Remember what Channel 4 is for

If you want to see penises on television, Channel 4 is by far your best bet. Graham Norton can be relied upon to show a todger or 10 on his show, and then there's Eurotrash. Unfortunately the channel is between series on the porn industry just at the moment, but if the new chief executive of Channel 4 wants to unveil himself in the style of his new outfit, then he only has to drop his Daks.

Apart from rehabilitating the male organ to a public position unacceptable since the saucy murals were painted in Pompeii, what else is Channel 4 for? Where is the ground- breaking drama? Where the governmenttumbling investigations? Where the pushing back of the boundaries of televisual art? Where the celebration of the intellect or the excitement of the passions? In short, where are all the things that I thought Channel 4 was set up to do?

That leather-on-marble noise you can hear right now is the sound of the Channel 4 publicists running for their word-processors. Last month (they will remind me), at the Bafta awards ceremony in London, Channel 4 walked off with 11 prizes - including Best Comedy Programme, Best Situation Comedy, Best Documentary, Best News and Current Affairs Journalism and Best Drama Serial - while the BBC, for all its channels, managed only six. So what is my problem, eh?

Well, in the first place, if Channel 4 gets anywhere near the same number of awards next year then I'm Bin Laden's batman. In 2000 the channel scored with just about every shot. So far in 2001 only the Brass Eye on paedophilia stands out as being what the channel was set up to do: to innovate, to amaze, to risk boring the viewer witless, to satisfy the otherwise unsatisfied needs of viewers. To boldly go where no one else wanted to go. To do the things that ITV wouldn't do because it wouldn't risk its audience and that the BBC couldn't do because it wouldn't risk the God-almighty row that might ensue.

There is hardly any drama of any sort now. The arts coverage is the Turner Prize. Politics doesn't really feature at all outside election time. No foreign-language films grace the screen. There are no kids' programmes. Big Breakfast is dying by its lock, Big Brother can surely now only interest the anoraks, unless murder or intercourse can be made to happen in the next series. As for Richard and Judy, there is only so much irony in the world. I tune in for Time Team, Frasier and The Sopranos.

Channel 4 doesn' t care, because I'm too old. Three years ago, the conscious decision was taken to make Channel 4 the channel of youth - not the channel of innovation that the first chief executive, Jeremy Isaacs, had wanted, nor yet the channel of diversity that Mrs Thatcher envisaged when she set it up in 1982. Her belief was that a channel which employed nearly no one itself, but that commissioned all its material-from independent producers, would be leaner than the old broadcasters (it is) and would mean the Heinekenlike servicing of minority interests. By that she meant caravanners and steam-engine enthusiasts, while Isaacs meant intellectuals and lesbians.

The Broadcasting Act stipulated that Channel 4 must provide innovative programmes and remain committed to diversity and originality. Since then this has been its Unique Selling Point. The BBC is a national institution and - in many mysterious ways - is accountable to the nation. ITV is the gloriously commercial, mainstream channel. All the little cable channels cater for whoever they can persuade to buy them. Channel 4 innovates.

Outgoing chief executive Michael Jackson claimed a few weeks ago that Channel 4 had "broken through the mundane and formulaic nature of most modern television to capture the public's imagination". And certainly his figures have - till now - looked good. In 2000 his share of total television viewing was 10.5 per cent, up two per cent from 1999, and his share of viewing in multi-channel homes was up 0.3 per cent at 7.2 per cent. One City analyst recently estimated Channel 4 as being worth up to £3 billion, should the Government ever want to sell it off. Up to now, however, the Government has resisted the Conservative call for this particular privatisation.

But will it always? True, Jackson's figures will look worse as soon as the ad recession kicks in, and there have been redundancies at Horseferry Road. Even so, the Government, looking at its revenue problems and the possible need to raise taxes to fund the NHS, may well want to revisit this question. What is it, exactly, that Channel 4 does that would make its dilution an unacceptable loss?

At this moment, not very much. Jackson's claims on programming - apart from indicating a certain jaundice with the limitations of the medium - are based on not much more than Big Brother. Take it out, and what "public imagination" do you have left? Documentaries on how things get sunk, blown up, shot down or incinerated. Willies. Mummies. There's nothing really on disabilities, nothing substantial on race, and before 11 September very little that was serious and current at all. Seriousness has actually been the great risk in TV, and Channel 4 has dodged it. So why should the Government forgo a few billion just to keep a niche youth broadcaster in the semi-public sector? The Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, has already forced the BBC back to its corporate drawing board over its planned BBC3 digital youth channel.

This is easily dealt with by the new boss. All he has to do is to embrace a bit of highprofile, expensive, innovative seriousness. In the new post-World Trade Center world, he can say, Channel 4 has an extraordinary opportunity to explore the ideas and movements of the new millennium. Oh - plus a fanny or two, because that really would be new.