Leaving aside the question of political and class bias in BBC news and current affairs, the abolition or hobbling of public service broadcasting in Britain would lead to a further decline in programme-making in this country. The gap would be filled with indiscriminate imports of American cultural output. Children's TV schedules in particular would be filled with the sort of stuff which in the 1950s - not without reason - communists used to campaign against. I can't see that as any kind of progress.