What’s the point of the BBC if we no longer share common cultural values?

Is privatising BBC3 as bad as Isis’s destruction of Nineveh? That was the wonderfully trolling headline on a Stewart Lee piece in the Guardian over the weekend. He was making the point that even though BBC3 was not to his tastes it should be preserved because the Beeb is ‘the greatest cultural achievement of any 20th-century democracy’ and such diversity was part of its remit:

In the wake of the licence freeze, the BBC plans to move the youth channel BBC3 online and halve its budget. As a middle-aged, middle-class man, I hate pretty much everything on BBC3. Snog Marry Avoid is just one of many BBC3 show titles that resist parody. The channel has the creepy vibe of a sleazy art teacher trying to coax sixth-form girls into the pub. But BBC3 isn’t aimed at me. And it shouldn’t be.

He then concludes his case for diversity by arguing:

We need a BBC Trust that comprises communicators who have pursued ideas for their own sake, not necessarily for gain.