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The BBC Trust has spent most of its short life parodied as a toothless hound. When cornered, though, even the most mild-mannered regulatory beast can bite.
The Trust's chairman, Sir Michael Lyons, has just taken a large chunk out of BBC management's leg. His report this week is not far off doing a Gerald Ratner “It's all crap” on aspects of the Corporation.
It lambasts BBC1's daytime output as “tired and boring” (have they only just noticed?), says BBC2 is not distinctive enough and recommends publishing information about star salaries, a move strongly resisted by the management.
Oh, and it reprieves 6 Music in a direct snub to the BBC director general, Mark Thompson.
In this last saga is pretty much all you need to know about the Corporation today. The 6 Music closure plan was intended to appease an incoming Conservative government, a sprat thrown to avoid sacrificing a bigger mackerel.
Sir Michael has reprieved 6 Music on the odd grounds that the outcry about its closure must mean it was worth keeping. Well, all due high fives to the indy music fans who made a fuss and organised their protest well.
But Sir Michael's logic is a charter for pressure groups, not a way to run the main broadcaster in a recession. In effect, it means that no station or channel of the BBC can ever be touched since all have audiences who have a vocal interest in keeping what they have.
More puzzling still is the reluctance to entertain a sell-off of Radio 1 or 2 which might attract a commercial bidder.
Sir Michael was widely thought to be the fall guy for the arrival of a Tory government that had talked tough about the Beeb. Now he has emerged from the shadows to deliver the kind of reportable but ill-targeted bollocking which will make it difficult for the Government to claim he is weak, without any clear indication of what he really means.
The most peculiar announcement was that star salaries would be revealed, followed by a swift reversal, which in effect means that we will only be given wide salary bands. This satisfies neither transparency nor discretion. It is the result of a stand-up row between Sir Michael and Thompson which resulted in the watering down of the Trust's proposal to tell us what Fiona Bruce and Jeremy Clarkson bring home.
To declare an interest: I am a part-time BBC presenter whose remuneration is unlikely to have tabloid readers dropping their toast in shock if Sir Michael has another rush of blood to the head. But by starting a battle royal over presenters' salaries, he has created a headache for those who manage the sensitivities, personal and commercial, of deals.
Of course, all of these arguments are really about what rights we have over the Corporation as licence-fee payers. The yearly fee is an anomaly but one that can be defended so long as output remains distinctive and of high enough quality.
We do have to choose between an argument that says the BBC must do everything and reach everyone all the time and a readiness to put quality above the quantity of viewers.
Not everything Sir Michael says is daft. He notes that BBC4, as the “upmarket” niche channel, has not made much of an impression. Admirable as it is in intent, it looks underfunded and overstretched — everything goes on for hours and the tone and cast are repetitive. All those Seventies rock documentaries and dear old Stevie Winwood — it's a baby-boomers' fest with the jaded stars treated with a hallowed reverence. There was life after the Reading Festival, guys.
I do not think he is so clear-eyed about BBC3. One insider defends its programmes such as the recent Peckham Finishing School for Girls as socially useful in showing the gulf between Sloanes and council estates. Fancy that.
It was entertaining and well made but it was not an idea that only the BBC could hope to carry off.
BBC3 does not fulfil its brief of youth-oriented news with any insight. As for “distinctive” — could not a commercial channel bring us Hotter Than My Daughter, Snog, Marry, Avoid and Bizarre ER?
One thing the BBC needs to convey is that it is operating in a country undergoing massive cuts which will demand sacrifices. Thompson has frozen pay for executives and imposed a symbolic salary forfeit of a month for high earners.
But the Trust seems unaffected by austerity. Its Charter commitments to greater regional representation and expansion are the priorities of a quango and echoes of a time when public money was much more lavishly on tap.
Some things it never talks about when it claims to represent the viewers' interests are the ones that bother me most.
The Corporation needs an online presence to publicise its output and enable us to watch online. It also needs more constraint. The cheeky idea that the online “only” costs us 67p a month is the old trick of telling us that the royals only cost tuppence a day to keep.
It still adds up to a costly operation.
Crucially, newspaper groups have to fund their own internet sites at a time when a sustainable model is elusive. So why should, say, the Evening Standard, Telegraph or Times have to endure a vast competitor, subsidised by rest of us?
The BBC exists to educate and expand minds. It is not there to expand itself infinitely — a point which has only recently been taken on board.
Yet for an organisation often slammed for being trendy progressive it is strangely content with the status quo. So it has few on-air female authorities — odder still, it still thinks this is broadly OK.
The Today programme brought some frustrations into the open on this. But it's not fair to pick on it alone. Across arts, politics, foreign affairs, history and the big serious series on big serious things, the record isn't good. Women prosper as well-groomed hostesses, tough reporters or slick newsreaders: far fewer as interpreters of what really counts.
One thing we would miss without a BBC is the sense that there is a broadcaster we care enough about to argue about. I wouldn't swap that for any other broadcast model I've come across. But it does need to pick which battles to fight and which to concede. Do less and do it better: make that Auntie's new motto for the tough times ahead.
