OPINION: Dyke should use BBC review to face realities of a digital future

And you can be absolutely sure of one thing - however severe Lord Hutton's verdict, the BBC director general will not consider resigning.

Yet if he has any sense at all, Dyke will pay very careful attention to the list of 24 questions put to the BBC as part of Charter Review.

They are of course the obvious questions anyone with a basic knowledge of the BBC would ask. In a multi-channel age, how is the BBC to be funded?

Should it be involved in commercial ventures, and if so, how can transparency and fairness be guaranteed? And should all the public service money go to the BBC?

Many of these questions have been around for a decade, but this time the answers may have changed, because the entire broadcasting environment has changed.

As culture secretary Tessa Jowell pointed out, when the BBC's present Royal Charter came in, there were no digital homes. But by the time the January sales are over, the total will have passed the 50% mark for the first time.

The 24 questions amount to a very stiff examination for the BBC and it will be in all sorts of trouble if it takes any of the answers for granted.

It is a clear case of the whole adding up to more than the sum of the parts.

Somehow Dyke and the BBC must produce a coherent view of the future of public-service broadcasting in a multi-channel age. And this view must go way beyond institutional survival. The good news for the BBC is that there appears to be no hostility on the part of the government, even though it plans to test the key questions to destruction. Ministers seem to be taking a longer-term view, which goes beyond the imprecise accusations aimed at the Today programme. The Hutton report may enliven January, but will have little effect on Charter Review.

Jowell insists she wants a strong BBC, with the ability to be autonomous, however inconvenient that may be for politicians. But despite the positive noises, one fundamental question is not receiving the attention it should - the effect on a new Charter of analogue switch-off.

The government is determined to move the entire country to digital by 2010. It has a plausible plan to begin the process in 2006 by switching off one ITV transmitter region after the other.

There is still no sign that this policy is being co-ordinated with the BBC's Charter Review. If everything goes according to plan, then halfway through the new Royal Charter period the entire country will have addressable boxes, which could be used to turn the BBC licence fee into an optional subscription. In practice, this is unlikely to happen, but a lot more thought needs to be given to the implications of an analogue switch-off in the middle of the BBC's next Royal Charter period.

This article was first published on Marketing