The BBC should take its younger viewers more seriously

Who in their BBC arrogance decreed that 25-34 year olds aren't interested in culture?

What do young people want? Greg Dyke and his cohorts at the BBC have decided that they know, which is bad news for the nation's youth – particularly the large part of it which enjoys culture.

Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, granted the BBC director-general's wish this week for BBC Three, a digital channel catering to 25-34 year olds. From the little we have been told, the programmes will include Johnny Vaughan's chat show and the nightly celebrity-based Liquid News, as well as repeats of East-Enders, with the only vague and extremely lateral reference to arts and drama being a new series about the drug-fuelled lifestyles of three thirty-something men.

One thing always strikes me about middle-aged television bosses' decisions on what young people like. They are always patronising and condescending. Never do they believe that 25-34 year olds might like some of the highbrow stuff that they and their friends enjoy.

Who in their BBC arrogance has decreed that 25-34 year olds aren't interested in culture? Who has decided that, however much young adults go to galleries and art-house cinemas, they don't want to see television programmes on these topics?

Of course, this problem isn't confined to BBC 3 or the 25-34s. The over-34s watching BBC One and Two also have insufficient arts on the schedules. Omnibus, the main arts strand, makes only sporadic appearances. And, though at last the corporation is promising improvements over the next year, for anything like regular arts coverage you have to tune in to the cultural ghetto channel, BBC Four, which tends to get audiences of under 100,000.

It is, of course, a supreme irony that the late Dennis Potter is to have his last unseen work broadcast on the themed channel, BBC Four. Potter hated the idea of themed channels, remembering how he loved BBC radio in his youth for the cultural surprise and free education of music followed by a play followed by poetry followed by a documentary. But much more depressing is the BBC's plans for the nation's youth and the insultingly low esteem it gives to their cultural tastes.

The only rationale for launching a channel targeted at the 25-34s is the hope that it will be watched in large numbers by that age group, so to say that arts are available elsewhere, on BBC Four for example, is not an answer. News is available elsewhere too; but it will feature on BBC Three, even if only in 60-second bites, because the BBC knows it is an indispensible part of public service broadcasting for the age group. When did culture drop off the list of public-service essentials? Tessa Jowell says that the new service will be "on probation".

As part of that probation, she needs to monitor BBC Three very carefully for its cultural input, or lack of it. There is a reason why she is secretary of state for both media and culture. She should call in Greg Dyke and tell him she assumes that his new channel is going to be teeming with programmes about Brit Art and dance and feature a range of contemporary plays. Those, after all, are among the pleasures young adults enjoy when they're not being patronised by the BBC.

*Programmes in some West End theatres have carried a provocative suggestion that productions should carry movie-style warnings about their suitability for children. What comment there has been about this has all been negative. However, while censorship in theatres should certainly not be back on the agenda, guidance is not necessarily a bad thing. It is strange that films have certification and television has a watershed, yet theatre has no form of public guidance at all.

That may be because it would be too complicated in a medium that can mix horrific images with beauty of language (do you put a warning on King Lear for example?), but occasionally, an age warning would do no harm. I write as one still jolted from idly recommending a friend to take their five-year-old nephew to see Shockheaded Peter, a funny and weirdly grotesque puppet-based set of stories. The poor kid didn't find it funny, but certainly found it grotesque, and had nightmares, as I was informed in no uncertain terms the next day. My friendship with the aunt has never fully recovered. Some guidance about minimum age in the listings might have saved me an ear-bashing.

*The Poole Arts Centre has been accused of sounding like a training school for synchronised swimming. And it seems that the joke has struck home. It is changing its name to The Lighthouse, which sounds like ... a lighthouse. When the Battersea Arts Centre in London changed its name to the not very meaningful BAC, its director said that the term 'arts centre' was too Seventies. I assume that the management at Poole also want to sound cutting-edge cryptic. They should brace themselves, though, for angry families who make the trek there expecting to see an honest-to-god lighthouse. It is strange, isn't it, how arts professionals worry that the word arts will frighten the natives.

d.lister@independent.co.uk