It's not about the ratings
Tonight wins current affairs battle
Unsurprising fact of the week so far is that ITV1's Tonight with Trevor McDonald (which can be a misleading title since it often contains precious little of Trevor McDonald) and Coronation Street beat the revamped Panorama in terms of the number of viewers it attracted.
But should anyone at the BBC be worried by this result? The answer is clearly "No", because a popular Corrie storyline coupled with tabloid-style reportage about hoodies served up by a deregulated, ratings-hungry ITV1 is very likely to be more popular with a mass audience.
However there are some things that British broadcasting should provide that often isn't provided, namely serious yet accessible peaktime investigative journalism. Therefore people should stop excessively worrying about ratings and concentrate instead on whether a reasonable proportion of the audience is actually satisfied with what they are watching.
You know it makes sense.
