There's something missing this Autumn. And I don't mean the frosts, freezing fogs and incessant rain that used to make November a contender for most depressing month of the year.

No, I am referring to the absence of any conventional travel programme on mainstream TV as the long nights draw in. For almost 40 years the likes of Judith Chalmers and Cliff Michelmore have been cheering up the dark months with their perky little reports from the more popular corners of southern Europe. But no more.

Commissioning editors have decided that the format is as old and tired as a two week break in Magaluf. ITV's Wish You Were Here was sent to the great green room in the sky in 2003 after a 29 year run. The BBC's Holiday, which started the fomat in 1969, lasted four years longer and was only pulled after its last run ended in March this year.

Now travel on TV means Michael Palin carving through huge wodges of BBC budget on his jaunts around the globe or Ewan McGregor showing off that he is as handy with a BMW motorbike as with a light sabre. Or at least he thinks he is.

Great TV maybe, but hardly reflective of the vast majority of overseas trips taken by British holidaymakers: "What's it to be this year kids? Two weeks in an apartment in Spain or six months tracking the Tropic of Capricorn on skateboards? Your call."

OK, so maybe the conventional travel show format had lost its way. Under the legendary Ms Chalmers it did not matter which part of the Med she was reporting from - the hotel always looked identical. And why was it the same middle aged couple from Penge always being interviewed on camera? Suspicious.

But the scope for modernising the format is surely huge. It seems odd that there are dozens of highly successful property based consumer programmes on the box - but nothing on travel. After all, we only move house once or twice a decade, but most of us now take two or three holidays a year. Top Gear has been a huge ratings winner for cars, but nothing as imaginative or funny has been tried for travel. Surely with a bit of imagination...?

It seems a missed opportunity to me, given how foreign holidays have been transformed in the household pecking order from occasional luxury to annual essential.

Or perhaps we really are all such globe trotters now that we do not need those little rays of televisual sunshine beamed into our sitting rooms as the winter rages outside.