Without backing, Panorama is dead

The trouble with Panorama, people round the country have told me, is that at 10.15pm on Sunday it's on at the wrong time. And, claiming they used to watch regularly, they add "it's not the programme it used to be?. I'll come to content later, but they are right about the timing. What is still (just) asserted to be the flagship current-affairs programme ought to be on BBC1 week in, week out at prime time. A viewing must, if you're at home.

The trouble for BBC schedulers, though, is that this reintrusion threatens their entertainmentratings battle with ITV - and to heck with public-service commitments to content. And things could get worse. When I raised this "graveyard" time slot with Greg Dyke, BBC director general, (at Robin Day's funeral two years ago) he replied: "Oh God, what are you going to say when I cut it to half an hour?"

That amputation is still in abeyance, although last Sunday you might have been forgiven for wondering. Where was the programme that might have dealt with the intensifying debate about Iraq or the Earth Summit? Season not started, they say, (it's limited to 32 a year) and so we had a non-Panorama Diana look-back.

Obviously, TV technology has been many times revolutionised since Panorama began in 1953, providing most people's "window on the world?. With satellite video phones and uplinks, events worldwide have an immediacy that almost brings viewer fatigue.

But news itself, however well-reported and resourced, is not enough to explain and understand the issues of the day. And in-depth discussion or uncomfortable investigation of the type many viewers expect should not be shoved out to the margins of the schedules, still less dumped on so-called "genre? channels hardly watched by anyone.

The further trouble with hiding current affairs away is that the argument that it depresses the ratings becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The remoter the programme seems from people's everyday habits, the fewer people watch it. And so they catch only the odd Panorama, perhaps miss the good ones, and then gossip that the programme is not what it was.

This neglect means that bright reporters no longer fight to get on the flagship, and so the withering on the vine continues. Put it back to 8pm or even 9pm on Monday nights, and viewers could test whether there had been such a fall-off in standards as they suspect, and, if so, create more fuss about it with the likes of Dyke. Not so long ago, one of the many editions during the miners' strike, say, would light up the BBC switchboard with reaction.

I wrote all the above before getting down to read Richard Lindley's scintillating book commemorating the programme's first 50 years, and now that I have read it, it wouldn't change much. His own conclusion is more cutting.

" Casuistry, double speak," he says of the BBC's defence of upping the cash but cutting back the number of programmes. And of the decision to put four of the year's total out on weekdays, he mocked Lorraine Heggessey, controller of BBC1, asking whether it meant wanting "a few really popular Panorama programmes-which she hopes will not damage the evening's viewing figures too much and will, at the same time, demonstrate that Panorama has not altogether been banished from weekday peak time?.

With BBC neglect has come the disappearance of its rivals, such as World in Action and This Week, leaving, alone in mainstream peak time, Tonight with Trevor McDonald, alongside the relentless rise of "infotainment?. British TV, as we know, does nothing so well as outdo its rivals' abdication of public-service current affairs.

Lindley's suggestion is to reinvent in prime time, drop the single-item show for a multi-item magazine format with experienced, preferably charismatic, and regularly appearing reporters. Above all, he writes with a sting, giving such a programme sufficient money and people and slots, the BBC would "add to its reputation for public-service broadcasting, which remains its only justification for the licence fee?.

But Whither is only Lindley's last chapter. His chronicle of 50 years of achievement and crisis is clear-eyed. He succeeds in explaining what Panorama has been mainly trying to do in our democracy - to inform more deeply and to expose, if necessary, what the powerful and the rich don't want you to know.

Panorama has always been more than politics. That other noses get put out is here described in fury from the drugs industry to the medical profession, the nuclear industry to the church and teachers, even the Royal family over the unforgettable Diana interview. In my view, providing the programme strove mightily to get it right, that's all as it should be.

The list indicates the rich vein of programming that should be pressed forward with - yes to human-interest stories where they have nationwide significance and no to celeb-style interviews, such as the one with Louise Woodward.

Lindley's access to hitherto private BBC internal correspondence reveals both personality insights and the headaches, not to say convulsions, a programme like this causes the BBC grandees.

Sometimes they were stalwart. but there was cravenness, too, which blew the Carrickmore filming of an IRA " roadblock? out of all proportion, a squelching of a security-services programme by Ian Trethowan, and, finally, John Birt's dismal record of pulling, and deferring, possibly in self-censoring fear of offending the government, a handful of Panoramas.

Although Panorama has largely seemed to the viewer a male preserve, it is an irony that there are two women to put things right. One is Ms Heggessey who has earned her ratings spurs. The other is Jana Bennett, the new managing director, television, who has a serious programme background. Go to it.

? Panorama - Fifty years of Pride and Paranoia, by Richard Lindley, is published by Politico's, £18.99.

Fred Emery left The Times as acting editor to present and report for Panorama, 1978-92.