Old favourites from The Generation Game to Blind Date may have bitten the dust, but TV bosses are still struggling to keep viewers entertained on Saturday nights.

In the summer of 2001, the then-ITV director of channels David Liddiment talked of a "once in a lifetime opportunity to change the shape of Saturday night television". TV executives and viewers alike agreed that the current programme line-up was stale and tired, not just on the commercial channel but on BBC1 too.

Yet, two years later, Saturday night TV is in crisis again. Liddiment's bold experiment in making Premiership football the centre of the schedules failed, abandoned due to lack of public demand amid much name-calling between ITV and the FA.

Now he's gone and his successor as network programme director, Nigel Pickard, is facing big problems after just four months in the hot seat.

Last Saturday, ITV1's new line-up - which included three game shows Judgement Day, The Vault and Drop! The Celebrity - gave the channel a meagre 18.1 per cent share of the audience. That was less than half BBC1's share and the channel's worst peaktime performance for at least two years.

ITV was quick to claim that this was just a "blip", caused by viewers preferring to watch live coverage of Tim Henman's Wimbledon match on BBC. That's a reasonable enough excuse, and ITV had further cause to blame Henman when the tennis player caused havoc again on Monday with his fourth round match. The audience for the BBC's coverage on Monday evening peaked at 13m and caused ITV1's double whammy of soap to suffer, with both Emmerdale and Coronation Street experiencing a slump in ratings.

So Pickard can, perhaps, be forgiven for the failure of his new Saturday night line-up to win over viewers. The three game shows attracted little more than three million viewers each. This may be more than they deserved. Judgement Day (contestants are eliminated by the studio audience as their private lives are revealed) and The Vault (contestants vie for the £100,000 prize; if they fail, viewers get the chance to grab the cash) hardly grab the imagination or attempt anything new.

In addition, Brian Conley and Melanie Sykes are hardly A-list presenters. And the less said the better about Drop! The Celebrity, in which performers past their sell-by date were chucked out a plane. Pickard himself may be thrown out without a parachute if he can't improve ITV1's Saturday night performance. The recent run of crime investigation drama M.I.T., another police series from the makers of The Bill, got decent enough ratings and showed viewers do have an appetite for drama on Saturday night.

Long-running hospital drama Casualty has been drawing good audiences for years on BBC1, although the channel's attempt to give us something fresh with the supernatural detective series Strange disappointingly failed to find a big audience.

Now, with Casualty on its summer break, the BBC is taking a chance by scheduling Hearts Of Gold, an old-fashioned love story, over two nights this weekend. If it works and gets a good response, we could see more new drama on Saturdays. This will be a blessed relief from all the game and talent shows with which the two main terrestrial channels flood the screen on that day.

This is a legacy from the days when Saturday night was variety night. Remember when Shirley Bassey, Lulu and Petula Clark used to have their own song-and-dance shows? Then, during the summer, the truly awful Seaside Special would replace them.

Comedy is something else conspicuous by its absence in today's schedules. The Two Ronnies used to be part of Saturday night TV, while shows like Game For A Laugh and Beadle's About employed the public to have a giggle.

There are signs things are changing. One long-standing Saturday fixture, Blind Date, has been axed. The departure of host Cilla Black was followed by Pickard declaring the series wouldn't return, but he is looking for a new dating programme format.

The BBC's The Generation Game too seems to have bitten the dust, without anything emerging to replace it on a long-term basis. Several shows have been tried, mostly presented by Ian Wright, but nothing has grabbed the viewers. Ian Wright's The Generation Game can't be far away.

The one bright spot for ITV is the success of Ant and Dec's Saturday Takeaway. This at least caused some Saturday night fervour with the last series proving a real hit for the Geordie jokers. Ironically, it's a distant relation of old BBC hit Noel's House Party, which played a key role in early Saturday evening viewing for many years.

The autumn will also see the return of Pop Idol as the centrepiece of ITV's Saturday format. It worked before, and spin-off Pop Stars The Rivals did well too. But, as the current lacklustre Big Brother has shown, the public are tiring of this type of reality TV.

The one thing that Saturday night lacks is soap. BBC1 used to screen Dynasty in the 1980s, but so far both the Beeb and ITV1 have avoided scheduling extra Coronation Street, EastEnders or Emmerdale on that day. I fear it can only be a matter of time before that changes, as soaps are guaranteed crowd-pullers.

Published: 05/07/2003