What with tumbleweed blowing through the marble banking halls, repossessions up by half and Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley creeping beneath the shelter of Gordon Rock like babes in the wood, you may think my topic footling. It is regional TV programming. But hear me out: my modest proposal might drape quite becomingly and warmly over the chill green bones of the coming recession.

For what do you do, when money is short and fuel is dear? You look for comfort and security close to home, that's what. Assuming you still have a home - and most will - you want reachable diversions and steady basic services. You are consoled and entertained by the reinforcement of your daily life. Wider news and exotic entertainments matter too, but these are piped to us from every direction anyway, and mainly they just aggravate the ubiquitous modern sense that we're: a) all doomed and b) somehow missing the fab celebrity party.

Whether your village be urban or country, there is solid comfort in local amusements and memories (it was uplifting, on Nelson's birthday at the weekend, to see a squad of cyclists dressed in 18th-century naval uniforms and hats making for his birthplace at Burnham Thorpe). Local news also counts for more in times of upheaval: strikes, power cuts, storms, disasters.

Yet at this very moment the ITV network is busy cutting its regional and local news and abandoning its regional features. Until this year all ITV regions produced short daily programmes, demonstrating the features, characters, histories and idiosyncrasies of their patch. Rootless metropolitans may scoff and titter “parish pump!”, but many of these documentaries were little jewels, made with love and low budgets and attracting immense appreciation.

The BBC, of course, also does regional programming: but it is more prone to be worthily consumerish, hence somewhat dull and grumbly. ITV's mini-documentaries - in this patch at least - were far more fun. They made you pleased to be here, keen to go for a walk and look around.

But given the financial need for every show to fetch high ratings nationwide and include Ant, Dec, celebrities, prizes or imaginary policemen, Ofcom has loosened the rules. It admits that “some types of UK-made public service content are increasingly commercially unattractive, such as current affairs, nations and regions programming...this is made worse by the deterioration in the advertising market.”

So out it goes. This was always going to happen, from that baleful moment in 1990 when in the name of deregulation Margaret Thatcher kneecapped the Independent Broadcasting Authority and decided that, rather than give ITV franchises to companies with good ideas and local roots, they would be sold to the highest bidder with only the feeblest of quality thresholds. There is a viable argument that this marked a turning-point also for BBC standards, because a regulated ITV “kept the industry honest”. It's a theory.

It is the BBC that sits at the core of my proposal. The dear old Corp is in a quandary. It has to decide what it thinks it is: rival or resource? Either it is a powerful, self-protecting rival of every other broadcaster (in which case, how is it fair to give it the whole licence fee?), or else it is a precious, justly funded national resource like clean water or safe roads or the NHS. Either it is the best-fed tiger in the jungle, or else it is a cooling stream, fertilising everything.

If it is the latter, why should it not share and collaborate? If reliable local news and well-made features are good things, then why not have the BBC offer to share cost, ideas and staff with any other broadcaster which wants to play? Regional output is the ideal place to start. Each could carry the programme or bulletin when it wished, and Auntie could keep her modesty by doing it without an ad break. You may argue that viewers can always just tune to the BBC, but independent television in the regions has a bank of ideas and talent that need not be lost. And frankly, left to itself the BBC at this level does get - well, a bit prim and PC. Teamwork might produce some little jewels of documentaries, well fit to emerge later on the national networks.

At times you could even take it farther - let the friendly tiger collaborate with local newspapers, announcing on occasion “Edward X of the Eastern Daily Press has the details” or running a series on river pilots of the North East in conjunction with a Teesside magazine. There are moments when local media feel far more kinship with one another than with their parent organisations: when Ipswich was suffering its wave of murders, for instance, or the West Country its floods.

You could take the philosophy farther. Why should the BBC iPlayer - a clever development enabling you to watch programmes on your computer - only carry BBC output? A real national resource should be anxious to throw doors open. Have local radio stations share, too: instead of the current embarrassing situation where late-night output from half a dozen BBC local stations combines in one long vapid DJ show, let it combine by night with commercial rivals to serve smaller, tighter locations. Indeed one of the things viewers and listeners most complain about is the insane vastness of “regions” - one ITV region stretches from Penzance to Tewkesbury, and people in Walsingham find it odd when the BBC news - patronisingly announced as “from where you live” - is all about Southend.

Suppose we didn't have two struggling, overstretched local “public services” but one healthy, careful collaboration, serving properly sized areas with news and programmes for that modest hour a day? It would cost the BBC, but would be far closer to its historic task than a lot of the things on which it spends millions now.

I hear a cacophony of protest. “Dreadful ignorant woman! She wants a monopoly.” (No, she doesn't. Just a bit of co-operation for an hour a day). “Anyway ITV is about naked profit, while the BBC has high cultural standards!” (Yeah, right). “Besides, it would be morally quite dreadful if programmes part-funded by the licence fee helped to attract advertising from SofaWorld!” (Why?) And ITV wouldn't play anyway.” (No harm asking).

But a choice has to be made. Is the BBC a snarling competitor in the piranha pool or a precious shared resource? Which would you rather be? Or indeed, in hard times, which would you rather pay for?

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