Good interview (looks like a multi-part series) with David Elstein concerning the BBC license fee on Digital Spy. Elstein offers the following advice for the BBC:

Look, the license fee is a fact of life for several more years, probably to
2012, maybe a bit later, but the BBC should be weaning itself off the license
fee. It should be listening to what the Burns committee says. It should be
listening to what Ofcom said. It should be looking to develop a mixed economy.
It should be putting all its digital channels onto subscription and it should
plan for a post-license fee funding resource. There’s no evidence of that going
on at the moment.

And he addresses the claim that the BBC uses the license fee proceeds to create quality programming:

If the BBC didn’t produce good programming, there should be somebody in jail.
You know you can’t take three billion pounds forcefully from the population and
not generate some good programming. It would be a national scandal. Anyone who
had three billion pounds of guaranteed income every year would generate some
good programming. I can tell you that.