How to annoy everyone

I was listening with half an ear open to the arguments about the BBC and the two culture spokescritters for Labour and the Conservatives: Ben Bradshaw (Lab) has been complaining about the Trust, Jeremy Hunt has been saying he won't top-slice the licence fee, the BBC DG weighs in, that sort of thing. And it occurred to me that the following problems and benefits are perceived with the BBC:

1. Negative. It is funded by a compulsory payment, which is a real problem if you watch television but never BBC. It's not great if you don't use the BBC much. (Of course, it is cheaper than Sky. But the compulsion is still a point against.)
2. Negative. Related to that first point, it is perceived to have an institutional bias towards the left and the left's particular concerns. Tony Benn may complain that it is right-wing, but very few people further right than Marx would agree. That would be less of a problem in a privately-run situation, but the compulsory funding model makes anyone who dislikes the BBC's ideological stance choose between not having a television at all, or funding something they would prefer not to fund.
3. Positive. It is not driven by commercial pressures. This means it can produce stuff which a private company, especially an advert-funded one, could not produce.
4. Positive. The BBC is publicly-owned, although formally independent of the government. That means that the paying public have a sense of ownership, even if it is somewhat removed and mediated through the trust

I don't like the idea of kicking the BBC out into the commercial sector as a privately-owned and -run organisation, if only because we don't need another tempting morsel to add to the growing Murdoch empire.

And yet, I don't like the "telly tax". It particularly grates to think that the BBC spends money (thankfully reducing) on importing foreign, mostly American, content: it really should be using its resources on new, British content and letting the imports come through the commercial sector. And then there are the things the BBC does which drive the commercial sector out of activities: Radio 1 could survive as a commercial channel, rather than competing from the security of the licence-payer's bosom. The same probably goes for Radios 2 and 5, and possibly for Radio 3 as well: Radio 4 is perhaps different (but I would say that, wouldn't I?). The television channels could be slimmed down, and bbc.co.uk is a major web presence, but frankly unnecessary.

So, apart from selling off those bits of the BBC which are not necessary to its core function, what do we do with the rest? As I say, I'm reluctant to make it a private company, but I can't for the life of me see the justification in taxing people for it. Mercifully, subscriptions have become a viable option since the days of Lord Reith. So here's my suggestion, which has been partly inspired by the blog conversation with John H:

After selling off the "non-core" assets of the BBC, turn the rest into a co-operative broadcaster funded by subscription. (I'd suggest that a divvy be abandoned in favour of lower subscriptions or better programming, though.) The initialism can be retained as the British Broadcasting Co-operative; the BBC's political bias lies not too far removed from the co-operative movement's own political centre; the subscription model identifies the BBC's viewers with its customers (ITV's customers are, of course, its advertisers) without the compulsory element of taxation; the left is annoyed by the idea of removing the BBC from the state; and the right is infuriated by the co-operative model.

A policy which maketh wroth quite literally everyone: so wrong, it's right?