Brand The Beeb

Auntie should have been fined eighteen million pounds, payable over three years. She could then have paid it by sacking Jonathan Ross.

To prevent any such situations in future, the license fee should be made optional, with as many adults as wished to pay it at any given address free to do so, including those who did not own a television set but who greatly valued, for example, Radio Four. The Trustees would then be elected by and from among the license-payers. Candidates would have to be sufficiently independent to qualify in principle for the remuneration panels of their local authorities. Each license-payer would vote for one, with the top two elected.

The electoral areas would be Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and each of the nine English regions. The Chairman would be appointed by the relevant Secretary of State, with the approval of the relevant Select Committee. And the term of office would be four years. Non-payers being able to watch or listen is no more objectionable then non-members being able to visit National Trust properties, or than the universal service afforded by the RNLI, or the fact that you not have to buy anything advertised on commercial television or radio in order to watch or listen to it.

At the same time, we need to ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national daily newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one national weekly newspaper. To ban any person or other interest from owning or controlling more than one television station. To re-regionalise ITV under a combination of municipal and mutual ownership. And to apply that same model (but with central government replacing local government, subject to very strict parliamentary scrutiny) to Channel Four.

But sticking with the BBC, would "popular" broadcasting be driven out by the above system? Well, what if it were? It would still exist elsewhere. And after last night's multiply shark-jumping EastEnders, a jaw-dropping pastiche of the programme's every cliché, change of this kind seems to be the least of the worries of, or at any rate for, the BBC's "popular" wing.