An interesting series tucked away on morning television last week was called TV is Dead? (Channel 4). Recent events suggest that television may not be dead but it is certainly in poor health. Revelations of phony phone-in votes on ITV are merely the latest in a long string of scandals concerning the main TV channels - mostly about practices which cheat the viewers. And now the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson (pictured), has announced massive cuts in BBC staff, particularly affecting news and factual programmes.

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that some commercial channels have been swindling the public, but we pay for the BBC (more than £11 a month per household) and should expect higher standards from it. Instead, the BBC seems determined to compete with the commercial channels for viewers and ratings, when it should simply make good programmes to fulfil its public-service remit to inform, educate and entertain.

The Corporation is in the privileged position of not having to worry about attracting advertisers but being able to cater for viewers in a way that other broadcasters cannot afford. In particular, the BBC can provide for those sections of the public - such as the disabled and elderly - who cannot necessarily cope with modern advances in technology, like the Internet and personal video recorders.

However, the BBC seems determined to alienate viewers rather than meeting their needs. A self-satisfied article by Mark Thompson on the BBC website drew a response from a viewer listing some of the things that people repeatedly tell the BBC they dislike: "Programme junctions spoilt with trails, voice-overs, credits cut . . . shaky cam pictures. Too loud too much so-called background music. Oft repeated catchups' during programmes." Yet the BBC ignores such complaints, assuming that it knows best. As Mark Thompson lives in Oxford, he may read this newspaper but I doubt if he will take any notice of anything in this column - even though it often reiterates what many viewers think.

If the BBC really needs to save money, it could dispense with the whole of its so-called Presentation department, which clutters up programmes with repetitive trailers and unnecessary reminders. These not only irritate but often add to the unpunctuality which messes up video recordings.

The malaise which infects the BBC is endemic throughout television. The symptoms are clear: lazy programming, excessive dependence on 'celebrities', a lack of originality, dumbing down, exploiting viewers instead of respecting them, and an excess of managers interfering with too few creative programme-makers.

This is not to say that the BBC doesn't make some good programmes - especially for BBC2. India's Missing Girls (BBC2) was a careful, eye-opening documentary about the thousands of baby girls who are killed or aborted in India because poor families cannot afford the dowry that is traditionally given when a girl marries.

The BBC still makes some inexplicable decisions. No doubt it spent a lot of our money on its new dramatisation of Fanny Hill (BBC4) but it is tucked away on a freeview channel rather than being shown on BBC1 or BBC2. Adaptor Andrew Davies has altered the story considerably but gives us a sensitive version of a classic erotic novel. The adaptation was followed by The Curse of Success (BBC4) which helpfully traced the life of the author John Cleland, who wrote Fanny Hill to raise money to get out of debtors' prison but never repeated this literary success. When a British publisher reprinted the novel in 1963, it was prosecuted for obscenity.

Lazy programming was illustrated this week by Britain's Love Story (ITV1), the start of a three-part series which purports to chart "the revolution in modern love, sex and marriage in Britain during the last 50 years". The first episode merely threw together some old film clips and interviews with a few people (including Cynthia Payne recounting the oft-told story of her progression to a career as a madam) and added a commentary packed with clichés like "True love and heartbreak are never far apart".