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The latest report from the .

"Anyone know what this is about?" asked the man from the Scotsman.

It's the sort of question we all ask at the start of news conferences but a bizarre one when, in fact, the answer was us.

Friday's report from the Scottish Broadcasting Commission - the third and final one to be published - was about us, the people who make the news.

It's a disconcerting experience - more so, since only a handful of journalists seemed to want to hear the results of the Commission's latest foray into the state of the home-grown industry.

The headlines? That TV was the main source of news for most of the people surveyed, with newspapers, radio and online lagging behind.

Of course, like all surveys, it depends on who you ask and it'll be interesting to compare this report's findings with the survey commissioned by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Trust from Professor Anthony King.

Can online news - regarded by many as the great hope for the industry - really be the main source of news for a paltry 13-18 per cent of respondents?

The figures may give hope to TV news - in Scottish news terms, a two horse race between ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland and STV - but there are concerns.

Viewers don't like everything they see - in particular they find Scottish news obsessed with crime and sport.

There are also concerns about the reporting of UK-wide issues in post-devolution Scotland.

Equally, TV news editors dumb-down at their peril. These viewers are discerning. They want more analysis, not less.

Without prompting, programmes such as Newsnight Scotland and Eorpa, were cited as examples of the sort of programming they wanted to see more of.

In the case of Eorpa, not for its Gaelic content, but as a rare programme which places Scotland in a European context.

They have to prove they're not just a talking shop for those who make TV, or indeed watch it.

The biggest issue for viewers though was choice. They wanted more, not less.

Along the Scottish Border, they were particularly concerned about plans for a merger between Border TV and Tyne Tees - an issue currently being reviewed by ITV and Ofcom.

SMG plc has its own problems and says without money to plug a funding gap, their ability to compete with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ in news and current affairs is under threat.

It's already asking the Broadcasting Commission to lobby for guaranteed public funding for the services on its two Scottish licences.

So the Scottish Broadcasting Commission has work to do - and not just in summarising its recommendations for the first minister, who commissioned it in the first place.

Already there are some signs that its evidence is being listened to.

After an earlier report which suggested programme makers were mislabelling programmes, to up the quota of work produced in the regions, this week the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Trust announced it would no longer label network productions as Scottish or Welsh, but use the Ofcom definition "outside London".

Oooh. Tim Reid and I really rattled the Quo fans with our last posting.

Seems we are not big enough fans to "get" Francis Rossi's humour.

Watched it twice and still don't get it myself - and my mum always taught me it was rude to speak with a mouth full of sandwich!

The piece was meant to be light-hearted.

I spent four years enduring the work of Robert Burns at Glasgow University - I still prefer his predecessor Robert Fergusson;- and I certainly wasn't knocking Status Quo's lack of love for the Bard.

What I do question, is a festival with a very specific raison d'etre, choosing a headline act which had absolutely no connection with Robert Burns.

And if you saw the TV news report, you might also question the director's criteria "what would Robert Burns have chosen?" Surely that means anything goes?

Anyway, I wasn't at the gig on Saturday at Ayr Racecourse but I was in my old stomping ground in Wales where I hoped my old Western Mail colleagues might line up some suitable cultural activity.

Since I left Cardiff a decade ago, they've acquired the Millennium Centre, the Millennium stadium, and a host of new arty ventures.

So where did I find myself Saturday? Parked in front of the telly watching the Eurovision song contest.

Thanks to Mike and Derek - who not only threw the very entertaining party around the telly, but helped numb the pain with large amounts of alcohol.

And thanks to Allan Little, whose theory about voting patterns mapping the spread of modern immigration across Europe meant we could pretend we were engaged in important political discussion, rather than watching euro pap on the telly.

Fortunately, our cultural activity moved up a gear on Bank Holiday Monday - with a visit to the Hay Festival.

It is the first time I've been back in 11 years - and it's changed dramatically.

Now celebrating its 21st birthday, it's at least five times the size of the festival I last attended, with umpteen shops and stalls as well as the main performance tents.

They have a great lineup - former US President Jimmy Carter, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Jamie Oliver, John Irving, Jeremy Clarkson and Jools Holland among them - but it is hard not to pine for the intimacy of the earlier Hay festivals where the site was small enough to bump into writers, either on site or in any of the bookshops in town (the new site is now so far from Hay itself, you have to take a shuttle bus).

As well as the author events, I remember a party in the local primary school with the Liverpool poets - to which most of Hay were invited; trying on a hat in a local shop and having Edwina Currie suddenly offer fashion advice (like her tips on eggs, taken with a pinch of salt), phoning through copy to the local newspaper from the pub payphone, embarassed because Ian Hyslop was eavesdropping and it included a diary item about him.

The highlight was always the events - but spotting the authors around town always added to the experience - and I'm not sure that happens so often now Hay has grown up.

That said, no one was hanging around yesterday. The place was a mudbath, torrential rain was pouring through any gaps in the tents and the handpainted deckchairs where abandoned on the lawn.

Mid Wales fire brigade had been out the day before, although a non plussed President Jimmy Carter refused to cancel his event, commenting only that he hoped it was similarly wet back in his farm in Georgia.

Equally at home was the gardening expert Monty Don, in his first public appearance since he stepped down as presenter of Gardeners' World.

Asked about his health, he said he expected to make a full recovery and wouldn't miss the burden of TV's long hours.

Instead, he planned to spend some time "just pottering around". Good luck with the pottering, Monty. And hopefully the weather will get better in Hay before the week is out.

I have to make a confession here. Sometimes, I can't be everywhere at once.

And on occasions, it is a colleague, not me, on the other end of an TV or radio interview.

It is known in TV world as "a legging job" - and no one likes doing them.

Not least, my esteemed colleague Tim Reid, who agreed to swap weightier Westminster matters for a sit down interview with Francis Rossi of Status Quo.

The band are headlining this year's - to raised eyebrows everywhere.

I wanted Tim to find out if Francis and co, knew any Burns poetry, or knew why they'd been picked to headline the festival.

Between bites of his sandwich, a grumpy and defensive Rossi (the PR tells us he had a fallout with band members just before the interview) said he had no idea why the band had been selected.

He'd followed the rants in the press from Burns purists and reckoned they had a point.

Pressed on his knowledge of the Bard, Rossi said he thought he recalled one poem from his ex-mother in law's bathroom wall - "the spider jobbie, if at first you don't succeed" - which sounds to me more like Robert the Bruce than Robert Burns.

Our man in London - a proud expatriate - tried to offer some Burns poetry to break the ice, but found his advances rebuffed. Sorry Tim, I'll do my own dirty work next time!

Legging the Ayrshire bit of the filming meant I got to meet the winners of Ayrplay - the festival's new competition for young unsigned bands.

As festival director Michael McDade points out, Robert Burns' reputation for wine, women and song, means he'd have been right at home in the Spiegeltent in Wellington Square, where Cumbernauld band White Ace won the title.

Their prize - to play the biggest gig they've played so far, warming up for Status Quo at Ayr Racecourse. Go guys.

Actors aren't exactly renowned for their selfless behaviour, but do believe everything you read about Drumchapel's James McAvoy.

The star of Atonement and The Last King of Scotland, is currently filming on location in Germany for the Tolstoy biopic The Last Station but was so incensed at planned cutbacks at his alma mater - the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama - he insisted on setting aside time on set with the backup film crew to record a special message of support.

Not only that, but while accepting an award in London last weekend, he not only dedicated the honour to the RSAMD - but to the First Minister Alex Salmond to intervene in the funding crisis.

Unfortunately his cry of "come on Alec, you know what to do" left most London journalists baffled, and desperately trying to find out the identity of James's mystery man.

I'm Pauline McLean and I'll be bringing you my view from the South Bank... of the River Clyde.

I've been ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland's arts correspondent for 11 years now - definitely one of the more pleasant jobs in Scotland.

Unlike newspapers, where I spent most of my early career, radio and television require you to meet your interviewees in person - so I get to travel the length and breadth of the country too.

There are plenty of behind the scenes stories - which only my closest family and friends normally get to hear about - but this blog might allow me to pass on some of the little snippets and insights that don't always make ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ news.

A bit about me. I've wanted to be a journalist since I was 14. At 15, I persuaded the editor of one of the two local papers in my home town of Dumbarton, to give me a job, freelancing on the Flourish, the monthly newspaper for the archdiocese of Glasgow.

These days, it's a priests-only operation but back then it had a string of lay-people writing and I got the chance to write about everything from church fetes to anti-drugs campaigns.

Realising, even at that tender age, the restrictions of the genre, I lobbied the other local newspaper editor for a job and got myself regular holiday shifts on the Dumbarton Reporter for the best part of five years, while I did a degree in English and Scottish literature at Glasgow University.

In 1989, I landed my dream job - while still studying at university - as pop columnist for the Evening Times, writing a weekly column about the Glasgow pop scene.

Endless gigs, LPs (it was a long time ago) and interviews with all my favourite singers - among them Eddi Reader, Sharleen Spiteri, James Grant, Edwyn Collins and Roddy Frame.

I was ousted by Bryan Burnett - but I forgive him as I would never have got my degree otherwise.

I did a postgraduate in journalism at University of Wales, College of Cardiff, returned to Scotland for a couple of years to work in local papers, and then returned to Wales for five years to work for its national newspaper The Western Mail.

I was arts editor there in 1997 when at least seven of my friends faxed or posted (no e-mail then!) the advert for my current job - the first full-time arts correspondent in ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland's history. I got the job, and the rest is my history.

I'm married with a three year old son, so life is a little hectic, but I hope to be able to find the time to share some of the behind the scenes stories of my job.