buy the detection equipment and databases, for the same tasks.

It would not say how many staff were involved in enforcement, saying:

As we do not wish to give to those who seek to avoid paying the licence fee any information which might help them to evade, we do not publish a breakdown of figures for staff directly involved in enforcement.

We asked the Department of Culture, Media and Sport about its attitude to this debate. It controls UK broadcasting policy and issues relating to the BBC, although under the new Scotland bill, Scottish ministers will, for the first time, have a role in appointing the Scottish member of the BBC Trust.

The general UK government position is that it has no interest in debating or discussing how UK resources could be split up after independence because it has no expectation that Scotland will vote for independence.

Focusing primarily on previous Scottish government demands for greater devolution of BBC services and control, it said this:

There were and remain good reasons why broadcasting as a whole was not devolved in the devolution settlements. Essentially, the country as a whole benefits from pooling the licence fees, advertising revenue and subscription fees so that major investment can be made in a range of programmes that we can all enjoy. The principles underpinning this means this is the most effective way of maintaining national standards and securing broadcasters' independence. There is a greater benefit to the nation in having broadcasting reserved. Broadcasting crosses national boundaries and the creation of multiple layers of regulation within the UK would risk impairing the effective promotion of UK broadcasting industry. Also, terrestrial transmission uses wireless telegraphy spectrum which is a resource negotiated at UK level by way of international treaties and used for many national purposes including broadcasting. Since broadcasting is not confined by national boundaries there is advantage in the government leading UK negotiations at the European level. Furthermore, the network economics of broadcasting underpin the benefits of a single BBC. There could be significant draw-backs in devolving broadcasting. It potentially reduces the exposure of talent in the nations to British audiences; deprives viewers in the nations of some of their favourite programmes and channels; and licence fee payers in the nations could end up paying more for less. There is no strong evidence demonstrating how such a change would be economically or socially viable. The interests of the nations are still represented without devolving broadcasting responsibilities (eg. through the appointment of the BBC Trust members for the nations and Ofcom's Advisory Committees for the individual nations).

But the Scottish government and the SNP too have to answer some significant questions: have they costed setting up and running a new SBC? Have they established what it offer and how it would be paid for? Would it be like RTE in Ireland and carry advertising? Would it be not-for-profit or a trust, like the BBC? Do they know if existing BBC staff would want to work for an SBC?

Our media editor, Dan Sabbagh, has just sent us his analysis of the BBC question for us:

What would happen to the BBC if Scotland became independent? Scotland could easily create its own independent public service broadcaster - call it the SBC - funded by a licence fee. But it would be far smaller than the BBC today. The BBC is funded by a compulsory levy on households, of which the Scottish proportion is 9%. With 2.34m Scottish households and a licence fee of £145.50 the headline publice income available would be £340m. It is not obvious how the SBC could access any of the BBC's commercial income, although it could try to claim a 9% dividend from BBC Worldwide's profits, which would amount to a very modest extra sum of perhaps £10m. Scotland would have to inherit some BBC obligations. Gaelic TV, BBC Alba, costs a modest £6.1m, and Gaelic radio £6.3m. BBC Radio Scotland has a budget of £33.1m. Together that is £45.5m, leaving about £300m to spend on other television, distribution, management and overheads. The cost of overheads, including licence fee collection amounts to about 8%, leaving SBC to spend £275m on content and its distribution, presumably on screen. That compares to the £1.4bn spent by BBC1 or the £528m spent by BBC2. The SBC, in short, would have half the budget of BBC2 for television. That would be best spent on a single channel, although it is possible to have more stations if it is necessary to spread the cash around. But in any event it is a small sum for local content. The SBC would face real challenges to export its content internationally. Danish drama may be on the up, although in fact the number of shows exported from the country is modest. But a fairer comparison would probably with Ireland's RTE, and British viewers would struggle to name an RTE show. Drama, say, can easily cost £750,000 an hour. One hour of high quality drama a week would cost in excess of 10% of the total SBC budget. Money that may be worth spending, but a major risk if costs cannot be offset with exports. A flop would kill. Scotland could take any view it liked in terms of allowing channels to access its airwaves. It could allow the BBC in, but would probably have to do so on a commercial basis; the BBC has advertiser funded channels elsewhere. The SBC could buy in BBC content, although it is not certain it could afford the same line up of shows as the BBC airs today. But if Scots are not paying the BBC licence fee, the BBC would block access to its iPlayer as it does today for people with internet addresses registered abroad. As a case study, the Scottish ITV, STV, is a separate company. But it has long battled with high debts, has struggled to invest it its own programming. For years STV's principal own produced drama was Taggart on ITV, a show no longer on air. STV, though, remains ahead of the BBC in peak time in terms of its share of viewing - which is perceived to be too London-centric and has long invested in regional news in a way ITV does not. But its schedule is ITV's with regional variations. Other broadcasters could simply be transmitted from London as they are. Channel 4 and Sky are aired in Ireland; and neither broadcaster has a tradition of Scottish broadcasting, although Sky is a major employer at Livingston. So could the BBC, providing more competition for the nascent SBC. A likely scenario, then, is a situation where public service broadcasting is weakened between a small SBC and perhaps some BBC channels, while London based players like Rupert Murdoch's Sky are strengthened. A glance at television worldwide demonstrates that it is the largest broadcasters that have the budgets to produce the best television of their own - whether in Britain or America. Smaller European broadcasters struggle to produce international hits, and often buy in large quantities of US and to a lesser extent British shows and formats. That could mean the best deal for Scotland would be to stay as part of the BBC, but secure a clearer commitments in terms of opt outs and guaranteed spending.

Our Ireland correspondent Henry McDonald, who works between Dublin and Belfast, has sent us this:

If you happen to be one of the tens of thousands of southern Irish soccer fans who follow Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton or even Burnley (yes they do exist in the Republic) and you don't subscribe to Sky Sports you might feel slightly disenfranchised every football weekend. Unlike their non-Sky subscribing counterparts in Northern Ireland, southern supporters of English clubs don't have access to the BBC's live soccer coverage on Radio 5 Live and Radio 5 Live Extra. While followers of UK culture can tune in to Radios 4 and 3 if they live in Dublin, southern Irish internet users are blocked from listening to the BBC's live football games via the BBC iPlayer. The anomaly that while Radio 5Live and 5Extra are not part of the iPlayer package in the Republic, most television viewers in southern Ireland would have been able to watch last Sunday's League Cup final at Wembley live on BBC television. Those on satellite and cable service providers in the Republic have free access to the BBC's main channels despite no one south of the border with Northern Ireland paying the license fee. Only those in what is known as "Four Channel Land", ie the Irish license fee backed RTE 1, RTE 2, TV3 and TG4 (the Irish language channel), cannot tune into the BBC's television programmes. There exists another partition-anomaly on the island of Ireland regarding broadcast provision. The BBC's internet pages in Northern Ireland are free of any private sector advertising just as they are in the rest of the UK. However the commercial operation of the BBC overseas extends to the Republic where you will see private adverts on line in the web content the corporation provides. Moreover, the further south you travel in the Republic the more "detached" you become from Northern Ireland in terms of the BBC. In southern areas such as counties Waterford and Cork, viewers are more likely to pick up the BBC Wales coverage than BBC Northern Ireland.

Summary

The government of an independent Scotland is likely to strike a deal with the BBC and ministers in London to keep the BBC broadcasting across the UK, several well-placed sources have indicated in response to this Reality Check blog.

Detailed study of the financial and practical issues which would face a Scottish broadcasting corporation, working on its own with just Scottish licence fee income, appear to be so great that the Scottish National party agrees that retaining the BBC in some form would be necessary.

Senior sources have disclosed that discrete, unofficial talks between the Scottish government's advisers and the BBC about a future role after independence – assuming Scotland votes for it – have already started.

The current Scottish government position about relying heavily on a Scottish corporation may change by 2013.

One senior broadcasting source said he believed the BBC too was very keen to maintain its leading role as a broadcaster for all parts of Britain. That new role could be worked out in time for the new BBC charter in 2016, a suggestion debated by sneakyboy.

"There is no doubt the BBC will want to keep broadcasting to Scotland," the source said.

Although a Scottish broadcasting corporation could be run using a sum similar to the £325m estimated to come from TV licence fees in Scotland, it would be unlikely to afford more than a single full time TV channel or much original programming. Scottish voters would react badly to that, a point addressed by the commenter nationwide.

Based on the BBC's current spending, it would find it hard to duplicate the BBC's Scottish output without either a state subsidy, which could be unaffordable, or advertising, which would bring it into conflict with STV.

Although BBC Scotland produces opt-out programmes for BBC1 and BBC2, and funds BBC Radio Scotland and Radio nan Gaidheal, and part-funds BBC Alba, from its £102m allocation, the total costs of running BBC2 alone are £528m. That does not include the extra costs of running smartphone and tablet apps such as iPlayer.