Is the TV news an attractive option for advertisers? Designer Vaginas versus Trevor McDonald? No contest, is it? Shouldn't we admit there is little call for news on the networks? (Forum).

How tacky can this get? Last week we passed a landmark in the history of television news when ITV's venerable news flagship, News at Ten, was trashed in the ratings by Designer Vaginas, a Channel 4 documentary about cosmetic surgery of a painfully personal nature.

If we can actually believe the audience data, that is. Unfortunately, given recent events at the Barb audience ratings panel, your Auntie Ethel can probably conjure up more accurate TV ratings figures by reading tea leaves.

It is like a scenario from Drop the Dead Donkey. "Morning hotshots! Are we cooking with napalm? You bet!" as Globelink's management guru, Gus, might say. ITN is certainly not cooking with anything like napalm. It's not so much the fact that a programme on genital surgery managed to attract in 3.2 million viewers (and let's be honest: even for the squeamish, genital mutilation as a spectator sport has more than a touch of curiosity value) but that News at Ten managed only to attract 3.1 million.

So to say it was "trashed" is maybe an exaggeration. But whichever way you look at it, this is still a huge embarrassment. And it's not been the greatest of times for mainstream TV news, coming, as it does, hard on the heels of Kirsty Young's return to rescue Channel 5's bulletins. No one gives better autocue than the fragrant Ms Young but even her talents have their limitations. She has doubled the audience of the 5.30pm bulletin (though its audience remains less than one million) but the main 7.30pm bulletin still struggles--for obvious reasons, given the opposition.

But that's the point, isn't it? News is always up against something. Something well produced and interesting, you might add. We seem to have come a very long way since the days when the centre break of News at Ten was one of the most expensive and demanded slots in the whole ITV schedule. It delivered not just a big audience but a hugely attractive ABC1 audience, including a high proportion of so-called opinion formers and decision-makers.

Is news considered an attractive advertising environment at all these days? Keith Moor, the head of marketing communications at Abbey National, says that the centre break in News at Ten used to be an important part of the company's TV schedule. No longer. He comments: "News viewing has become dissipated. When both the BBC and ITV moved the main evening bulletins people became confused about when the news was on. They have other sources for news these days -- they're not reliant on the BBC or ITV. In the past, it was really all you had."

So what would he like to see them do? Can terrestrial broadcasters do better? Do they want to? "They all face different issues," Moor reckons. "ITV, for instance, faces a number of issues across several day parts, which is not making its job any easier. For ITV, it's a matter of `where do we start?' For Channel 5, on the other hand, it's about finding new ways to develop a proposition that hasn't really moved on recently. But the most important thing that they all need, especially from an advertising point of view, is flexibility."