Television never says goodbye now. Never more the national anthem, the test card and music. In some homes, the set is literally never turned off - and it used to be such a long nightly death, the picture reducing into a vanishing dot of light. How we would rage, rage against the dying of that light. This was nevertheless a year of television fare-wells. Even Michael Fish - who, a BBC Parliament replay of the October 1974 general election revealed, used to do the weather in a woolly tank top - finally retired, still claiming he never said that thing he said about the hurricane.
The exits started comically enough in early January with the car dealer Barry, one of the thicker EastEnders, being pushed down a cliff by his duplicitous bride. It was not particularly well done, but Janine came back to London with a magnificent aria about how Barry had fallen over his shoe-laces while on a poetic mission to pick her flowers. "If only he hadn't been so romantic, if only he didn't have so much love in him. If only he'd worn slip-on shoes."
By the end of the month, the BBC had learned what real drama was. Director General Dyke and Chairman Davies were both thrown to the lions for sticking up - a little arrogantly, to be sure - for a lowly reporter against the might of a nasty government. It was a punishment far beyond their crime, and I was not alone in fearing that the BBC news operation would be hobbled from then on.
At the Edinburgh television festival, Mark Thompson (Greg Dyke's young replacement) assured us in response to an allegation by one of his noisier investigative reporters, John Sweeney, that there was no "corporate cringe" at his BBC following the Hutton report. Perhaps not, but I found it a little odd that David Blunkett's domestic troubles received no BBC coverage at all until November and that, even then, its reporters found it hard to report that the Home Secretary was claiming paternity of two children, one as yet unborn, by a married woman. Call me old-fashioned, but this is what used to be called news.
More happily, we said good riddance to two dodgy old pros. Robert Kilroy-Silk wrote a diatribe about Arabs in the Sunday Express and was kicked off Kilroy. When I caught up with him in the Midlands in the spring, he seemed to be campaigning as much for a return to morning television as for a seat at Strasburg. Meanwhile, Big Ron Atkinson put his big foot in his big mouth slagging off a black Chelsea player and lost his commentary spot at ITV Sport.
Not that there was much left for him to do on the network. ITV's The Premiership was abolished and the league reverted to BBC's Match of the Day, where it looked like it belonged all the time. Des Lynam, crumpled, with little bits of bun in his moustache, retired to the radio, where Michael Parkinson surely also now be-longs. No one blames an old interviewer for following the money in the twilight of his career, but it was typical of ITV to make its big snatch Parky rather than Jonathan Ross, who really has revived, for the second time in his career, the chat-show format. Parky rewarded ITV with disappointing ratings and an interview with Tom Cruise in which he barely managed even to utter the name Nicole ("er, your ex-wife . . ." "I know who she is . . .").
There were three important American farewells. In Friends, the inevitable happened and the six pals grew up. Ross and Rachel finally got it together again and Joey blew off to Hollywood for his own sitcom, coming to Five in February. On the final, terrific run of Sex and the City, Carrie got hitched to Mr Big, who turned out, bathetically, to be called John. Frasier also let love come before work and left Seattle not for a new job in San Francisco, but for his girlfriend in Chicago. (This ending was a personal relief. No longer do I have to pretend to find Frasier funny.)
All three shows ended just in time to avoid a lingering creative death, which, I fear, is exactly what is happening to the much younger West Wing. Its presiding genius and magic-mushroom fan Aaron Sorkin was fired from the show for missing deadlines last year. In his absence, this season - the one being shown on E4, not the third on Channel 4 - has lurched alarmingly towards imbecility. Donna now has to ask Josh what schadenfreude means; CJ gets a brilliant idea for Mrs Bartlett to appear on Sesame Street. One of our best TV dramatists, Russell T Davies, told me he no longer bothers to "series link" the show on his Sky box and, in sorrow rather than in anger, I may be about to follow him.
But the saddest farewells were yet to come. Mark Thompson seemed intent on swingeing cuts in jobs from Britain's greatest production house, the BBC itself. There was a distinct gloom among staff at the early BBC Christmas party I attended, with no one knowing whether they should be chatting up the director of television, the rather nice Jana Bennett, or avoiding her gaze. Whether or not you buy the argument that the BBC is run by lefties, it seems intent on following one leftist tradition. As Malcolm Muggeridge, I think, said, the thing about liberal newspapers is that they always fire you on Christmas Eve.
Andrew Billen is a staff writer on the Times
