Digital television is coming. You can't have helped but notice. A less-than-subtle promotional campaign for it is already at work, softening us up for the prospect of either having to change our old television for a new one or buy a special box to sit on top of our existing set to convert it to digital mode.

That's good news for the people who make televisions and conversion boxes. The switch-over is creating jobs, a fair number of them in this area. So it's an ill wind that blows no-one any good, as they say.

But as far as I'm concerned, digital television IS an ill wind. It will cost every household a lot of money, when the present system is phased out and we have no option other than to go digital or leave our screens blank, bearing in mind that most households have more than one set these days.

But that isn't the worst aspect of it. Digital means lots and lots of channels. There isn't enough good writing, acting and directing talent about to fill the existing terrestrial channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 and C5) with quality material. At least half the stuff we're presented with isn't worth a place on our screens.

Imagine what it will be like when there are thousands upon thousands of air hours to be filled each week. What depths of dross will be plumbed?

Those who thought we'd reached rock bottom with Moment of Truth might well find themselves, a decade from now, looking nostalgically back on this show, hosted by Cilla Black, as quality television.

What a nightmare Moment of Truth is. What a dreadful idea. Set a family a difficult task. Get them to choose one member of the family (usually mother or father) to master that task as best they can in a week. Invite the whole family to select luxury prizes for themselves.

Then bring them into the studio, let them meet their prizes - and then have that selected family member try to win them.

If they succeed, all is well. There are smiles and congratulations all around, amid lots of that terrible whooping and hollering which now seems to be compulsory for studio audiences.

But if they fail? Mother or father devastated -- a failure not only in their family's eyes but before the entire viewing population. Children horribly disappointed and probably resentful for years. A family plunged into crisis.

Talk about a theatre of cruelty! Whatever next? Family Russian Roulette?

Moment of Truth is appalling. "I love this show!" gushed Cilla last week, just before I switched over. Well I don't. I hate it.

And I dread a future in which digital television spawns countless cut-price equivalents of it in which ordinary people driven by greed are persuaded to risk ritual humiliation in the name of entertainment.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.