More cuts and a merger with Channel 4: the BBC contemplates its radical future

With 500,000 households a year cancelling their TV licence, the corporation may have to do less with less to survive

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."