Robert Hanks: Missing bongs and golden handcuffs: how a programming legend fell to earth

To the man in the street, Liddiment is just what you rub on your chest when you've got a blocked nose. To the world of television, David Liddiment is a programming legend.

Any programming director might have seen the potential in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? But who else would have thought of scheduling it night after night after night, almost wiping out BBC1's primetime ratings? In 1998, when the first series of Millionaire was broadcast, it seemed he could do no wrong; and there were plenty of other ratings successes, the only kind that really count for a commercial channel, Bad Girls, Cold Feet, At Home with the Braithwaites.

More recently, Liddiment's star has waned; but how far that is his fault is open to question. The decision to replace News at Ten with a later bulletin, abandoning the bongs and one of the most firmly established brands in British broadcasting, caused an uproar; and the new, uninterrupted slab of time between nine and eleven in the evening didn't work the ratings magic hoped for. But the idea of dumping News at Ten had been around long before Liddiment.

The failure of Desmond Lynam to win audiences for ITV's Premiership football slot demonstrated not so much Liddiment's incompetence as the persistent power of Morecambe and Wise syndrome, the weird, subliminal patriotism that causes the public to resent stars who rat on the good old BBC in favour of upstart commercial channels.

Something similar must surely account for the BBC's massive ratings dominance during the World Cup, when objectively there was little difference in quality of commentary.

But Liddiment undoubtedly had some bad ideas. One was buying in soap and drama stars with fabulously expensive "golden handcuff" contracts, Robson Greene, Sarah Lancashire, Kemps Martin and Ross. The handcuffs turned out to be be on the wrists of ITV, the channel with an obligation to find vehicles for stars who haven't always been up to driving them.

Recently, Liddiment's strategies have demonstrated timidity and nostalgia: the startlingly innovative soap Night and Day needed nurturing, but got axed; by contrast, the dull, efficient resurrection of Crossroads, not a ratings success, has been given a second chance.

While there have been big successes – Pop Stars, Pop Idol – weekday schedules have leaned heavily on a tedious mix of soaps, detectives and Carol Vorderman. BBC1's ratings overtook ITV's for the first time.

One theory is that Liddiment wanted to quit while he was ahead. Perhaps the truth is that he realised no decision he took had relevance, given the decline of commercial terrestrial TV: flourishing subscription services, advertisers who want ever-more precise information about what their money is buying them, and the collapse of ITV Digital into a big hole. Maybe David Liddiment got tired of digging.