Television - It may be Channel 4 without the worthy bits, but Andrew Billen loves E4 for its US imports

The colonisation of television's digital future by the great powers of the narrowband past continues apace. Last week saw the birth of Channel 4's frisky offspring, E4, now to be seen frolicking nightly across all digital platforms - including, thanks to an 11th-hour deal, Sky Digital. The reason it is there is the conviction of Channel 4's chief executive, Michael Jackson, that in the multichannel age, it is "no longer possible to rely on being a single channel".

After the qualified success of Film Four, E4 shows the less reputable side of the public service broadcaster - the side that relies on sex, yoof and American imports to keep Channel 4's audience share above 10 per cent. (The "E" in E4 stands for entertainment, but hints at the ecstasy culture.) This is a self-consciously brash but clever channel, which is why the filthy yet brilliant Ali G compered the launch night, and why Sasha Baron Cohen's other alter ego, the Kazakhstan TV journalist Borat, popped up in his own programme later on.

G's promise that E4 is Channel 4 without the worthy bits would be quite a good marketing proposition were it not, on some nights, a pretty fair description of Channel 4 itself. But I mustn't grumble. I shall watch E4 a lot, not because I want to see more Eurotrash or So Graham Norton, but because I still think the best of US television is better than the best of ours. Dawson's Creek, which masquerades as a teen soap, but has an upmarket, thirtysomething following, is on E4 every weeknight. There are Sopranos repeats on Sundays and the new Ally McBeal on Mondays. Above all, E4 has imported wholesale, after a bitter bidding war, the core of Sky One's must-see-TV evenings: new series of Friends and ER.

Both are now in their seventh years, and it was interesting, last Thursday, to see them respond to their longevity. On Friends, the taboo of the sextet's age has at last been lifted. Joey was ridiculed for auditioning, at 31, for a part as an 18-year-old. "Your eyes give you away. There's just too much wisdom in them," Phoebe said, rather wonderfully. Monica's parents told her they had assumed she would be paying for her own wedding now she was 30. And the fear of being left on the shelf is palpable in the others. Given her own happy circumstances, Jennifer Aniston gave a very touching performance as Rachel, traumatised into almost having sex with Ross by the news of the Monica-Chandler nuptials.

ER, on the other hand, obeys an ageless rhythm of its own. You now expect, when you return to Chicago General, that at least one male lead will have grown facial hair. In this case, it was Carter, back from three months of drug rehab and clearly still not "quite right". In the ward, the usual medical crises unfolded. It must be hard to bring variety into the "will they live?/will they die?" template, but, as always, there was cleverness in the script. Saying farewell to him, Carter's counsellor said that he would feel "this was just something that happened to you" - exactly what viewers think is the nature of the plot-turns that befall characters in long-running drama series. A test of ER's seriousness will be the extent to which its writers buck this by incorporating Car-ter's addictive personality into his stories.

After the premium US offerings, E4 reverted to Eurotrash level, with a Japanese betting game-show called Banzai. This was crude, repetitive, badly edited, vaguely racist, and meaningless because it lacked audience interactivity. I know schedulers assume that viewers' IQs fall after 10.30pm, because we have all just staggered back from the pub, but this was pathetic.

According to Broadcast magazine, meanwhile, Sky One is banking on a state of constant inebriation in its viewers. After brave attempts to make itself a respectable challenger to the mainstream channels, it has been so stung by the loss of Friends and ER that it is, apparently, planning to turn itself back into a tits'n'bums channel of cheap and cheerful home-made programming. It is a real pity, because its hand-crafted sitcoms Time Gentlemen Please and Baddiel's Syndrome show promise.

If these disappear, E4 will be delighted, but it will not have things its own way. One stiff competitor is C4 itself. Viewers now have a dilemma on Thursday nights over whether to watch ER on E4 or The West Wing on C4. BBC Choice is also flexing its muscles, in preparation for its relaunch as the youth-orientated BBC3; it is now showing two hip comedies, The Dave Gorman Collection and Simon Munnery's Attention Scum, ahead of their airing on BBC2. Add to that the increasing confidence of ITV2, the home of the great David Letterman, and the near-certainty that it will be in Sky Digital homes some time this year, and E4's niche market is beginning to look very crowded indeed.

At the moment, the winner is the digital viewer. The loser, eventually, will be anyone who thinks having five channels in their home represents choice, or who cannot afford to buy more. As the great empires expand, their native citizens are becoming second-class viewers.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the London Evening Standard

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