ALL the uproar about a "poll tax on watching TV" following a government advisory panel's recommendation that viewers of digital programmes should pay an annual extra licence fee of £24 on top of the normal £101 colour licence is, of course, not really about the wasteful BBC benefiting from yet another virtually compulsory tax on top of the £2.7 billion it already rakes in.

It's about the other digital companies being afraid that the punters will be put off from subscribing to watch their stuff. Yet, if this new TV revolution that we keep hearing about - one that, we are told, will enable us to watch countless more channels and even use the remote control to order a take-away while we are at it - is so wonderful, why are they having to give away the set-top boxes that let you get at it?

Could it be - as viewers of satellite TV already know - that, apart from the much-improved coverage of sport, more channels only means more rubbish?

You have only to flick through the existing channels to see what more means - ancient Star Trek episodes being shown on a nigh-permanent loop, Yankee handymen re-covering sofas, Aussies wrestling with crocodiles, mindless American hunks in trunks doing the same with each other and exhumed quizzes and sit-coms that bombed on mainstream TV years ago. It is the notion of even more that upsets me more than the thought of having to pay more - when they should be paying us to even be able to receive such trash, let alone watch it.

Speaking of which, the decision of Noel Edmonds to quit the BBC after 30 years because he has lost faith in its ability to make quality programmes is bound to upset discerning viewers.

This, after all, is the man who brought us such cerebral stuff as people being covered with gunge, the intellectual Mr Blobby and contestants making fools of themselves to see who could jump fastest in and out of pairs of underpants.

And to think the Beeb is accused of no longer being able to achieve such heights!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.