The toughest job - making politics sexy

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the words "politics" and "politicians"? Earlier this autumn the BBC commissioned a survey that posed this question to 500 people across the country, most of them under 40.

The results astounded Sian Kevill, editor of Newsnight and the BBC executive responsible for the survey. "What shocked me was that not one single respondent gave a positive answer," she says. "Nobody said it was about transforming the world, or changing things for the better." Instead, the answers ranged from the neutral ("government", "political parties" and so on) to the downright hostile, such as "a bunch of liars" and "they're in it only for what they can get out of it".

The survey confirmed what Kevill had long suspected: that the gulf between politicians and the political media on the one hand, and the public on the other, has become far wider than the chatterati realise - not least many in the upper reaches of the BBC. For the past 10 weeks, she has been conducting an inquiry on behalf of Greg Dyke, the director-general, designed to reshape the way the BBC covers politics. Her report, due to land on Dyke's desk in the new year, looks certain to provoke shock waves throughout the corporation - though whether its formidable bureaucracy will change its ways or simply absorb the shock waves and carry on as before remains in doubt.

Kevill argues that three big things have changed. The first is the structure of power.

"People don't know where decisions are made these days. There's not just Westminster, but also Europe and devolution, and also globalisation." Beyond that, a huge generational divide has emerged. "The over-50s remember the way postwar politics brought big changes. They grew up seeing how government could be a force for good. The under-40s are very different. They don't buy in to the political conventions of their parents and don't take so much notice of what politicians say. Their attitude to politics is simultaneously more passive and more demanding. Neither the parties nor the media have really come to grips with this."

Finally, big economic and social changes, such as the decline of safe jobs and big factories, have reinforced this generational shift in ways that the executives of large, stable media corporations simply do not understand. These changes were stressed by Richard Sennett, professor of sociology at the London School of Economics, in a keynote speech to a private seminar on Monday at Broadcasting House, when 50 BBC executives - along with 50 politicians, academics, business leaders and communications experts - were given their first glimpse into Kevill's research.

Sennett described what happened in 1996 when a New York Times reporter "broke" the story that 30 million American work-ers had lost their jobs over 10 years because their companies had "downsized" their labour force. This revelation was greeted with amazement by the paper's editorial board, "as though he were bringing news from another planet".

HOW does Kevill propose correcting old failings? She says the BBC needs to experiment more imaginatively - "not only new kinds of programmes, but new ways of presenting information in existing programmes. We have been doing politics the same way for too long."

This kind of thinking makes some in the BBC's news and current-affairs fiefdoms extremely nervous. No political programme on the traditional channels - BBC1, BBC2 and Radio 4 - is likely to escape unscathed. Some may change radically. Kevill refuses to criticise specific programmes ahead of her final report, although traditionalists may be alarmed to learn that she speaks highly of some innovative political coverage on Radio 1 and Five Live. Other BBC insiders predict turbulent times next year for Question Time, On The Record, Breakfast with Frost and possibly the main Six and Ten O'Clock news bulletins.

Kevill's report will also recom-mend that, if the BBC is to be serious about reconnecting politics to everyday life, it must broaden the agenda of non-political programmes, too - soaps, drama and light entertainment - in order to reach people who switch over whenever anything labelled "politics" appears on their screen.

Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, thinks the BBC may be heading down the wrong track. "My advice is: don't panic," he says. "The worst thing it could do is to dumb down in search of bigger audiences. All the terrestrial channels have this problem: they are trying to defend a diminishing asset, as more and more view-ers turn to specialist channels. ITN has a huge problem as it's under pressure to maximise audience to hand on to ITV's next light-entertainment programme. It would be very dangerous for the BBC to go down this route. Even if audiences are declining, it still has a special authority and a duty, from the way it is financed, to continue being serious about politics."

Dumbing down? Not necessarily, says Kevill. She cites Bob Geldof - now a successful impresario of independently produced current-affairs programmes through his company Ten Alps - who sought her out last month.

She recalls: "When we met, he was insistent that the worst thing to do in order to reach young people was to be gimmicky. They want serious information that's relevant to them, not gimmicks."

It is a fair bet that Dyke will embrace most, if not all, of Kevill's recommendations. However, for things to change, far more is needed than the director-general's endorsement. This was brought home to me during this year's General Election when I analysed the campaign for Channel 4 News. I found the programme far more innovative and open to fresh ideas than News-night had been when I performed the same function for it in 1992 and 1997.

It wasn't that Channel 4 News had recruited a different breed of editors and producers. Most had come from Newsnight, including its editor, Jim Gray. The difference was that they were no longer ensnared by the BBC's restrictive culture, with its absurdly detailed "producers' guidelines" and layers of twitchy managers. Indeed, the Channel 4 management was positively keen on precisely the kind of experimental coverage that Kevill is now advocating for the BBC.

What of Kevill herself ? One option is for her to return to Newsnight and apply her new ideas to her own programme. But that would surely be second best, both for herself and for the BBC. If there is one key test of Dyke's commitment to change, it will be to give her real executive clout to implement her ideas as part of a wider strategy to loosen the corporation's culture.