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Blaming these programmes for ITV's difficulties in a multi-channel world is comical. How many religion or arts shows are broadcast at peak times, and what does their programme budget actually add up to?

The plan is obvious, and you will be hearing the same sad tale with monotonous regularity over the next few years. ITV wants to be allowed to pick its own definition of public-service broadcasting, and then find someone else to pay for the residual bits and pieces that it is not allowed to jettison.

All the cynical complaining is aimed at the £450m a year ITV estimates it has to spend on its licence fees and public-service obligations. Clearly ITV licence fees should be reduced to reflect the changes in the broadcasting market since the licences were last valued. But Ofcom should not be conned into believing that ITV is on its last legs nor that the company is incapable of being enormously profitable again.

Above all, Ofcom, stiffened by its finding that the audience still values diverse schedules of high quality, should have high expectations for the UK's premier commercial terrestrial broadcaster. There is, after all, the ultimate choice for a commercial broadcaster that finds the burden of public obligations too high - it can hand back its licences. There will be no shortage of takers, even if they have to put up with the dreadful burden of broadcasting religious or arts programmes.

If ITV devoted more time to programme creativity instead of plotting how to get its hands on a large slice of the £450m, it might come up with something less pointless than Hell's Kitchen. It might even find that some of the things it is so keen to drop could, if done well, be good business as part of a diverse schedule, in terms of reputation and attracting upmarket viewers. Arts shows have not exactly harmed Five's prospects.

ITV should be making a virtue out of the range of its programmes.

At least ITV has decided to face the music later this month and outline its future strategy to investors, advertisers and the press in two half-day extravaganzas. This is the moment of maximum danger for the broadcaster and a courageous decision. It had better be a good performance.

There are those, including many ITV shareholders, who will be waiting to see what the broadcaster's strategy for growth amounts to, as opposed to cutting costs, sacking people, hoping for the best and trying to wriggle out of obligations.

A lot of attention will also be paid to the trends on commercial impacts, ITV's self-chosen battlefield.

What if the audience concludes that there really is no strategy worth the name, however slick the visuals? The shareholders could easily become impatient if they don't like what they are told, even though the early replacement of ITV chief executive Charles Allen by the unemployed Greg Dyke is little more than a fantasy.

They will certainly expect rather more than whingeing about the burden of a few religious and arts programmes.

- Raymond Snoddy is media editor of The Times

30 SECONDS ON ... RELIGION AND THE ARTS ON ITV

- ITV has one regular arts programme, The South Bank Show. It started in 1978 with a show featuring Germaine Greer, cartoonist Gerald Scarfe and Sir Paul McCartney.

- Its presenter, Melvyn Bragg, is ITV's longest-running presenter, having fronted programmes on the channel for 40 years.

- The show's highest rating (nine million viewers) was for a programme on Irish dancer Michael Flatley in October 1997.

- ITV has one regular piece of religious programming, a show called My Favourite Hymns. It is presented by John Stapleton and made by Granada.

- The channel also schedules one-off programming on religion and the arts. It recently broadcast two late-night religious shows, It's My Life and Faith and Music, and this Sunday debuts another - Not Just on Sundays.