[DTV]

My proposal, to be clear, is to keep everything which has an obvious PSB purpose, and everything which the commercial can't or won't provide, inside a fairly-funded "BBC PSB" with money coming from a publicly funded source. And everything which would survive under an advertising model, or which has no clear PSB function, to stand on its own in competition with its commercial rivals.

This fundamentally misunderstands the PSB bargain that allows the BBC to work - which is, in order to get funding for the 'PSB stuff', we also provide you with a range of popular programming that you can enjoy and make you feel like the BBC is a worthwhile investment. BBC One is as PSB as any other part of the broadcaster (indeed, I'd argue its PSB value is greater than something like the BBC News channel). What you've outlined as 'PSB stuff' is incredibly expensive and massively reliant on this cross-subsidy, which, if that PSB bargain broke down, I'm not sure if people would be happy to fork out for.

And the thing about this BBC should do PSB stuff only logic, is where do you draw the line? A few years ago, broadcasting women's football would arguably have been 'public service' stuff as it was very much a minority interest; now it's grown in popularity, does 'BBC PSB' have to drop any women's football programming because commercial rivals can do it? When the BBC commissioned Strictly, nobody thought it would be a success; from the minute it was, should the BBC have given the rights over to ITV? Although I guess 'BBC PSB' wouldn't commission anything vaguely fun in the first place, just the Today programme, some dry documentaries and Britain's third-best news channel (out of two).