Tim Luckhurst: Suspend your cynicism and turn on the television

If BBC3 registers in the ratings it will be because it has been obliged to nurture new talent

As a child I learned to be cynical about invitations to "expect surprises". Once, after the phrase turned out to mean "you are going to watch Scunthorpe United play Lincoln City because your father forgot to book seats for the Chelsea game", I became actively sulky. Later, when the same ostensibly enticing prospect left me alone in an auditorium watching a tone-deaf crooner murder the songs of Joni Mitchell, I came close to abandoning the Edinburgh Fringe for life. So, the publicity previewing Sunday's launch of the BBC's latest digital offering, BBC3, has left me more anxious than intrigued.

Greg Dyke's most dutiful spin doctor could not expect more. We have, after all, been here before. BBC News 24, the digital news station that was supposed to revolutionise our attitudes to rolling television news, has come as close to broadcast disaster as a channel can without actually closing. BBC4, mooted as the means to bring serious arts and documentaries to the masses, has recorded average audiences not much bigger than the crowd at that Scunthorpe game.

The BBC's entry into the world of digital choice has stimulated controversy of precisely the wrong kind. Far from debating radical new programmes, the nation has become perplexed as to why we should all pay for services a barely quantifiable minority of us want or watch. And yet, serial optimist that I am, I do long to see BBC3 reach the screen.

This time it seems regulation has worked. When the Culture Secretary rejected the BBC's original schedule for this network for "young adults", the corporation was obliged to think again. Tessa Jowell recognised the danger that the new channel would be cheap and derivative. She spotted how crudely it was targeted at destroying the audience for commercial competitors like E4 and Sky One. Her response was to order a channel on which 90 per cent of programmes must originate within the EU (in effect in Britain) and 15 per cent must be news, arts or education-related.

The result is that while the BBC had no intention to surprise us with anything more than the vigour of its commercial instincts, it has been left with no choice. It gets better. Since Ms Jowell set out the most rigorous criteria ever demanded for a BBC launch, the pressure on Dyke's digital division has grown intense. The licence fee has been put squarely in play. If BBC3 is as unattractive as its predecessors, Dyke may go down in history as the director General who threw away the most lucrative funding arrangement available to any broadcaster anywhere. The rod has replaced the root vegetable, and it might just work.

Fret not if you are past the 20-to-30 age group at which BBC3 controller Stuart Murphy insists his channel is aimed. Murphy, and everyone else in broadcasting, knows this is just an aspiration. The type of urban trendsetter at whom BBC3 is aimed has more exciting friends to meet than Johnny Vaughan and Dom Joly. Anorak types will remain paralysed in front of their PlayStations. If BBC3 registers in the ratings, it will be because it has been obliged to nurture new talent, and from that we all may benefit.

No, Vaughan, who will be the first face to appear on BBC3 on Sunday, is not a fresh discovery. He performed the same service for FilmFour five years ago. Joly made his name on Trigger Happy TV. But it is at least possible that Justine Frischmann, the former chanteuse with the Britpop act Elastica, will be exciting. The idea for her programme, Dreamspaces, certainly is. Architecture is beginning to take its rightful place in our crowded national consciousness. The scheduling of a serious show about buildings is overdue. It will make a nice change from those lowest-common-denominator programmes about how to refurbish a semi in Cirencester.

Beyond that, BBC3 has a duty to promote new drama. It will kick off with Burn It, commissioned from first-time screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh. The notion that British television will now have a slot for new writing ought to promote applause beyond creative writing courses. As fringe theatre has proved, new platforms do more than just showcase otherwise hidden talent. They provide a reason to write. I hope that BBC3 means bedsits around Britain will resonate with the plunk of laptops being used for something more valuable than solitaire. BBC3's topical satire programme, The State We're In, offers the same hope that new Peter Cooks may emerge to amuse and challenge us.

There are similar reasons to suspend cynicism regarding BBC3's news, documentary animation and comedy strands. Little Britain, which has transferred from Radio 4, has potential, not least because the refreshing absence of political correctness involved in characters like Dafydd, the lonely and only gay in a Welsh village, marks a departure from bland sitcom.

This is not a rush to judgement. The weapons inspectors have not been inside the BBC3 bunker yet, and they deserve time to report. But if BBC3 is the first successful BBC launch since Radio Five Live, it will prove something: regulation enhances quality. Tessa Jowell should ponder that as she considers the licence fee and the BBC's arrogant insistence that its own governors, rather than an independent regulator, should keep responsibility for output.

timlckhrst@aol.com