Are we witnessing the dumbing-up of television?

After a decade of round-the-clock 'reality' TV shows and schedules hijacked by home and fashion makeover shows, can we really be witnessing a dumbing up of terrestrial television? Tonight sees the return of News at Ten, while last night, BBC 1's schedules included an entertaining adaptation of Flora Thompson's Victorian rural drama, Lark Rise to Candleford, the final episode of Andrew Davies's delightful Sense and Sensibility adaptation and the classy Glenn Close legal drama Damages. Cranford enjoyed audiences to match anything else on TV when it was on. Meanwhile, Big Brother has been exiled to E4. It is true that we are still stuck with a very inferior version of Panorama, and there remains a lot of dross in the schedules; but these must be hopeful signs that the TV bosses have recognised that they underestimated the intelligence of their viewers for too long, and must now make amends. Exiles to BBC 4 should now be free to return to the mainstream (at least occasionally).

Today's telly

Bryan Forbes captures the truth about far too much of today's terrestrial television - especially BBC2 and Channel 4 - magnificently in this week's Spectator:

In my list of television hates I include that survivor from Blackadder who endlessly digs up half of England and discovers nothing more than the broken rim of a Stone Age piss pot, repeats of repeats, celebrity chefs who make snail ice-cream or eat fat-saturated midnight snacks in satin pyjamas, those poor demented women who submit to complete face and body makeovers in a matter of hours and emerge looking like the bride of Dracula, the dandy decorator with the fluffy shirt cuffs who turns ordinary suburban rooms into Victorian brothels, the two fashion gurus who do a lot of rather disturbing breast-squeezing, fatuous TV shows about fatuous TV shows, plus any programme featuring couples with the tragic urge to buy and run a B&B in Transylvania.

Save the (BBC) World

Reports that the BBC is determined to save BBC World from cuts despite 'losses' of £15m a year miss the point. It is important that the BBC retains its international TV as well as its radio service, which is often a beacon of truthful reporting in countries lacking independent media. But its news bulletins could be sharper, and license fee-payers might feel more affinity with the service if it provided even as much UK news as CNN does. BBC World has a fetish about ignoring British news, even though many of its viewers are British tourists watching in hotel rooms. That should change. And why can't we watch BBC World on digital TV here except for the odd bulletin on News 24 or BBC 4? The radio world service is now available in the UK on digital. TV should be too.

The real problem with the BBC

David Aaronovitch is spot on when he identifies the real problem with the BBC as being not the misnaming of the Blue Peter cat, but

The far greater problem is a gradual and long-term erosion of journalistic standards and seriousness in favour of the sensational and the meretricious, and the incredible self-deceptions that executives have to go to in order to justify this trend.