The ITV News At Ten is dead, long live the BBC News At Ten. The latest twist in the argy-bargy over the ten o'clock news slot threatens to turn the matter into a long-running serial to rival a TV soap.

First, ITV axes News At Ten. Then, it gets into a legal tussle with the regulatory body, the Independent Television Commission, which demands the reinstatement of the programme.

Now, as they prepare to lock horns in the courts, BBC Director-General Greg Dyke sneakily nips in and bags the 10pm slot for BBC1's main bulletin of the day.

When news of a news programme knocks other stories off the front pages - as the News At Ten fiasco has done regularly over the past year - perhaps it's time to call it a day and let the interested parties fight it out among themselves.

Organise a gladiatorial contest in the Dome between Dyke and his commercial TV equivalent. They could batter each other over the head with rolled copies of old News At Ten scripts. Ulrika Jonsson could present the TV coverage which would be screened at, well 10pm would seem appropriate.

Dyke, of course, doesn't want to move the Nine O'Clock News to a later slot simply to satisfy the "bring back the bongs" brigade bemoaning the loss of News At Ten.

The move may win him a few new friends among news-hungry viewers and MPs who like the idea of a news programme at 10pm because it can show them at work with late night voting in Westminster.

But his plan to mess about with the established and popular Nine O'Clock News, which has been running for 30 years, is as much to do with ratings as ITV's original decision was to move News At Ten in the first place. They wanted a clear run through the evening without a major news programme bringing matters to a halt - and losing millions of viewers (and advertising revenue) as they switched to other channels.

Audiences for ITV's news bulletins may be lower but so is BBC1's share of viewing. Some peaktime drama series, such as Fish and Jack Of Hearts, have done badly in the ratings partly because of clever scheduling by an ITV unencumbered by having to interrupt dramas, films and documentaries for the news.

There have been signs of late that ITV is struggling to fill peaktime with quality shows, relying too heavily on real life documentaries and cheap caught-on-video style programmes. The BBC will need to make a lot more original drama and other series to plug the gap left by the move of the Nine O'Clock News. Dyke's announcement of an extra £100m for new series is intended to help solve that problem but seems unlikely to be enough.

ITV must be rubbing its hands in private that the BBC's action could get them out of a tight spot with the ITC. There would seem little point in trying to make them reinstate News At Ten now the BBC has staked a claim to the slot. Nobody in their right mind is going to want to have the main news programme of the two channels on screen at the same time.