But read the fine print. Mr. O'Reilly doesn't want to kill the corporation; he wants to save it. Even English TV would be closed for five years, tops, only to be brought back again.

Confound his knavish tricks!

Nonetheless, he has made a lasting contribution to the debate, if only for his wonderful description of the CBC's current mandate. It is, he says, no longer a mass broadcaster, but "a specialty service." That sounds about right: with an audience share averaging 5%, the CBC is a "public" television network in name only, in as much as 19 in 20 members of the public at any given moment elect to tune their TVs elsewhere.

But what kind of "specialty service?" What's its niche? Mr. O'Reilly goes on: It is "a specialty service," he says, "offering generalized programming." Huh? How can you be specialized and generalized at the same time? What's so special about CBC's generality?

But I cut him off. The network offers "generalized programming fare of significantly lesser depth, breadth and imagination than it did a decade ago." This strikes me as dead-on. The CBC's specialty, its unique selling proposition if you will, is to offer generalized programming so shallow and deadly that no one wants to watch it. That's its niche.

And that's its problem. It's one thing to be producing shallow programs for a broad audience: At least the CBC might then claim to be drawing the nation together. Or it might offer deep, thought-provoking shows for a narrow elite, a la PBS. But to busy yourself, at enormous public expense, making mass-appeal programming that appeals to no one -- to aim for the broadest possible audience, and miss -- seems a peculiarly futile exercise.

But then, the CBC is not really the issue. If there is a crisis in public broadcasting, it's less a matter of quality, than of obsolescence -- of public TV generally, and of the "flagship" broadcaster model in particular. The CBC could be producing world-beating programming, and still it would face the question: Why should we be forced to pay for it?

Quality alone is not sufficient argument. You must also prove necessity: not only that such programs could not be produced without subsidy, but that those who bear the cost of the subsidy, the taxpayers, would want it to be produced. And since just about everyone pays taxes, this would include a lot of people who don't watch the CBC -- that even they benefit from it in some way, and would be willing to pay for it.

Of course, if people are willing to pay for something, the question arises: Why force them to? Obsolescence implies its opposite: there was a time when public funding was necessary. And the reason was that it was impossible for people to pay for television directly, no matter how willing. In TV's technological infancy, the only alternative was to sell air time to advertisers. But that flattened preferences onto a single plane. What mattered was not how much people wanted to watch a particular show, but strictly how many were. Programming was tailored exclusively to winning the largest number of viewers, regardless of quality: a failing that is nowhere evident in the market for most goods and services, where every taste is catered to, high or low.

Coupled with the small number of stations then available, the theoretical case could be made for public funding: not to supplant public taste, but to serve it in all its true diversity; not to override the market, but to mimic it, as it normally functions. In an ideal world, it might even have worked out that way.

But leave aside the CBC's 40-year history of failure. The point is, there is no scarcity of stations any more, nor is it impossible for people to pay directly for the sort of programming they want. Look through the television listings. There are programs to suit every taste, on any number of different stations: broadcast, cable, pay-TV, even pay-per- view. Audiences are no longer fodder for advertisers. They are calling the shots. There is no longer any necessity for public funding, least of all in the form of a single, general- interest broadcaster like the CBC.

Of course, if people can pay directly for private television, they can also pay directly for the CBC. And therein lies the solution to the network's woes. There's no need for drastic measures: shutting it down, or privatizing it (who'd want to buy it?). Just put it on pay.

Take it off general revenues, where it has to compete with health care and public security and a thousand other things, and turn it into a pay channel.

As I say, this really isn't about whether one likes the CBC or not. God knows some people love it. Good. Let them pay for it.