It may seem obvious to those who value the BBC's contribution to the world that the corporation should be given as much public money as possible. It certainly seems obvious to David Clark. Yet it may well be that a below-inflation licence-fee rise would be the best thing not just for the pensioners and single mothers who will have to pay it, but for the BBC itself.
Some hint of belt-tightening might do something to stem the loss of public support that the corporation must have experienced in recent weeks, as tales of its profligacy and wastefulness have multiplied. People can hardly be expected to stump up ever more of their own incomes to support an organisation that chooses to pay its film-reviewer £18 million, or considers that even its director-general's deputy needs £456,000 a year.
Energetic expansion with me-too output into areas already well served by commercial operators might also be usefully cut back. This might benefit not only the BBC's core activities, but also the rest of Britain's creative economy, most of which is grappling with financial pressure of a kind BBC bosses could barely imagine, and can ill afford to be crowded out of its key markets by publicly-subsidised competition.
If there were a little less money sloshing around, the corporation's chiefs might be less tempted to waste it on endless navel-gazing internal upheaval, and focus instead on the quality of their product. John Willis, the BBC's admired head of factual and learning, has just left the corporation after learning that this job would disappear in the fourth major reorganisation of his area since he took up his post three years ago.
A refocusing on core purpose might do much to restore morale weakened by endless expensive diversion from the business of making programmes. This is not just a matter of team-building weekend away-breaks in the Cotswolds. One chief of a vital programme department left in despair after staff he needed for urgent production work turned out to be away on a bereavement counselling course.
Yet, there is an even more profound reason why less money might make the Beeb better. The assumption, which the corporation so enthusiastically fosters, that more money means better shows is not necessarily well-founded.
Of course, Planet Earth needs the funding lavished on it, if it is to do what it does. As it happens, however, such programmes are able to raise much of the money they require from overseas partners and purchasers, rather than licence-payers. Other programmes, including some of those most central to the corporation's purpose, are actually damaged by too much funding.
The truth is that, in many of the areas in which the BBC ought to excel, tight budgets concentrate attention on what really matters. Thus, Five's no-frills arts programmes have focused their limited fire-power on the pictures they are supposed to be addressing, rather than extraneous diversions. In the process, they have earned considerable critical acclaim. The BBC's equivalents often seem more intent on providing Alan Yentob with lavish travel experiences than in saying anything much about their supposed subject matter.
All too often, the same problem also undermines the effectiveness of BBC programming in other fields, like science and history. Expensive and elaborate sugaring of the pill dilutes its therapeutic effect.
As a TV producer, I have worked with big budgets and little ones. With my hand on my heart, I cannot pretend that the programmes that have cost the most money have always been the best. What I do know is that the less money I have had, the more ruthlessly I have had to concentrate on the heart of the matter in hand.
When money is short, there is no chance of shooting anything that moves and wondering lazily what to do with it all afterwards. Nor is there any prospect of making those enjoyable but often unnecessary trips to glamorous locations that can drain energy from projects.
It is not as if the BBC does not need to raise its game. It still tells the gullible that it is the best broadcasting organisation in the world. Indeed, it does produce triumphs, like The Office. But so it should, with a guaranteed annual income of over £3 billion from the licence-payer. Much of its middle-range output, on which most of the licence fee gets spent, is nonetheless mediocre, to say the least.
Make a list of the best TV programmes you have seen in recent years. Don't you find a startling preponderance of shows like The Sopranos, The Simpsons, Frasier, Larry Sanders, the West Wing and Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose makers have received not a cent of public money? Perhaps this has helped them focus on creative endeavour, rather than looking over their shoulders all the time at political masters with a tight grip on the purse-strings.
It is a pity that the government has allowed the costs of digital switchover to become embroiled with those of BBC programme production. This will provide limitless opportunity for the creative talents of clever people to be devoted to cooking the books, rather than programme-making.
It is a pity too that a creative enterprise should get snarled up in the pursuit of politically correct projects like the transfer of programme departments to Manchester. It is another pity that the corporation should feel obliged to be pay so much attention to fashionable technological development, instead of simply making good shows.
Yet, such things are the inevitable consequences of the BBC's present system of funding. There are better ways, such as that outlined in Beyond the Charter, the report produced in 2004 by the Broadcasting Policy Group (of which I am a member).
By the time the imminent licence-fee settlement expires in 2016, some such methods will doubtless have been adopted. Till then, however, short rations may do more to prepare the BBC for what will become an ever harsher broadcasting environment than largesse, however well-meant.
