Hey! Teacher! Leave those credits alone!

Being the kind of person who always stays in the cinema for the closing credits and who avoids movies on broadcast TV because of their fondness for lopping 'em off (especially ITV), this Charlie Brooker piece from The Guardian yesterday is right up my alley...

Pay attention. You're going to read this. Sit up. Concentrate on my words. This is important. Something terrible is about to happen.

I was first alerted by an email from reader Mark Liversidge, with the subject line A Cry For Help. In it, he complained about the BBC's new "end credit delivery policy", the effects of which will be seen on screen from June 4 onwards. There's a preview, complete with mocked-up screengrabs, at www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/credits/position.shtml - but in case you're not near a computer, or you're allergic to the internet, or (most likely) you think it all sounds a bit dull and couldn't be arsed, let me summarise neatly in 12 words: the BBC are about to ruin the ending of everything they show.

For several years now, end credits have been maltreated by all the networks; regularly squashed to one side, babbled and scribbled over, in a desperate bid to keep you watching, or sell you a spin-off DVD, or force you to visit a website. Why? Because you're not a "person" any more, bucko - you're a "content consumer", and the omni-powerful shit-committee that runs absolutely everything these days can't bear to leave you alone for a second. It has to keep prodding you and prodding you and prodding you, like a hog in a cage that has to be kept awake at all costs.

So credits are squashed and squeezed. Most viewers don't notice or care, but to spods like me, it's like watching a dog owner violently jerking their pet's lead in the street, shouting "hurry up" and booting its arse. It's not that I want to scan the credits and find out who's who: I just want to enjoy a small breathing space before the next programme. And listen to the theme tune without being yelled at.

Anyway, until now some programme makers have been able to find a way round the squeezing. I know this because I did it myself. On my BBC4 show Screenwipe, we deliberately fill our credits with jokes or footage or dialogue, partly because we're trying to make a show with at least a vague whiff of personality, but mainly because it stops "them" messing with it. But now, thanks to the new rules, we won't be able to do that any more when the show returns in the autumn.

Instead, "end credits should run over visually interesting graphics or live action but the content must not be editorially critical to the integrity of the programme or include speech... programme trails, solicits or helplines [within] end credits are no longer allowed."

Why? Because from now on they're going to cram the credits into a teeny box and fill the rest of your screen with squawking exhortations to stay tuned for Judge John Pissing Deed. Every. Single. Time.

That's it, at a stroke. No more enjoying the Doctor Who theme tune. No more '"You Have Been Watching". No more dramatic coda following the final credit. No more Pythonesque fun-with-mock-continuity. None of that. Instead, shows must slide into and over each other, turning the schedule into one big TV megamix; meaningless imagery gushing from a tap. Because they're terrified you might exhibit free will and turn over.

As ever, it's all the fault of people with charts and computers and expensive shirts and frail imaginations, of course; people who delight in proving beyond all doubt that old-fashioned credit sequences caused viewers to start flipping. And you can't argue with their figures, because numerically they're right. But aesthetically they're wrong. And aesthetics matter in a way that can't be detected in Microsoft Excel.

Slowly, surely, these bastards are wrecking the universe; turning everything into a gaudy festival of tactless shouting. Thanks to their meddling, I'm going to have to stand behind my own end credits, in a stamp-sized window, thronged with virtual hoardings, saluting them and their latest idiotic triumph.

Rub a little more shit on all our noses, world. That's the way. Thank you.