Within days of her appointment as culture secretary, Lisa Nandy met one of the few prominent BBC presenters who is not currently embroiled in a scandal: Hacker T Dog, the puppet star of CBBC.

“Hacker, I don’t know if you remember but you once met my little boy and made him cry,” Nandy told the troublesome terrier at the BBC’s Salford studios last month. “So I’m afraid I am announcing today that I am shutting the BBC down.”

“Hooray! It worked!” replied the dog.

Watching this exchange between two Wiganers was the BBC’s director general, Tim Davie, who will be hoping for a slightly different outcome from his future negotiations with Nandy.

He now faces the single challenge that will define his legacy at the corporation: whether he can strike a deal with the government over the long-term financial future of the BBC.

Negotiations over the future of the licence fee – and whether it is retained in its current form or replaced with a subscription model or funded by a new tax – are expected to begin in January and last two years, with a deal needing to be in place by the end of the current royal charter in 2027.

Labour’s election victory – and Keir Starmer’s vague commitment to the licence fee – suggested the clouds may be parting for the BBC after 14 years of cuts by Tory-led governments.

Yet one BBC insider warned “don’t count your chickens yet”, as the political threat is replaced by an acknowledged threat of irrelevance with 500,000 households a year cancelling their TV licence. As a result, there is a growing acceptance that extreme thinking might be required to secure public service broadcasting.

One radical suggestion is to consider merging Channel 4, which was threatened with privatisation by the Conservatives, with the BBC to create a public service television powerhouse. Two television industry sources have said that the BBC discussed a merger as part of the next round of licence fee negotiations.

Such a move would combine two publicly controlled broadcasters, add £1bn of revenue to the BBC’s balance sheet, and could enable Channel 4’s profits to subsidise other parts of the BBC.

Phil Redmond, the veteran television executive who created Brookside and Hollyoaks for Channel 4, is a proponent of a merger. He said that, in the face of declining youth audiences, a deal between the BBC and Channel 4 would secure the long-term future of public service broadcasting in the UK: “Reforming the BBC has to include reforming Channel 4. The big debate is not about who is sitting in what desk in what building.”

He said it could enable cost-cutting at Channel 4 and free up its budget to be spent on commissioning new programmes. “You could get rid of a lot of the technical side, the admin, HR, finance, all that stuff can go. The only thing you’d keep is the sales team for a while,” he added.

Another commercial television executive said they had heard the BBC has looked at a merger with Channel 4 under which the commercial channel would operate as a semi-independent entity under BBC Studios, the corporation’s for-profit subsidiary.

They said this could be similar to how the BBC owns UKTV, the parent company of Dave, and such a move could “soothe” independent production companies worried about the commercial broadcaster’s longtime financial future. Channel 4 could then act as a talent incubator for British formats created by BBC Studios that could then be sold around the world.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We do not recognise what you’ve put to us. There are no ongoing discussions regarding the acquisition of Channel 4 and nor are we developing a proposal to do so.”

A government source also said a merger of the two public service broadcasters was “not a proposal we are currently considering”.

Another radical idea for the future of the BBC is mutualisation, with all licence fee payers given a stake in the broadcaster on a model similar to the Co-operative Group or a building society. Nandy proposed such a scheme during her 2020 leadership campaign, saying it would allow licence fee payers to “decide the trade-offs that the BBC must make to secure its future” while ensuring the organisation is protected from meddling by politicians withholding funding or appointing board members.

The BBC could also ask the government to pick up the bill for the World Service. This used to be subsidised by the Foreign Office as a tool of British soft power but the cost was largely lumped on to licence fee payers as part of coalition-era cuts. Yet convincing the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to hand over hundreds of millions of pounds for overseas broadcasting would be a tough ask, given the government’s messaging about difficult decisions.

The BBC’s overall audience remains enormous, especially among older age groups, but the future is less rosy. A growing number of young people barely engage with the broadcaster’s content, undermining the long-term case for a universal licence fee.

Less than half of British 16- to 24-year-olds watch any linear television in a given week, according to the latest Ofcom research, raising questions about how long the BBC can maintain dozens of separate television and radio channels – and when it should start to close outlets and lump everything on its digital offering.

This combination of financial pressure and changing audience habits could force Davie and Nandy to envisage a radically different BBC, doing less with less but still acting as a hub for British public service television output. In a sign of the times, this week the BBC began experimenting with using artificial intelligence to produce transcriptions of BBC Sounds content – while also preparing for a further round of human job cuts in the autumn.

The hope for the BBC is that Nandy accepts warnings from the British media industry about the existential threat it is facing. The playwright James Graham, responsible for the hit show Sherwood, last week told the Edinburgh television festival that the UK is being too complacent about the future of the BBC and other public service broadcasters: “We will miss them, if they ever go.”

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The second season of the Frasier reboot has aired to mixed reactions from fans and critics.

The hit sitcom, which starred Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane, aired for 11 seasons from 1993 to 2004.

Earlier this year, a 10-episode revival saw Grammer reprise his role as the titular therapist as he returns to Boston, where his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) has just started college.

And while the first season was branded “dismal and unfunny” by The Independent critics, it was still considered an overall success with a call for there to be more shows like it.

Season two premiered on Thursday (19 September) on Paramount+ to eagerly awaiting fans.

“I loved the first episode of Frasier season two. Happy ham day all!” wrote one person.

Others were left confused as they wrote, “Frasier reboot is wild”.

One commenter had a mixed reaction as they posted on X/Twitter: “I didn’t hate the new episodes of Frasier like I expected, but it is absolutely the 2010s Nickelodeon sitcom version of Frasier”.

Some were downright disappointed as they wrote, “Frasier OG series = 9.5/10. Frasier 2023 series = 1/10.”

Die-hard fans were still left satisfied, as one person said, “I really don’t understand all the complaints about the Frasier revival. I’m really enjoying it!”

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Viewers also praised the show for positive representation, as one mother wrote: “Season 2 of the Frasier reboot cast a child actor who has what seems to be a very prevalent nevus spot on his face.

“It’s so nice to see representation for kids with differences, and it makes me hopeful that my own baby’s uniqueness will be accepted. Thanks Paramount+”.

But critics also had a mixed response. The Telegraph commended the sitcom for “beginning with a bang”, praising the show’s scriptwriting for being “enjoyably erudite”.

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However, The Guardian gave the show a mediocre three-star rating, writing: “The humour is basic, the laugh track extremely dated and the dialogue creaky”.

Nevertheless, fans still insisted that “Binge watching Frasier is a natural medicinal cure”.

In its finished incarnation, the Frasier reboot follows Frasier as he returns to Boston and is hired to teach at his alma mater, Havard.

Alongside Grammer, the series also stars Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier’s son Freddie, Anders Keith as his nephew David, Jess Salgueiro as Freddie’s roommate Jess, Toks Olagundoye as Olivia, the head of Havard’s psychology department, and Only Fools and Horses star Nicholas Lyndhurst as Alan, an old friend of Frasier’s who also teaches at the university.

Frasier is available to stream on Paramount+ now, with new episodes arriving weekly.

My friend Ashley Hill, who has died aged 80, was one of the most admired planners and schedulers in the television business, choosing programmes to commission or buy and then deciding when and where they should be shown.

Those two jobs bring no screen credits but are hugely important in terms of shaping a TV channel’s output. This Ashley did first at BBC Two and later at British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB), Channel 4 and Channel 5. Michael Grade, the former chief executive of Channel 4, no mean scheduler himself, was among Ashley’s many admirers, and felt he was one of the best in the business.

Ashley was born in Cardiff to Charles Hill, who, with the help of his wife, Eileen (nee Tremlett), was a farmer, butcher and publican. Ashley went to Howardian high school for boys in Cardiff, then graduated with a law degree from UCL, where he met Pauline Conran, an administrative assistant there. They married in 1968.

After graduation Ashley joined Granada TV as a researcher. In 1970 he became a graduate administration trainee at the BBC, and by 1978 had been appointed as a planning manager at BBC Two, where we worked together. In 1984 he became head of planning there, taking over from me when I was promoted. At BBC Two Ashley was influential in the commissioning and scheduling of an outstanding mixture of drama, music, art and documentaries, including Shock of the New, The Young Ones, Not the Nine O’Clock News and the channel’s substantial coverage of snooker.

In 1988 he moved to BSB as a senior planner, then to Channel 4 in 1991 as head of programme planning. Finally, in 1997, he became director of broadcasting at Channel 5, where he stayed until retiring in 2004.

Ashley’s success – in his career as in his personal life – was down to a mixture of warmth, fun, common sense and integrity that endeared him to so many. He enjoyed life – and especially wine, food, theatre and cricket. Often the rain affected cricket matches we went to were the most enjoyable because the chat with him was so good.

He is survived by Pauline, their three sons, Christopher, Stephen and Peter, and five grandchildren.