Doing without

This could be interesting. The Guardian says that the BBC has taken a representative cross-section of licence-payers - from enthusiast to refuseniks - and conducted a trial which left them without BBC tv, radio and online services for two weeks. Graham Norton seems to have ownership of the idea, saying he wrote to Lord Hall with a more extreme suggestion - stop all BBC output for two weeks and repay £24 to each licence-fee holder.

The acid test is whether or not the Daily Mail could fill its columns without the BBC to get it riled up. Readers might like to suggest a self-denying ordinance. The stream of important news about Kardashians will probably fill the gap, in the Mail's distinctive, public service sort-of-way, threatened as it is by the imperial ambitions of Kardashian coverage offered by the BBC website.