Media in Dundee has been an integral part of the city's history, particularly print media. Dundee has long been known for its Jute, Jam & Journalism, with the latter the only remaining industry of the three still present in the city. The city and surrounding area's main newspaper The Courier has been a fixture of Dundee life, still printed in the city, since 1801.
Dundee also has a number of regional radio stations and has local production facilities for the BBC and STV.
The main newspapers of Dundee are The Courier (daily) and the Evening Telegraph , both printed six days a week by D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd. The free newspaper Metro and a local edition of the Record PM are widely available in the city. Dundee is also home to one of Scotland's most popular Sunday papers, the Sunday Post, and various magazines such as The People's Friend and children's comics, such as The Beano. Former comics published in Dundee include The Dandy.
For over forty years, Grampian Television maintained a base in Dundee for newsgathering and advertising sales purposes, covering Tayside and north east Fife. Since January 2007, the station (now known as STV North) has produced and broadcast a nightly opt-out bulletin for the area, within the regional news programme STV News at Six - originally from studios in Harbour Chambers and since 2008, from expanded facilities at Seabraes.
BBC Scotland also have a base in Dundee's city centre. BBC Dundee is mainly used for news operations for both television and radio services.
For a few years, Dundee was also home to its own Restricted Service Licence television channel Channel Six Dundee.
The city is the base for two commercial radio companies; Radio Tay, which has two stations, Tay FM and Greatest Hits Radio Tayside & Fife, and Wave 102. Dundee also has a base for BBC Scotland's radio service Radio Scotland. Due to its close proximity to the Central Belt, it is also possible in Dundee to receive Heart Scotland, Capital FM Scotland, Kingdom FM and Forth 1.
Dundee is Scotland's fourth-largest city and the 51st-most-populous built-up area in the United Kingdom. The mid-year population estimate for 2016 was 148,210, giving Dundee a population density of 2,478/km2 or 6,420/sq mi, the second-highest in Scotland. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea. Under the name of Dundee City, it forms one of the 32 council areas used for local government in Scotland.
Fife is a council area, historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland. It is situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth, with inland boundaries with Perth and Kinross and Clackmannanshire. By custom it is widely held to have been one of the major Pictish kingdoms, known as Fib, and is still commonly known as the Kingdom of Fife within Scotland. A person from Fife is known as a Fifer. In older documents the county was very occasionally known by the anglicisation Fifeshire.
Grampian Television was the original name of the Channel 3 service for the north of Scotland founded in 1961 and now named STV. The northern region's coverage area includes the Northern Isles, Western Isles, Highlands Grampian, Tayside, and parts of north Fife.
DC Thomson is a media company based in Dundee, Scotland. Founded by David Couper Thomson in 1905, it is best known for publishing The Dundee Courier, The Evening Telegraph and The Sunday Post newspapers, and the comics Oor Wullie, The Broons, The Beano, The Dandy and Commando. It also owns the Aberdeen Journals Group which publishes the Press and Journal. The company owns several websites, including Findmypast, and owned the now defunct social media site Friends Reunited.
Wave FM was a radio station broadcasting to the cities of Dundee and Perth, Scotland. In June 2020 the Wave FM branding was removed and replaced by Pure Radio 'coming soon' messages. Pure Radio replaced Wave FM on 6 July 2020.
Tay FM is an Independent Local Radio station serving Dundee, Perth and Tayside in Scotland. The station is owned by and operated by Bauer and forms part of the Hits Radio network.
Greatest Hits Radio Tayside & Fife is an Independent Local Radio station based in Dundee, Scotland, owned and operated by Bauer as part of the Greatest Hits Radio network. It broadcasts to Dundee, Perth and Tayside.
The Courier is a newspaper published by DC Thomson in Dundee, Scotland. As of 2013, it is printed in six regional editions: Dundee, Angus & The Mearns, Fife, West Fife, Perthshire, and Stirlingshire. However, by 2020 this had been reduced to three regional editions for Perth and Perthshire; Angus and Dundee and Fife. In the months July to December 2019 the average daily circulation of the Courier was 30,179 copies.
Dudley Dexter Watkins was an English cartoonist and illustrator. He is best known for his characters Oor Wullie and The Broons; comic strips featuring them have appeared in Scottish newspaper The Sunday Post since 1936, along with annual compilations. Watkins also illustrated for comics such as The Beano, The Dandy, The Beezer and Topper, and provided illustrations for Christian stories. Watkins was posthumously inducted into the British Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2015.
Television in Scotland mostly consists of UK-wide broadcasts, with regional variations at different times which are specific to Scotland. The BBC and ITV networks both began broadcasting in the country during the 1950s. There were further expansions in the early 1960s with the arrival of Grampian, Border and BBC2 television.
North Tonight was a Scottish nightly regional news programme covering the North of Scotland, produced by STV North.
Radio Tay is a group of two Independent Local Radio stations serving Tayside and northeast Fife in Scotland. Radio Tay is owned and operated by Bauer Radio, based at studios at 6 North Isla Street in Dundee and forms part of Bauer’s Hits Radio and Greatest Hits Radio network of local stations.
Scottish media has a long and distinct history. Scotland has a wide range of different types and quality of media.
STV is a Scottish free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the STV Group. It is made up of the Central Scotland and Northern Scotland Channel 3 public broadcaster licences, formerly known as Scottish Television and Grampian Television respectively.
Media in Aberdeen have long been published or broadcast. The main newspaper of the city and the surrounding area, the Press and Journal, has been made and printed in the city since 1748, making it Scotland's oldest newspaper.
Original 106 is a radio station owned by DC Thomson and broadcasting to Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. It was initially owned by Canadian media company Canwest, and was awarded its broadcast licence in January 2007 and the station launched on 28 October 2007 at 1:06 pm, when the first record played was "Revolution" by The Beatles. On 12 September 2009 the station was sold to a consortium led by Adam Findlay which included John Quinn and Murray Strachan. Adam Findlay's New Wave Media owned Dundee radio station Wave 102, John Quinn is the majority shareholder and chairman of Central FM, a station which covers the Forth Valley in the Central Belt. On 20 March 2019 it was announced that the publisher DC Thomson, which already owned Wave FM in Dundee, had bought the Fife-based Kingdom FM and Original 106 taking its tally of radio stations to three.
Ron Thomson MBE was a Scottish journalist.
STV News is a Scottish news division produced by STV. The news department produces two regional services covering STV's Channel 3 franchise areas of Northern and Central Scotland.
Tayside House was an office block development in the city centre area of Dundee. The building served as the headquarters for Tayside Regional Council and its successor organisation following local government reorganisation, Dundee City Council. Tayside Police leased part of the building, which formed the city centre police station.
Bridge FM is an independent hospital radio station which is currently based in Ninewells Hospital in Dundee, Scotland that was launched in 1952. The radio station airs 24 hours a day with a range of music and talk show programmes.
