The £21million investment in the Gaelic television channel, BBC Alba – or MG Aba, has seen the loss of almost a third of the channel’s audience in the four months since its launch.

Its early viewing figures were 610,000. This fell to 400,000 in November and December 2008 and BBC Scotland has just said that it expecte the figiure to fall to around 250,000.

The station was set up in response to intensive lobbying forom the Gaelic community after widespread alarm when the 2001 Census showed that the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland had fallen from 250,000 in 1881 (7% of the population) to an all-time low of 58,652 or 1.2% of the then population.

Given that figure, if the station achieved a regular audience of around 250,000 it would be a highly significant achievement. Cynics say that with part of the station’s programming including the screening of Scottish Premier League football matches, the anticipated bedrock of audience at 250,000 is not surprising. The historian Michael Fry is reported as saying wryly: ‘I expect you don’t need Gaelic to watch football’.

The restriction of the channel’s availability to transmission on Freesat and Virgin Media has, from the outset, been argued as obstructive to audience development. Alasdair Morrison, Chair of MG Alba, wants the channel to be made available immediately on Freeserve. He – and many others – believe that this would allow more people to watch the programmes.

Last year a national plan for Gaelic was launched, following a highly successful Welsh model which has seen the numbers of Welsh speakers rise from 18.7% of the population in the early 1900s to almost 21% of the population in 2001. This is credited to the introduction of the Welsh Language Act in 1993.