BBC College of Journalism Blog - A vigorous and robust discussion about journalism from every perspective.

For two prime time hours last night - TV's most prestigious evening of the week - you could have heard just two voices. 

Niall Ferguson's Civilization: Is the West History? (Channel 4, 8pm to 9pm) and Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe (BBC2, 9pm to 10pm) had much in common despite the differences in subject matter:

- Charismatic, clever, youngish male presenter from academia

- Enormous, abstract subject

- Budget that allowed the presenter to do pieces to camera in many exotic locations

- The challenge of appealing to a general audience to justify the budget and transmission slot

- The need to find interesting and visual stories to illuminate big ideas without leaving the viewer puzzled as to what the film is really about.

Brian Cox's series (left) was heavily trailed and was on the front cover of the Radio Times. The first episode found Cox travelling the world in his attempt to explain how the inevitable forward movement of time relates to the idea of entropy. And how the universe will end with more of a whimper than a bang.  

It's easy to mock. And Sam Wollaston in today's Guardian does it very well:

"Hi, I'm Professor Brian Cox, I'm one of the Wonders of the Universe (BBC2, Sunday). Here I am, on top of a mountain, triumphant in outdoor clothing. Why are we here? Where do we come from? These are the most enduring of questions. And why is it that you are a little bit in love with me? Is it my enormous mind? Or my boyish good looks, the NME hair, the expansive wardrobe coupled with exotic locations, the soft modest enthusiasm with just a hit of Lancashire, the winning smile ... this winning smile - ah, that's got you, hasn't it? Look how proudly I stand, while the helicopter circles. I've conquered this mountain, just as I'm conquering your heart."

The smile: does anyone smile while saying something completely serious unless they're on television? Or unless they are Margaret Thatcher.  

Andrew Billen in the Times described the film as a "satisfying romp", though he did complain that while some comparatively simple ideas like the one-way direction of time were explaining laboriously, others, like black holes and black dwarves, were thrown into the script without much explanation.

Niall Ferguson (right) found a way to describe the episodes of his series for an audience that might have been put off by hearing that episode one started with the Ming Dynasty. Don't worry: think of it as the story of the first of six "killer apps" of the West: competition.  

If I was sceptical about these ambitious series, I was probably wrong: look at the overnight figures:

- Civilization: Is the West History?: 1.1 million (pretty good against Top Gear, 2.3 million)  

- Wonders of the Universe: 3.6 million (excellent: more than Top Gear before it, and Match of the Day 2 after it).

It will be interesting to see how the figures (especially Cox's) hold up in the rest of both series.

Maybe there's still life in the lavishly illustrated lecture tour.

It's a classic TV format going back to the likes of Kenneth Clark (Civilisation, 1969) and James Burke (Connections, 1978).

It was revived with Simon Schama's History of Britain (2000), which spawned a revival of the genre - producing, for instance, Channel 4's David Starkey (Monarchy, 2004). It continues in both arts and science (for example, Michael Mosley's The Story of Science, 2010).

The question for the future is whether such mainstream offerings can hold their own against more targeted nuggets of education and entertainment available online?

While big nature documentaries may continue to appeal to a general as well as a specialist audience with amazing footage, the science or cultural blockbuster could be vulnerable.

For instance, the annual TED conference in the States is beautifully produced with a hugely varied collection of half-hour talks in front of an audience, and online.

There's a lot more to them visually than the austerity of BBC1's annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture. Take a look at one I came across: an inspiring illustrated talk by JR, a French street artist who has done some extraordinary work with photography and massive prints in public areas.

And if the rest of the TED cast doesn't appeal - and you'd have to be pretty jaded not to find something of interest among them - there's a growing collection of lectures whose lower production values are made up for by the specificity of their content. If you're getting the exact subject you want, you probably won't mind too much how it's dressed up. 

So, online you can find a 24-lecture course, Introduction to Astrophysics, for non-scientists given by a professor at Yale - along with 18,000 other videos from universities on almost every other subject.

Then there's the amazing Khan Academy, founded by a former hedge fund manager, which boasts a collection of more than 2,000 talks. For Sal Khan's version of Brian's Cox's theme last night, see his 17 minutes on the Radius of the Observable Universe. In Khan's talks you just hear him while you watch his jottings on a graphics pad. No distractions from a change of presenter clothes, then.

For mainstream television, the future of the authored educational documentary is just one slice of a bigger problem: how to continue to assemble substantial audiences for expensive programmes in the face of the increasing ability of online content to satisfy niche interests and offer personal content (your Facebook page is unique to you).

As viewing internet content on television sets becomes ever easier, the competition will only get fiercer. 

Don't expect a reversal of the trend towards big names presenting ever bigger subjects before the sun explodes and reduces the earth to a glowing cinder.