A major channel up north could solve the Beeb's problems

As the licence fee dust starts to settle and the much-discussed BBC move to Manchester hoves into view, it is worth having just one more look at what's moving up north and why, and whether it will really deliver all that it could. Why children's, sport and Radio 5 Live? And why no TV channel?

The fact is that children's, sport and 5 Live are all, in BBC terms, bastard children not really owned by either of the two big internal divisions - radio (now known as Audio and Music) and BBC Vision. When Mark Thompson inherited Greg Dyke's promise to move north to make the BBC less London-centric (and to cut costs), one of his first tasks was to make decisions about what to actually move. Understandably, perhaps, he encountered serious resistance from the people running the newly joined-up London-based output divisions. They were determined that none of "their" channels was going to move since that would lead to commissioning power being devolved and, worse, the nightmare scenario for any corporate politician - the perception at least that the size of their empire had been reduced.

With so much else to be worried about in the BBC immediately post-Dyke, the barons got their way, and the move to Manchester ceased to be primarily a cultural question and became more an economic one. Even though moving a major TV channel would have made a significant statement. Spool forward to the below-expectation licence-fee settlement and you can already see how difficult this has now become for the BBC - notwithstanding the move's price-drop from £600m to somewhere under £200m in the course of the process. Children's and sport are both big - in head-count terms, at least - but quite how different the BBC will look and sound as a result of their moving is difficult to gauge.

And 5 Live - almost the only BBC network with a full spectrum of regional voices and opinions - is for that reason the only network that, paradoxically, in cultural terms, doesn't need to move. Then there's the likelihood that having moved thousands of staff to Salford at vast expense, the inexorable trend to outsourcing production activity will entail many of them being made redundant over the next few years. And with all key commissioning decisions remaining firmly in the gift of London-based fiefdoms, the great move up north could end up being very expensive and short-lived. And that would be a disaster.

But if this is looked at another way, the Manchester move represents a historic opportunity for the BBC to make a great leap forward that could underpin the whole organisation's future in the emerging new media world. Consequently, it needs to urgently revisit the issue of moving a major television channel and, critically, the commissioning power that goes with it.

And in order to stand any chance of fully grasping the potential of new media - not just to enhance current services but to revolutionise licence-payers' experience of the BBC in a joined-up way - the whole operation requires real managerial autonomy. The future beckons and must not be held back by the powers of the past. Salford needs to be set up and set free to be the competitive grit in the oyster that the rest of the BBC - as well as viewers, listeners and users - so desperately needs.

In November 1947, Maurice Gorham, the then head of the BBC's nascent TV service, resigned. He was upset that senior management were failing to see the real potential of a new-fangled medium - television - preferring instead to see it merely as an adjunct to the BBC's main game - radio. He noted that the BBC's reputation in radio had been made by young people, but that these same people were now standing in the way of the new. Thank goodness they didn't win out.

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