Watching the telly is supposed to be fun, but the menacing woman who voices the adverts from TV Licensing just wants to scare you. “It's all in the database,” she intones in an attempt to frighten us into paying a tax, £139.50 this year, apparently for the privilege of owning of a television - although of course it is to fund the BBC.

Not that you'd know. There's no reference to the BBC in the TV Licensing material. That, at least keeps keeps Auntie's hands clean while the nastier family members extort the cash. Even Noel Edmonds is disgusted, although he has made so much money from the BBC down the years that his complaints lack credibility. Nevertheless, Noel joins the one in 20 of the population who refuses to pay - quite a house party at 1.25 million households in all.

Against that backdrop it is not surprising that Britons don't really know what the licence fee is for. When viewers were asked in an Ofcom survey who the levy funds, only 44 per cent mentioned the BBC unprompted. Only with prompting did the proportion of people rise, to 87 per cent. Yet, just over a fifth, when prompted, reckon that ITV, Channel 4 or even Five get some of the money (those surveyed could tick more than one box). Which, on the face of it, adds up nicely to a case for sharing the licence fee with other broadcasters.

However, the case is not sound. What is true is that the television licence should be called the BBC licence, and indeed licence payers should get a leaflet with their bill explaining where the money goes. It would, though, be a mistake to take the argument farther, because spreading licence-fee cash around to bail out other broadcasters is incoherent, unwieldy and potentially dangerous for the BBC.

It's incoherent because creating a hybrid public-private broadcaster makes no sense. If cash went to Channel 4, it would be unclear whether the cash is for Big Brother or Dispatches. It's unwieldy because it dramatically increases the regulatory overhead for any commercial broadcaster taking the money and is potentially a drag on creativity. And, as Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, gave warning this week, once you take one slice from the BBC, it's pretty easy for the quango, or ministers, doing the slicing to cut down further. Instead, those who want to cut back the size and the scope of the BBC should simply trim the licence fee - and so the £130 million-a-year digital switchover bill, about £5 on the licence fee, ought to be handed back to viewers. Ofcom says that nearly two thirds of our boggle-eyed nation would favour a rebate.

The problem seems to boil down to two issues, regional news and Channel 4. ITV says that it cannot afford to do regional news and wants to drop it, which is emotional for anybody who remembers Tony Wilson presenting Granada Reports. Decisions to drop out of current affairs and documentaries and children's programming have failed to generate significant fervour because those genres are well supplied elsewhere. Regional news, though, is a big deal at Westminster because this is where MPs can actually get on air, although ITV's bulletins tends to lag behind the BBC. ITV says that it is willing for public money to be paid to a third-party news provider for it to continue the service, but this is difficult for all the problems already mentioned.

Instead, painful as it may be, ITV should be free to work out how it provides regional news. To not do so in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland would clearly be suicide but there are plenty of imaginative ways in which ITV could provide regional news in England, and even in the nations, without giving over a full half hour every night. ITV, a commercial broadcaster, needs to work out what its viewers will wear, rather than ask for handouts.

Then there's Channel 4. The Big Brother broadcaster is tight for cash and faces tougher commercial pressures over the next decade. Yet, it still wants to carry on as it is, which is not how most businesses operate. A bailout will allow that, but is that a sensible use of public money?

Curiously, the option that seems not to be on the table is a commercial one. Would it not be possible to sell some shares in Channel 4 to create cash for investment, perhaps to a consortium of independent producers, who have a vested interest in Channel 4's current publisher-broadcaster model? Has any minister or regulator tried to hire a bank to test the market? After all, Channel 4 might well be more attractive to buyers than ITV.

What is important is Channel 4's commitment to innovation and independent production but full state ownership is a heavy-handed way to sustain that. Regulation and perhaps some ownership safeguards, in the form of a golden share or an employee trust, would be enough to achieve that. The broadcaster's corporate culture should also survive all but the most brutual and insensitive of owners.

Given that most people don't know what the licence fee is for, it is not obvious that they should pay more of it. Television needs to be allowed to evolve and not be preserved in aspic by regulators.

dan.sabbagh@thetimes.co.uk

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