ts, Fawlty Towers, Bagpuss, Pobol y Cym, Grange Hill, Taggart).

But the world in which the BBC could be taken for granted just as the
sun rose (even if invisible behind clouds or fog one knew it to be there) so
there was the BBC doing its BBC thing started to unravel in the early
1980s and the unravelling has continued apace since then. Table
dhte started to give way to la carte. First came Channel 4 in 1982 for
the first time the BBC competed with another not-for-profit public service
broadcaster. The UK changed from a place where public service
broadcasting was synonymous with the BBC, and any defence (or attack)
on public service broadcasting was, ipso facto, a defence (or attack) on
the BBC, to a place where there was clearly more than one way to realise
the standard and outlook of public service in broadcasting and where
public service broadcasting could take more than one organisational (or,
Reiths term, administrative) form. All this started to put the BBC and its
way of doing things in question.

Later in the 1980s came the Peacock Report remarkable in that few of
its specific recommendations were enacted, though, despite that, it was
profoundly influential in advocating market led broadcasting. Peacock
opened an ideological door (technological change forced open the real
door) for pay TV in the 1990s and thus a further step towards la
carte broadcasting was taken. Peacock put the BBC on the back foot:
after 1986, the case for public service broadcasting (though ably made by
Andr