Any attempt by Mr Whittingdale to tinker with its governance will make little difference. Replacing the BBC Trust with something like the old governing body but with a more authoritative chairman is a positive but hardly revolutionary idea. Equally, decriminalising licence-fee evaders — their cases are clogging up magistrates’ courts — would be a welcome move, but it won’t lead to a transformation of the BBC.

Something more radical is called for — the slimming down of the Corporation so that it concentrates on doing things which the market cannot be relied upon to produce. Whole swathes could be sold off over time: most of BBC1, BBC3, Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 5 and local radio. Needless to say, Auntie would fight such proposals like mad. She is refusing even to contemplate a £100 million offer for BBC3, which is being shoved online to save money. In other words, the BBC won’t even sell a minority, little-watched television channel in order to preserve it in its existing form. How much more will it squeal and struggle to hang on to its prize assets!

In the real world Mr Whittingdale can’t simply instruct the Corporation to flog off parts of itself. There would be an outcry, and he would be returned to the backbenches in short order. But he can squeeze the BBC by reducing its licence fee, forcing it to consider selling off chunks of its sprawling empire. And he can also make clear that the days of relying on a tax, paid for by all television viewers regardless of whether or not they watch the BBC, are numbered. The Corporation’s future should be subscription charging. Let the market determine the scope and nature of its offerings. The government’s responsibilities should be limited to protecting those channels — Radio 4, perhaps, and Radio 3 — which the market might not embrace, though it is perfectly possible that it would do so.

The BBC as it is presently constituted is on the wrong side of history, as Tony Hall should be clever enough to see. Not only is the licence fee morally indefensible in a multi-channel world, forcing people to pay for programming of which they watch little or nothing at all. It is also increasingly impractical. More and more viewers are looking at BBC channels exclusively on their laptops, tablets and mobiles. About 1,000 households a day are said to be opting out of the licence fee for this reason. It is technically difficult, as well as potentially controversial, for the BBC to make them pay up, and no prosecutions have yet been brought against people who watch programmes in this way. If the practice grows, the Corporation’s income will haemorrhage even without Mr Whittingdale applying a squeeze.

Does anyone believe that the BBC will report even-handedly on Mr Cameron’s forthcoming renegotiation of our EU membership, or the package he eventually obtains? There will be scare stories galore. One recent example: on BBC1’s Ten O’Clock News on April 7 economics editor Robert Peston (a seemingly ardent Europhile) declared that the think-tank Open Europe believed “the worst-case outcome is significantly worse than the best-case outcome of [Britain leaving the EU]. So they would say the costs massively outweigh . . . well, not massively, but they outweigh the potential benefits.” In fact, Open Europe predicts broadly similar costs and benefits.

John Whittingdale certainly faces an enormous challenge, which might be described as the unfinished work of Margaret Thatcher. He may turn out to be a theorist who lacks the courage or the political nous to get his way. Or — more likely, I would think — he could be reined in by a naturally cautious David Cameron.

Alternatively, he may start a revolution which ends up with a smaller and less overmighty BBC funded by people who want to use its services. If Auntie then continued to show an anti-Tory bias, we could at least say that that is what its subscribers wanted.