BBC Radio Scotland Breakfast review: A promising debut - but please ditch the WhatsApp notes

In an era of fast-moving audience fragmentation, a strong, identifiable news brand is worth its weight in gold. But the shake-up - part of wider, contentious changes at the station - is designed to freshen things up, with Pacific Quay promising a programme that is more pacy, informal and conversational than its predecessor.

Such buzzwords understandably led to fears that Scottish audiences would be asked to make do with a frothier, magazine-style show. But if the promising first episode is anything to go by, the changes have been kept to a minimum.

Helmed by veteran broadcasters Martin Geissler and Laura Maciver, with Phil Goodlad providing sports coverage, the inaugural show revealed minor tweaks to the breakfast show format. There were fewer stories touched on, but those that were warranted coverage that was mostly in-depth and insightful.

There was a deep dive into the future of Grangemouth and the wider energy sector - a timely issue ahead of a momentous Budget - with the programme taking different approaches. A union representative spoke of what has happened to the Grangemouth workers that were made redundant in April, for example, while the Port of Aberdeen’s chief executive reflected on a downturn in oil and gas business.

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The same strategy worked well when it came to the Ukraine peace talks, and demonstrated the show is willing and able to cover major international stories without simply ‘putting a kilt’ on it.

A thoughtful interview between Geissler and Euan MacDonald, a veteran Scottish broadcaster who has worked in Kyiv for more than two decades, was later followed by a segment featuring Andrei Ostalski, an analyst and former editor of the BBC Russian Service.

The most high-profile segment of the three-hour programme was an interview with Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, conducted by Geissler with the same robustness and curiosity shown during his stint on The Sunday Show and before that, The Nine. There were, however, no major news lines to emerge from the one-on-one.

The three hosts complemented one another well, occasionally veering off to chat about stories or issues, without it ever becoming couthy or try-hard. The mix of topics was broad and well judged, although some segments around time-honoured staples - hello, littering - ran on a little too long.

Less successful, however, were the repeated prompts for audience input and interaction, especially the requests for listeners to send in voice notes via WhatsApp. It was nearly an hour-and-a-half before the first such recording was aired, courtesy of a listener called Tess, who had switched over from the Today programme.

“I hope you won’t be cutting people off short like they do,” she said “We’ll see how it goes.”

We will indeed, Tess. But as far as a maiden outing goes, the new show got more right than it did wrong.

If anything, it had echoes of the much lauded weekend Good Morning Scotland programme from around a decade or so ago, which covered national and international affairs with aplomb and imagination. That bodes well for the future.