Under half of the production team who make The Traitors are based in Scotland, the BBC has admitted.
BBC Scotland director Hayley Valentine has revealed the number of Scots crew working on the show has only increased by around 10 in the last year.
She insisted she does not know the total number of crew members involved in the production, which the BBC counts as Scottish despite not meeting key guidelines set by the broadcasting industry regulator.
Giving evidence at a House of Commons committee, Ms Valentine suggested there was too much of a focus on how many Scots worked on the show and raised concerns that criticism of the BBC could put other productions off filming in Scotland.
She insisted the Scottish screen industry did not have the “ready-made skillset” available to make The Traitors when it first went into production in 2022, but said the available talent pool to make high-quality reality series in Scotland had been transformed by The Traitors.
Ofcom counts productions as Scottish if they meet two out of three criteria – having a “substantive base” in Scotland, spending at least 70% of the production budget outside London and ensuring at least 50% of the off-screen talent budget is spent outside London.
The BBC last year insisted it wanted to “go beyond” Ofcom’s criteria in future for the commissioning of new shows made in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
However Ms Valentine insisted the BBC would continue to make an “exception” for shows like The Traitors, which is made by the London-based production company Studio Lambert, because of the wider benefits they generate.
Research commissioned for the BBC last year revealed that The Traitors had been worth more than £21.8m for the Scottish economy since it went into production. More than 750 jobs are said to have been supported at Ardross Castle, north of Inverness.
Ms Valentine was giving evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committee days after the finale of the latest series of The Traitors.
She revealed that 800,000 viewers had tuned in from Scotland for the finale, out of an overall audience of 9.4 million - the BBC’s biggest overnight audience since the finale of the celebrity edition of The Traitors in November.
However the BBC has come in for regular criticism for not ensuring that more Scots get the opportunity to work on the show.
Ms Valentine said: “The vast majority of our productions do qualify (as Scottish) based on those spend criteria. They are clearly what we feel are meaningful in terms of putting money into the economy.
“We have said that from now on productions that qualify on base (substantive) base only will be the exception rather than the rule.
“I’m not saying there are not certain productions where the think the wider benefit to Scotland is huge and there is a really strong case to say this, particularly in the initial setting up of the production when it doesn’t qualify on the other criteria.
“We are not saying never, but we are saying we are looking very hard at it and it will absolutely be by exception that something qualifies (as Scottish) without spending significant amounts of money in Scotland.
“We are absolutely committed to spending money in Scotland, and developing talent and careers in Scotland.”
Ms Valentine said the Scottish screen industry was much better placed to take advantage of new reality series that want to film in Scotland as a result of the Traitors due to the "career progression" it had provided over the last four years.
She added: “There are specific skills required to make this kind of programme.
"The Traitors is not just a general entertainment programme. It's a very specific sort of reality programme.
"We are not short of talent in Scotland. But what we didn’t have before The Traitors was that ready-made skillset. We have developed that skillset over the last four years.
"The Traitors story is about massive growth and development of the Scottish sector, and of raw talent versus training and development. A big number of Scottish people now have The Traitors on their CVs.
"Companies all over the world will be thinking about the next reality series format. People will be sitting in their offices thinking ‘Scotland can do this’. Scotland didn’t have that skillset to start with, but it does now."
Ms Valentine suggested Scots were now working in “relatively senior roles” on The Traitors who had come from the ranks on the various series, with more than 70 Scottish-based crew working on the most recent series.
Ms Valentine was asked to provide the total number of people who were now working on the show.
She said: “I’m sorry, I don’t have that figure. It’s not meeting the 50% criteria for the staff working on it. It’s clearly more than double that (70) altogether.
“But 70 is a big number and the truth with something like The Traitors is that it is spending a huge amount of money, not just directly on the production of the programme. Our economic impact report found that 750 people have worked in the industry because of The Traitors.”
Ms Valentine was asked about the "pathway" to ensuring The Traitors meets Ofcom's 50% regional production criteria for spending on off-screen talent.
She said: "We are developing and training staff all the time. It may not get there. We hope it does, but it may not.
"The overall numbers and the broader sense of what it is doing for Scotland mean I would continue to make an exception for The Traitors."
Luke McCullough, corporate affairs director at BBC Scotland, added: "It's worth remembering that the 50% of production talent is a spend figure, not a number of people figure."
Ms Valentine suggested the special treatment offered to The Traitors had been justified due to the global reach of the show, which has expanded into American and celebrity editions, which are also filmed at Ardross Castle.
She added: “It’s the biggest hit on British TV at the moment. It’s a huge hit we have right here in Scotland. It’s doing great business for the Highlands.
“If someone had said to me if I would make an exception for The Traitors on condition that the skillset grows and the ability of Scottish people to move up through the ranks of that programme grows, which they are clearly doing, I would say ‘yes, absolutely’.
“It is important to be flexible. There is a lot of nuance in this. I understand it, but some of the reporting in the papers is fairly black and white on what we do. It is a complex picture.
“I have said it over and over again publicly. Scotland is open for business. Come here and develop an idea and we will make it work. If you can’t meet the criteria the first time round there is a little bit of flex, if we think it is worth it for broader reasons.
“I think there has been a danger over the last year that the debate around The Traitors could have put people off coming here.
"There is a public risk around saying ‘we don’t want this big, massive success here because it is not doing that one thing that we want it to do’. We need to get our heads up and have broad minds about what Scottish success looks like.”
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