A week that begins with another Gordon Brown lecture on Britishness ends with the BBC £2bn short of the licence fee it sought. Spot the connection - and the supreme pottiness of the politics here.
Yes, it's the British Broadcasting Corporation we're talking about - and the Scottish PM-in-waiting who, as Chancellor, is making its big pips squeak. Broadcasting jobs have gone in Scotland already. More news jobs are surely on the block. For what? To move kids' programming and sports coverage to a stately new pleasure dome in Salford Quays as Prime Minister Brown's genuflection to regional policy - while, down south, White City is sold off because giant pleasure domes don't seem to be needed any longer.
It doesn't make sense. But you could say the same about the whole wretched business of BBC charter renewal, an interminable saga of manoeuvring, calculation and lobbying spin.
If this is the end of the broadcasting world - revenue guaranteed six years into the future - then what are we to say for ITV, which must be remade by Grade or perish a week on Friday? Does a monumentally lugubrious negotiating process have any relevance to a hi-tech, fast-moving business?
Curiously, the time for proper consultation and deeper thought would seem to be now: conducted in an atmosphere of reasonable financial certainty.
That's what the new BBC Trust wants. That's what licence-fee payers deserve. That is also what a grim-faced director-general appears to promise as, finally, he lays out his three chosen areas for closing the funding gap: cutting back on new investments, bringing self-help to bear harder on costs, and moving cash out of existing services into fresh initiatives.
Guess which way newspaper opinion will be flowing? Big regional groups have been staunchly hostile to the BBC's idea of a network of super-local TV news stations and websites. Big national players ploughing online face head-to-head news battles with the BBC's licence-fee-funded web empire. Certain national players - such as MySpace Murdoch - aren't at all keen on BBC competition in that particular space. Others - such as the Telegraph - don't fancy a Beeb plugged deep into mobile-phone text messaging.
The debate, in short, is all about digital turf wars. Does BBC reach extend with every development of the technology (because it must serve all Britons in every way)? Or are there frontiers it mustn't pass? Is an admirable, much-valued corporation going too far, too fast? 'Does it have to attempt everything, often indifferently?' - the Mail, speaking (for once) for many more.
This is the cutting edge for any cutting back. It's the animated discussion that those of us who cherish BBC output want just as much as those who would like to pull Broadcasting House down. It's a boundary thing and a future thing - in the country where Gordon wants no borders.
