The Green Paper on the future of the BBC published by Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, yesterday, might be more accurately described as a Yellow Paper. It displays an intellectual cowardice on too many questions confronting the corporation. It meekly endorses the status quo on issues such as the licence fee despite the transformation of the universe of broadcasting since the royal charter was last renewed. Michael Grade, the BBC Chairman, and Mark Thompson, its Director-General, are highly astute political operators. They have exploited the weakness of a department (the DCMS) whose initials should stand for Don’t Care Much for a Struggle.

Ms Jowell declared that the current licence fee should remain intact until January 2017, although it will be “reviewed” during that period. This extraordinary gift of your money is necessary because the BBC needed “stability”. Why it should be uniquely stable in a market that is otherwise admirably fluid is not explained adequately. There is a decent case either for contending that the licence fee might be extended for only another five years rather than a decade, or for a ten-year phased abolition of the fee, or for letting channels other than the BBC bid for resources to produce public service broadcasts. None of these options has been treated with proper respect.

What Ms Jowell has instead argued is that the BBC should, in return for retaining its revenue, promise solemnly not to “chase ratings” nor to indulge in “copycat” populist programming. For the price of hinting that Panorama will appear on a Monday once more and that Fame Academy will never be seen again, Mr Grade and Mr Thompson have secured £30 billion in public money at present prices. A bargain of this nature has not been struck since Manhattan Island was allegedly purchased by the Dutch for $24 worth of trinkets.

The Green Paper does, in fairness, propose an overhaul of the means by which the BBC is governed. Both Ms Jowell and Mr Grade were at pains to insist that the proposals here are truly “radical”. But the model of a board of governors that acts as cheerleader for and regulator of the BBC is so anachronistic that some reform was inevitable.

It is entirely right that the BBC has been spared the regulatory embrace of Ofcom and there is logic in the division of responsibilities between the trust and the executive board. The scheme that Ms Jowell has chosen is, nonetheless, closer to that promoted by the BBC than the one suggested by an independent panel headed by Lord Burns. There is not much in the Green Paper to inspire confidence that the people who will serve as trustees will be more professional than the amiable but amateur souls who have hitherto served as governors.

Nor are they destined to rein in the rampant commercial activities of the corporation. The worst excesses of the Greg Dyke era are condemned, but the Green Paper blandly asserts that when it comes to new services: “The BBC trust will only approve proposals where it judges public value exceeds market impact.” In order to make any sense of this ambiguous doctrine, however: “Further work is needed on the methodology for making such judgments.” Thank God that the BBC is not in the communications business.

It is bad enough that there are so many repeats on television. That the next royal charter will repeat too much of the previous eight such documents is utterly lamentable.