Must more mean worse on TV today?

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Ask viewers whether television is getting better or worse and, as often as not, they will look at you with incredulity and declare that it is not only getting worse but that there is now nothing worth watching. Did you see a single episode of Rockface on BBC1? As a parody of a soap melodrama it might have passed muster, but as a serious peaktime drama series? Four monks in sandals roped up with their own belts, descending what looked like the Eiger? Oh come on. But ask those who run broadcasting and they will tell you confidently that television is getting better. Both groups cannot be right, can they? Oddly enough they probably can. Viewers, of course, have always claimed that television isn't what it was. Those old enough to remember the televising of the 1953 Coronation have been saying it to one another since about 1955 when the arrival of commercial television in Britain was likened by Lord Reith, creator of the BBC, to the coming of bubonic plague.

However, when broadcasters insist that today television is getting better they generally mean that there is more of it than ever before; that transmission now continues 24 hours a day; that there are channels for film buffs showing nothing but films; that you can have the news whenever you want, day or night; and that, thanks to continuing technical advances, these improvements will continue, with diversity becoming yet greater, niche broadcasting serving ever more specialist interests, and the quantity of programming going up and up. Seen in those terms, it is hard to deny that television is getting better, although viewers on lower incomes might sniff at the idea that taking the best soccer, boxing and movie offerings away from the free-to-air networks and putting them on pay channels was somehow an improvement.

The odd thing is that television, which takes up more of our lives than anything except working and sleeping, is now in the middle of the biggest change it has ever undergone and yet we are paying hardly any attention to it. True, there has been some agonising over failures such as that of ONDigital, and rather a lot of starry-eyed nonsense in the technical press (where they really seem to believe that the average viewer is going to get on-line in the middle of a soap opera and start ordering up jewellery like that worn by the female lead, or re-playing a free kick from a different angle: sheer fantasy except for the rare computer nerd) yet remarkably little is being said about the more general effects of this great sea change.

The Independent Television Commission (ITC) is the government-appointed body responsible for overseeing commercial television in Britain and each year it issues a report on how things have been going on ITV1, Channel 4, Channel 5, and the other commercial stations. The tone of this year's report, which came out on Tuesday, was like that of a teacher who is obliged to admit that, in virtually every subject, the pupil has done rather badly yet manages in every case to look on the bright side and suggest that things may yet get better. In drama "There were fewer new series than in previous years ... soaps continue to be the mainstay of the schedules and remained highly popular ... but the proliferation on all channels is leadingto some lack of diversity."

Still, not to worry: "Some one-off dramas added variety." Similarly with arts programmes which the report admits are disappearing from peak-time viewing "with a 40 per cent decrease over the past four years". But never mind, "There was evidence of range and quality, with Channel 4 fulfilling its promise to 'broadcast projects of real scale' and to bring 'new thinking and fresh imagination to the arts' exemplified by Britten's opera Owen Wingrave and the visual-art series Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death."

The report could have pointed out that there was a time when ITV made splendid drama series such as The Jewel In The Crown. It could have noted that ITV (yes ITV, not Channel 4) used to offer its viewers four or five grand operas every year whereas today such a thing is unthinkable. Instead of the "not quite as good as we might have hoped" tone of its report on current affairs it could have contrasted the array of programmes in the 1970s and 1980s - World In Action, This Week, The Tuesday Documentary, Disappearing World and so on - with today's repetitive police car chases and CCTV out-takes.

Yet while true, this really misses the point, which is that the days of wavelength scarcity have gone and consequently the great days of paternalistic broadcasting also. Those of us who admired the BBC for hammocking Civilisation or The Ascent Of Man between a sitcom and a one-off drama, or for persisting in transmitting serious current affairs such as Panorama in peak time, have to face the fact that such nannyish activities, however benevolent, are simply not possible on the free-to-air terrestrial channels in the 21st century. Those channels are now driven totally by ratings requirements and will cease to compete, and therefore cease to exist, if they do not concentrate on maximising their audiences.

The broadcasters say that those of us who mourn the operas and the dramas which contained provocative thinking as well as entertainment should not mind this: we should move with the times, pay for digital TV, and learn to use the Electronic Programme Guide to take us to the Performance channel where Bryn Terfel performs extracts from Salome this evening, or to Jeremy Isaacs's Artsworld which tonight has programmes on Vermeer and on the music of Grieg, Bach, Handel and Mozart among others. History is on their side of course, and certainly there are still many nuggets to be found within today's great diversity, assuming you have the patience to look. Yet it is hard to shake off the feeling that an admirable and inspiring ideal is being nullified by modern technology.