Debating the debates

Max Arkinson has a clever proposal with regard to the ongoing negotiations on the party leaders' election debate:

The Guardian is warning that the party leaders' election debates are in danger of 'being negotiated to death', and today's Times is reporting that Brown is calling in 'the Obama team for help with television debate'.

As readers of this blog will know, I'm fully expecting the 'debates' to be as boring as all the other interviews the media will be inflicting on us during the election.

But all this talk about the debates about the debates has given me an idea:

Why
don't the BBC, ITN and Sky insist that all further negotiations with
the main political parties about the rules and formats for the debates
must be conducted in front of the cameras?