The end of the arts show

The BBC wants to show that it is committed to the arts. But axing Omnibus is hardly the best way to go about it, says Robert Hanks

Ars est celare artem, goes the old tag: the true art is to conceal art. And one effective way of concealing art is to hive it all off on to a digital channel where nobody is going to see it – which is, some argue, precisely what those artful dodgers at the BBC have been doing.

Murmurs of complaint about BBC Television's shoddy treatment of the arts – murmurs from pundits, former BBC employees and even the occasional viewer – have become a sort of background drone in recent years. Nearly all the corporation's regular TV slots for cultural discussion have been abandoned: The Late Show reduced to the undignified stub that is the Review glued on to the end of Newsnight on a Friday; Moving Pictures, the film magazine, Tx, the slot for experimental film-making, and Bookmark all gone. Omnibus and Arena, the standard-bearers on BBCs 1 and 2 respectively, have lost their weekly slots, the labels being reserved for irregular "specials" – Arena has been on just three times this year. The mouth-watering menu of subtitled films and serious documentaries offered by BBC 4, on digital, just adds insult to injury.

Last week, the BBC announced the death of one of its most revered institutions: Omnibus will end in January, after 35 years. In its place will come a new strand of one-hour documentaries, tentatively entitled Imagine, to be presented by Alan Yentob (below), editor of Arena in its glory days and now the corporation's director of drama, entertainment and children's TV, as well as chairman of the ICA. He will also be presenting occasional series on great artists of the past, beginning with Leonardo: he is to become, in effect, the BBC's answer to Melvyn Bragg.

News of the demise of Omnibus was greeted with outrage in some quarters – Jonathan Miller was quoted as calling the decision "ignorant". But the BBC denies that it has any real significance. Franny Moyle, the new head of arts commissioning for television, is quick to offer reassurance that what we are seeing is nothing more than a rebranding exercise: "We have now bitten the bullet and decided that the Omnibus name really didn't have enough resonance with its public. Market research showed that some people thought it was a general current-affairs strand and some thought it was news. They didn't connect it with the arts."

What matters, she says, is the amount and quality of coverage, not the label. As far as quantity goes, the BBC has committed itself to a minimum of 245 hours of arts coverage on both terrestrial channels in 2002/3 – up from 230 hours last year. And as for quality: how about Ackroyd on Dickens, Arena on Pinter and Rolf on Art (watched, Moyle says, by more people than went to galleries last year)?

There is something to be said for the idea that the Omnibus brand is unimportant in itself. Humphrey Burton, who edited the series in the Sixties, points out that it has not had a regular slot since the 1980s, when it went out on Sundays on BBC 1. Last year, it was announced that Omnibus programmes would appear on both BBC 1 and BBC 2; this year, it was all back to BBC 1.

When the Department for Culture, Media and Sport gave the BBC permission to launch its new digital services earlier this year, it made BBC 4's existence conditional on a promise not to reduce coverage of the arts on the terrestrial channels. In any case, the BBC was already in the business of increasing arts coverage. Everybody I spoke to last week seemed to agree that the real nadir was two or three years ago, since when things have slowly been getting better.

But causes for celebration are still thin on the ground. After all, 245 hours of arts a year is not much when you recall that BBC 1 and BBC 2 together have nearly 18,000 hours of airtime a year; and since 200 of those 245 hours are going out on BBC 2, that leaves BBC1 with less than an hour a week.

At the very least, the BBC's attitude to arts broadcasting is confused. Melvyn Bragg has little doubt where the blame lies: with the BBC's Face of The Arts. "I completely fail to understand why Alan Yentob, with his terrific track record many years ago and his powerful position as creative director of BBC television, has failed to look after, nourish and protect arts programmes," Bragg says. "Many people who work with Alan and admire him as I do are bewildered by this."

Putting arts programmes on BBC 4 is good; more arts on BBC2 would be better. As for arts on BBC1 – over to you, Mr Yentob.