1a) What should the BBC be for and what should be the purpose of PSB?

[french frank]

As to the question of what should be the purpose of public service broadcasting, I'm trying to work out whether any analogy can be made with 'public service' in general, and other specific public services.

Just reading what Wiki has to say

"A public service may sometimes have the characteristics of a public good (being non-rivalrous and non-excludable), but most are services which may (according to prevailing social norms) be under-provided by the market. In most cases public services are services, i.e. they do not involve manufacturing of goods. They may be provided by local or national monopolies, especially in sectors which are natural monopolies.

They may involve outputs that are hard to attribute to specific individual effort and/or hard to measure in terms of key characteristics such as quality. They often require high levels of training and education. They may attract people with a public service ethos who wish to give something to the wider public or community through their work."

[Gordon]

it is too big now; why not split it into BTV, BRadio, BNews Service, and possibly BDigital; and make them all subscription - the license fee funding is now a curse ... in any case it must ripped out of the grasp of the present great and good gangster cult ...

I don't disagree about possibly separating out the parts but that separation is to some extent already in place, it just isn't formalised. The extended implication is the dreaded P word which no doubt we shall hear more of once the debate warms up.

As to funding, if not a licence fee how do you propose that a subscription system would work? How would the necessary revenue get collected?

Also, if not "the great and good" in whose grasp would you want it? Anyway who are these great and good - name some names?

From aeolium above:

Actually I think I'd prefer modest claims underpinned by strong ambitions.....

I agree about the failure of management, and suggest it is above all a failure of confidence and imagination, an unwillingness to believe in a better audience. Intelligent and highly educated managers put out rubbish that they would never think of watching or hearing but with the defence that this is what people want.

I agree entirely!

[Stephen Whitaker]

[QUOTE=VodkaDilc;348954]My consumption of those three channels consists of a handful of BBC2 documentaries or Proms throughout the year; nothing on BBC1 or 3. Add to that occasional listening to R3, 4 and 5, nothing on the BBC's online content and rather more on BBC4. My personal use of the BBC (and I admit that I'm not typical) amounts largely to the Proms and the various orchestras and choirs.[/QUOTE

Your licence fee gives you all that but if the Proms and the various orchestras and choirs were to be dependant on a subscription
then you would need to fork out a great deal more than you pay now.

Similarly Calum Da Jazbo if you think it is too big now and
"why not split it into BTV, BRadio, BNews Service, and possibly BDigital; and make them all subscription"
consider how few people would pay the expenses of programming those things that you like.