Re: Content is king
Whether the content is mediocre or not is generally subjective. I appreciate the BBC news coverage (yes, warts and all) and series like Happy Valley or The Night Manager, but I also think Eastenders is grungy, maudlin crap, so popular opinion isn't going to answer that question satisfactorily.
Content is king though - with respect to the BBC, the importance is perhaps less its subjective mediocrity, and more about the question of ownership.
Whether the license fee goes up or down by a few percentage points over time or is replaced with some other direct funding (risking the problems highlighted elsewhere), it is now more lucrative for creative producers of good content to do so as independent companies and then sell it to the highest bidder, BBC or not.
By gradual attrition, this will pull remaining or home-grown talent out of the BBC and in to the commercial world. Hence the need eventually for the BBC to compete more rather than less. I prefer some of the BBC differentiation to be possible because of the license-fee funding model, but would sadly concede that there is only one direction of travel.