Rolf on art, Cliff on music?

Have broadcasters developed an itchy conscience about how they cover the arts? Judging by some defensive publicity campaigns, both BBC and Channel 4 feel they have a case to answer. Many people, myself included, received a 28-page glossy booklet from the BBC listing prestigious arts programmes in 2002, and inviting us to judge for ourselves whether the BBC was "failing" - as some, apparently, alleged - "to make programmes of range and distinction". Of course, if the BBC were doing its job in these fields, it would not need such a pamphlet.

Similarly, at a lunch sponsored by Channel 4 at the recent Canada House Conference on The Arts on Television, each seat bore a smaller leaflet titled, Who Said There's No Arts on Television? Well, who did? The French have a phrase for it: "Qui s'excuse, s'accuse." Or, in the English vernacular, "If the cap fits, wear it."

Executives at the conference admitted that the volume of arts coverage had fallen. David Elstein, chairman of the Screen Advisory Council, laid into the BBC, ITV and channels 4 and 5 for offering arts programming of lower quality, at the least watchable times, and less of it. Some executives conceded that the arts had been marginalised. But when it came to doing better in the future, doubts set in.

Look at the budgets involved. BBC Four - the much-vaunted arts channel - gets £34 million per year. But with average audiences of 16,000 per programme, this hardly looks like the BBC fulfilling its charter obligations as a mass broadcaster. It looks just like any other impoverished niche digital provider - like, for instance, Jeremy Isaacs's everstruggling Artsworld. Is that what the universal licence fee is for?

BBC Three - the much criticised youth channel - gets almost three times as much money as BBC Four. Such lopsided budgetary priorities don't look like a commitment to the arts. If I were Roly Keating, BBC Four's outgoing controller, I would start making a lot of noise about the BBC's public service remit as the charter review approaches. Keating, though, is caught in a bind. Having been starved of resources at BBC Four, he is now in charge of arguing the case for a charter renewal.

BBC Four is not the solution. The heart of the matter remains with the terrestrials, where commissioning editors are fixated on "the Rolf Harris experience". "How can you argue with audiences of five and seven million for Rolf on Art?" they demand.

Well, I don't. BBC 1 and 2 have always needed - and often found - great popularisers of difficult subjects, from Jacob Bronowski to Simon Schama. The question is whether Rolf Harris is to be the main word on art - and don't tell me that Alan Yentob's Imagine will act as a counterbalance. Yentob started out as a documentary maker before he became a BBC suit.

He is now being parachuted into barren arts terrain to profile, among others, his good friends Charles Saatchi and John Mortimer. Arts coverage-that lurches inconsistently between paintbrush Rolf and socialite Alan leaves yawning chasms of artists, experiences and ideas.

What next? Will the Rolf Experience be followed by Cliff Richard on Beethoven? Will audiences of five to seven million become the benchmark - a favourite word of TV planners - by which other arts programmes are judged? Having won such audiences, can they settle for less?

Other BBC assumptions are equally dangerous. First, because only seven per cent of the population call themselves "arts lovers" but 66 per cent say they "consume" the arts, the argument goes that arts coverage must change dramatically to accommodate the "missing" 60 per cent. In fact, the existence of a massive two thirds of the nation who "consume" the arts should be a justification for boosting the full range of arts coverage.