Insomniacs of all ilks will wipe away a misty tear tomorrow morning as the last Open University course-related TV broadcast is shown on the BBC at 5.30am.

The OU said A103 Art: A question of style, Neoclassicism and Romanticism has been a stalwart since it was first broadcast in 1998.

But it explained times, technology and the OU have moved on. Its students now get course material in others ways. This includes podcasts, on DVDs over the internet and other virtual learning environments.

It's a huge change from the OU's heydays in the seventies and eighties. Since the very first OU course-related broadcast went out on January 3 1971 on BBC 2 at 11am, many a bleary-eyed person, studying for an OU degree or not, but unable to sleep, gazed mesmerised at these programmes.

Bearded lecturers in baggy corduroy trousers wittered on about subjects as varied as quantum physics to Plato, scribbling symbols and equations, philosophies and facts on a blackboard; much of it making no sense to mere mortals.

Yet it was addictive stuff.

However, despite the end of this era, it is not the end of OU programmes. Instead they have evolved into television series of broad appeal for viewers with peak-time programmes such as Coast, Stardate and Battle of the Geeks; so maybe things won't be so different.