Last week we all got a bit distracted by Socks and Cookie. But as Steve Hewlett points out in today's MediaGuardian section, BBC director general Mark Thompson's presentation of his cost cutting proposals to the BBC Trust last Wednesday will be of far more long term significance to the corporation.
Hewlett suggests that Thompson's plan to concentrate on doing less content, but better, rather than axe specific services - BBC3 and BBC4 fans can allow themselves a sigh of relief - will save around £250m a year.
In BBC News, the cost cutting drive will lead to the merging of TV and radio newsrooms, something the corporation has contemplated before but never managed to see through.
Here's Hewlett's take on the likely impact of Thompson's cost cutting plan:
"So what is the plan? Well-placed sources suggest that, in addition to dropping some of the licence fee bid proposals (including possibly the plan to develop ultra-local TV services and new radio stations), there will be an overall reduction of some 10% in the amount of content the BBC creates. This would save about £250m a year. And it would be consistent with comments made by Thompson in a speech looking forward to the BBC in 2012, delivered last July, just before Blue Peter and the avalanche of fakery allegations that followed hit the corporation.
"He said: 'The BBC needs to become smaller . . . it should make less. It should concentrate its finite resources on rather fewer, better hours of TV and radio and fewer, better web pages.'
"That was a clear signal that the years of expansion - in content creation at least - might be over. And now it looks as if that is about to happen. It also sounds quite radical but can be achieved without anyone having to lose anything "big". It explains how the Trust can allow the management to retain all the BBC's current output channels and services - you just spend substantially less on content to fill them. And if that sounds like many more hours of repeats, just think of it as more opportunities to view key content! But overall, if it is achievable, it might well play a major part in fixing the problem."
However, Hewlett also highlights the fact that as well as the internal cost cutting drive, Thompson has an external battle on his hands to keep the jealous hands of other broadcasters off the BBC licence fee in Ofcom's upcoming second public service broadcasting review.
"Thompson makes a convincing case in principle as to why taking money off the BBC - which is unavoidably committed to PSB - to hand out to others who might not be, should be resisted. Doing so would not maintain the amount of PSB we get. It would spread the one remaining source of funds more thinly. As such it would also fail to replicate the plurality of funding that has characterised the current set-up and underpinned the independence of the commercial PSBs. It would lead to significant increases in administration costs. And above all it would break the basic accountability link between licence payers and the BBC - you know what you're paying for - and, in time, as a fund for unpopular programmes, would thereby lose popular support.
"Thompson might well be right. And if the BBC in 2012 looks and feels like a creatively vital and vibrant organisation, the sort of leading cultural institution it aims to be, it is hard to see anyone winning the argument to take money off it.
"However, if after four years of cutbacks and contraction the BBC looks and feels anything like it did a few years back, the public clamour to let others have at least some of the cash will be very hard to resist. For Mark Thompson and the new BBC Trust the stakes could hardly be higher."
