Streamlined to 30 minutes, Panorama is drinking in the last-chance saloon Panorama BBC1 Dispatches Channel 4 Tonight ITV1

It has been difficult for the media commentators to know whether to applaud or condemn Panorama's move from its Sunday-night graveyard to its old home on Monday evenings. Prime-time weekdays seems the right slot, but it now goes out at 8.30pm against not only Coronation Street on ITV1, but Channel 4's Dispatches (whose bosses have cried foul at the shift). Its ratings risk being depleted even further by the proximity of ITV1's Tonight With Trevor McDonald, which airs at 8pm. The overcrowding arguments would surprise 1970s commentators who used to congratulate ITV for screening World in Action rather than anything more "box office" against Panorama. In the good old days of public service telly, it was thought irresponsible to offer viewers too much choice.

On balance, I am pleased about this traffic jam in the schedules, if for no other reason than it should sharpen each programme's competitive instincts. If part of the competition is for viewers, and only part for quality and prizes, that may be no bad thing. No viewer under 35 watches a programme because he thinks it is good for him. Tonight has known the score for years. Its hallmarks are smart titles, sexy tasters of what's to come, and the pseudo-authority of Sir Trevor to make the exercise look slightly less tabloid. Dorothy Byrne, Channel 4's head of news and current affairs, this past week patronised Tonight as a vehicle for "young journalists" to reinvent "a very narrow consumer agenda" but did not say they failed in the task.

As it happens, Tonight on Monday (15 January) was on a different beat: London's no-go estates, into which it sent the Tory dragon Ann Widdecombe. Seeing her chat up the hoodies had some comedy value but the programme, the first of two, was high in colour and low in analysis. The most telling views were thrown away.

One youth said he wore hoods for his own protection, against other gangs, rather than to alarm OAPs. Another explained that he had joined his local football team to get his picture in the local paper. There you go - no one opts for the anonymity of the hood if they can be a somebody instead. But these insights were drowned out by the sound of Widdecombe tutting.

Dispatches had the most important report of the night, having uncovered religious hatred in two of Britain's mainstream mosques - Green Lane in Birmingham and Regent's Park in London. An undercover reporter discovered dodgy preachers, inflammatory DVDs and direct links, televisual and financial, to Saudi Arabia. Dispatches failed to land a killer blow, as the mullahs inconveniently declined to endorse terrorism as such, but it still provided plenty to worry about. Borat might consider putting to music one imam's catchphrase: "Take that homosexual man and throw him off a mountain." But, my, it was a long 60 minutes! An accumulation of fuzzily filmed examples is not the same as a methodical, sequential investigation. The film made such rudimentary nods to modern presentation techniques that it could have been shown on World in Action 30 years ago.

It was Panorama that, in its new half-hour format, had all the mod cons: a bright-scarfed presenter in Jeremy Vine, a dolled-up reporter in Kate Silverton, bright production values . . . Silverton, in a mocked-up office, stared at clips on her PC and interrogated her sleuths in her car. All very 24. The problem was that it chose the wrong subject for the relaunch.

IVF rip-off clinics fall into Tonight's consumer agenda. The Harley Street specialist Mohamed Taranissi deserved a going-over by Watchdog, not Panorama. Towards the end of the report, Lord Winston, one of a panel of "good" IVF doctors that had been assembled, declared that, "as a public service broadcaster" (not to mention one of his employers), the BBC should hand over its findings to the General Medical Council, as the HFEA, the fertility watchdog, had failed. Unfortunately for Panorama, the HFEA was not as toothless as Winston suggested. It had been investigating Taranissi for months, and on the day of transmission raided his clinic.

I have more hopes for John Sweeney on the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko (22 January). The question is whether Sweeney can skewer Vladimir Putin in the 30 minutes available at the flashy last-chance saloon where Panorama is now drinking.

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

Pick of the week

Climate Change: Britain under threat
21 January, 8pm, BBC1
And if David Attenborough says we are, it must be so.

Consent
21 January, 10pm, Channel 4
A mock jury hears a mock rape case. It's the latest reality format, don't you know.

Skins
25 January, 10pm, E4
From the Shameless stable, a new drama about teenagers. They're into sex and drugs. Apparently.

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