CB: The internet is free in the sense which you would like to reverse, because you would, understandably, and I agree with that, like to see newspapers charging.

CM: My point is simply that technology has a tendency to create greater freedom at a lower cost. This is not an unmixed blessing, but it is nevertheless a blessing. It's perverse to go against it. The consequence of this is that things like the BBC pass into history. And what I want to do is to help it pass into history, and get the bits that are of value and think of how to project them into the new era. What I feel now about the bureaucrats who run the BBC is that they're all scared, they're all worried, sad people. I met the head of comedy the other day — I've never met a gloomier person in all my life!

CB: Oh well, clowns are always gloomy.

CM: That's true, yes. But it's because they sort of know that they are doomed. They're very powerful and they've got a bit of life in them yet, but they can't have the courage of their convictions because then they get attacked. So what they do is have an act of listening to everybody all the time. And what they're really doing is trying to defend an extraordinary bureaucratic apparatus for as long as they possibly can, and that seems to me to be soul-destroying. The BBC is full of negativity, and I would like it to move into a more creative area, which means getting rid of most of it. 

DJ: Next year the new government will have to think about what to do about this. There really are only three ways to fund a thing like the BBC. Either you stick with the system that you have, which has the huge advantage that it is accepted broadly by most people, because it's been there for a long time. 

CB: Except Charles.

DJ: A lot of other people don't like it too.

CB: Who likes paying taxes?

DJ: Nobody does and it is a regressive tax. But the other two things are advertising and subscription, and there isn't really another alternative. They all have a downside.

CB: They do. Advertising you can rule out, because there isn't enough of it to go round the existing channels. If you tossed the BBC into the equation it would become the most powerful commercial broadcaster in the UK overnight, and that would destroy ITV, Channel 4 and Five. Subscription is possible, but I think the licence fee remains, with all its imperfections, the best way of funding a service which I admire. 

CM: To come back to the point about costs, it is relevant, because costs always develop when there is protection of the entity, when there is monopoly or quasi-monopoly, or protected power of one sort or the other. And so one of the interesting things about Jonathan Ross is just how much he is paid — unbelievable. And this is all done on the basis of competition, a sort of bogus market way of talking. It's utter rubbish. He needn't be paid even a twentieth of that to retain his services in the current environment.