I was nearly convinced by my broadcaster friend. But I suspected that the decline of television coverage hurt him and his fellow broadcasters. In their hearts they must know that newspapers were shrugging their shoulders and walking away from a declining medium. Jean Seaton, an historian of the BBC, points out that on an ordinary day in the 1970s when nothing worth noting had happened, 10m people would nevertheless sit down to watch the evening news. In July, the final episode of Doctor Who, the most successful drama the BBC has produced in years, attracted just 9.8m viewers.

James did not need to acquire specialist knowledge of the mechanics of broadcasting 30 years ago. Television wasn't a minority interest for a well-informed audience who expected a critic to be able to understand its technicalities as well as an opera critic could understand a score. It was the general interest of the nation; the centre of cultural life. James could joke about Murray Walker and know that most of his readers would get the gag. When there were only three channels, millions of people with only a passing interest watched Formula 1 for the prosaic reason that there wasn't much else on.

The age of media scarcity is dead. For all their apparent differences, today's typical audience for Formula 1 is like the traditional audience for opera: highly knowledgeable and relatively small. The passing trade the old BBC-ITV duopoly brought has long gone. You understand that when you grasp that it is impossible for any sports commentator ever again to enjoy the fame of Murray Walker.

The arrival of multi-channel television played its part, but the real reason broadcasters should worry is the internet. Print journalists have no right to snigger. Any of my fellow hacks who doubt we are in a dying business should read Clay Shirky's brilliant and, from the point of view of reporters, terrifying Here Comes Everybody. Newspapers were products of a time when information was expensive to disseminate and a professional caste was needed to collect and publish it, he writes. The internet has reduced the costs of publishing to next to nothing. "Anyone in the developed world can publish anything anytime, and the instant it is published, it is globally available and readily findable. If anyone can be a publisher, then anyone can be a journalist."