Posted Sunday, October 5, 2003; 12.48BST
The people coming down hardest on the Corporation now are its commercial competitors — but self-interest doesn't drain their argument of potency. One in particular, global media baron Rupert Murdoch, owns powerful newspapers that can grind axes in ways that matter to politicians. During the Hutton inquiry into the suicide of weapons expert David Kelly — whose leak to Gilligan prompted his explosive charge on the Today program that Downing Street put material in its Iraq weapons dossier "probably knowing it was wrong" — Murdoch's papers trained their guns mostly on the BBC. And in August, Tony Ball, outgoing CEO of Murdoch's BSkyB, said the BBC should be forced to sell its most popular programs to private companies — like his — and spend the proceeds on experimental shows. Sour grapes? A ploy to sap the BBC's strength? Greg Dyke, the BBC's Director General, notes wryly that "this is one of the few jobs in the world where you get crap for losing and crap for doing well."

The imbroglio between the BBC and Downing Street has brought other critics out of the woodwork. Conservatives have stepped up their long-standing complaint that BBC news programs are biased against them. Janet Daley, a columnist for the Daily Telegraph, which recently started a "Beebwatch" column to skewer egregious examples, regularly appears on its comment programs and admires much about it. Nevertheless, she describes a hermetically sealed culture in which everyone at the Beeb reads the liberal Guardian and little else. "The idea that there could be any moral case for reducing tax and public expenditure seems to them the equivalent of the moon being made of green cheese," she says. Politicians of all stripes grump about blatant errors that are corrected unwillingly — or not at all.

Some critics say the BBC is dumbing down its entertainment shows to get ratings and sexing up some of its news broadcasts to get buzz. With a bunch of new digital TV and radio channels, a highly successful website, a major international expansion — to say nothing of a first-class fight with the government that provides much of its money and is about to rework its charter — "the BBC is having to justify itself in too many directions at once," says Anthony Smith, president of Magdalen College, Oxford, and a former BBC producer.

Complacency is the BBC's endemic disease. But I love it to bits. I'd die for it. — YASMIN ALIBHAI-BROWN, columnist

For all the criticism, the Beeb is still widely admired, respected and listened to by more people around the world than ever. The corporation produces 40 hours of output for each hour of the day on its domestic radio and TV networks, and 93% of Brits tune in at least once a week. Audience satisfaction started at 6.4 out of 10 when it was first measured in 2000 and peaked this year at 7.1.

And even the fiercest critics often retain a powerful affection. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a columnist for the Independent, has blasted the BBC's arrogance and its treatment of blacks and Asians. "Complacency is its endemic disease," she says. But she aborted a well-advanced plan to emigrate to Canada in the late 1970s once she realized she wouldn't be able to get the BBC there. "I love it to bits and would die for it," she says. Jim Innis, a director of the West Highland Free Press, a newspaper based on the remote Isle of Skye in Scotland, says his kids mostly bypass the BBC's programming now that they have satellite. But he still admires it, especially its Gaelic service, which is nurturing this threatened language by daily broadcasts to just 60,000 listeners. "There are few taxes I pay more willingly than the license fee," he says.

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	Blair in the Glare [Sept. 8, 2003] After the British Prime Minister testified last week — beating back charges that his team "sexed up" the case for war against Iraq — his top spin doctor resigned. Can Blair repair his tarnished image? The Upfronts: NBC's Nervous Reality [May. 13, 2003] At the first of the fall-schedule unveilings, the hanging-on-to-number-one Peacock knocks other networks' reality shows —but hedges its bets Question Time [Sept. 1, 2003] The inquiry into a weapons expert's death exposes the Blair government. And the PM's up next End of a Dream [April 22, 2002] German TV giant Kirch's house of cards finally collapses under a mountain of debt Anarchy from the U.K. [June 05, 2000] A different British invasion is under way as BBC America imports shows that are anything but stuffy Shaking up the Beeb [May 08, 2000] A new director-general at the venerable British Broadcasting Corp. vows to slash bureaucracy and foster creativity Asia's Hot New STAR [Oct. 28, 1991] The BBC takes aim at CNN on a satellite-TV service Search all issues of TIME Magazine