The film critic Sebastian Faulks observed recently that the current hit horror film, The Blair Witch Project, had a title which made it sound like a Panorama special on Baroness Thatcher, writes George Frew.

Feasible enough? Maybe - but only because Panorama is made by and shown on the BBC. According to the Campaign for Quality Television (CQT), when it comes to coverage of political, foreign and economic current affairs, only the Corporation seems to bother nowadays.

The CQT - a pressure group mostly made up of television producers and programme makers - commissioned a survey in trends in current affairs and drama over the past 20 years. And the survey, published this week, concluded that "Commercial television has effectively vacated politcial and economic current affairs, which is now covered almost exclusively by the BBC."

One-off plays and drama serials have declined "across the board" and the creative people of British television are said to be fed-up, skint and devoid of ambition.

The survey focused on the years 1977-78, 1987-88 and 1997-98 and concluded that big names were replacing big ideas or big drama serials. Robson Green, John Thaw, David Jason and Nick Berry, the survey found, were being relied on to bring home the bacon in terms of viewing figures, rather than a policy of innovative programming.

These four actors are currently the highest-paid in British television, but good stuff gets made without them - think of The Cops (and how's that for 'innovation'?), A Respectable Trade, The Lakes, Liverpool 1, Cold Feet, Shockers - all recent, or current programmes, all superb and none of them featuring any of the Fab Four. There is still life and ratings success without a superstar as a programme's foundation, for if the script is flimsy to start with, then the show will fail and fall like a house of cards, even if it's a house of cards built around King Robson and co.

It also seems to me that the survey employs a giant hand to make sweeping statements when it comes to the coverage of current affairs, when even the sound of one hand clapping might have been fairer.

Predictably enough, the CQT findings have severely annoyed C4, who quite rightly point out that they are the only channel to feature a flagship current affairs programme - Dispatches - at peak viewing time. This sort of scheduling courage, remember, used to make C4 the butt of many a hoary old joke about it being the channel to watch if documentaries on one-legged Bolivian tin-miners were your thing.

The point was always that the Fourth Channel was launched as a place where minority interests might be featured, if not indulged. And politics - compared, say, to EastEnders - is a minority interest, yet C4 continues to cover the subject.

To accuse the channel of abdicating its responsibilities in this direction is harsh, bordering on plain wrong. No-one, on the other hand, would dream of looking for current affairs on Channel 5, but then you don't go to the Harrods Food Hall for a Pot Noodle. The truth of the matter is that television is never as good as you thought it once was.

One day, the present will be part of the good old days and we will polish our rose-tinted spectacles with the soft cloth of nostalgia and yearn for The Royle Family, as we bemoan the loss of Only Fools and Horses today.

Talk of dumbing down is made easier because telly trends are simpler to spot. Without doubt, there are way too many 'fly on the wall' documentaries, or 'docusoaps', just as there are a sickening glut of 'makeover' slots and gardening programmes and mindless game shows. Success breeds envious copycats and at the moment it's a mongrel litter that needs culling, before we end up with something along the lines of Changing Airport Ground Force Driving School Hotel Better Fantasy Homes, presented by Vorderman and Smillie, with guest appearances by camp, plump young men in goatee beards , self-satisfied, leather-trousered refugees from Prince Rupert's Horse and bra-less, gardening maidens with flowing, er, Titian locks. Television's creative people may be stifled by cost-cutting and exhausted by the relentless drive for ratings, but there is still room to breathe in British television, although the air may be rarer. In the end, the viewers will vote with their remote control handsets - and who will dream up the next Jewel In The Crown, Brideshead Revisited or Boys From the Blackstuff if not telly's creative brigade?

British television - current affairs and all - may not always be marching on Quality Street, but we're still a long way from skulking down the alley called Skid Row.

Story date: Tuesday 26 October

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.