You can have a policy area in which there are a number of options. At either end of the argument, big rivals will have their preferred solutions.

In the middle, there is one option that isn't massively attractive to any powerful lobby, but it is one that is the 'least worst' one on offer. It's often one that is a bit complicated to grasp, and one that commercial lobbies hate disproportionately. It may have lots of potential supporters, but they are dispersed and don't feel too strongly about it.

It's a classic example of the way that competing interests create a sub-optimal outcome.

All over the world, advertising revenues are tumbling, and the impact upon commercial broadcasters in the UK is plain to see. At the same time, the BBC has never looked as timid as it does today. In recent months, it has shown itself to be no more capable of defending itself from it's rivals than Jermain Taylor could in his final round against the mighty Carl Froch.

All over the world, journalists are being laid off in the perfect storm of recession, disintermediation and converged media. This is a potential disaster for democracy. In a year when we've bailed out banks to the tune of $billions in order to stem a systemic threat to the economy, it seems unlikely that systemic threats to democracy will receive even a tiny fraction of the largesse.

But here's the thing: If we wanted to raise £210 million to spend on public service content every year, it could be done almost effortlessly and painlessly. All that we would need to do is to put a 1% levy on mobile phone operators (who would, in turn, make a good deal morein return streaming the resulting content). There are plenty of other levies that could also be applied in a way that the public would barely notice or care about.

It's a simple solution that could save thousands of journalists' jobs and ensure that the quality and quantity of reporting can improve.

Commercial broadcasters would fight it, of course, as would mobile phone companies. But as far as I can see, absolutely no other options have been advanced apart from a general view that public service broadcasting should just give up the ghost and die.

Media journalists are largely ignoring it because they are resigned to the political reality that a good idea can be killed by commercial lobbyists, and no politician is going to pick up an idea that doesn't have any vocal, principled support from the commentariat. It's only backers are two small trades unions and a handful of committed engaged consumer lobbies.

It's an absolute no-brainer that is being ignored for reasons that Mancur Olson would have understood. But the failure to break out of this trap is one that neither politicians, regulators or commentators should be forgiven for.

The details are here. Spread the word, willya?

This has provided a useful backdrop for some spectacular special pleading from media owners.

The need to rescue journalism has, for industry lobbyists, been rapidly translated into a need to feather-bed dying industries that have shown no interest in the promotion of any reasonable standard of journalism for some decades. 

So alongside the special pleading for the removal of media concentration, cross-media ownership and monopoly rules, all of these demands run concurrent with the kind of geographic consolidation that is removing local journalists and creating top-down managerial 'news factories' that have nothing to do with the local communities that they serve, as this report from my old manor illustrates.

It remains to be seen if any slackening of regulation will run alongside obligations to invest, but I wouldn't hold your breath on that score.

But the obligation to invest is key here. And if the newspaper industry should be obliged to invest in the production of content in return for regulatory leniency, surely other carriers should also be asked to invest in the content that drives the demand for their services? 

I don't know about you, but when I sign up to that broadband deal and pay for an increase in the capacity of the pipe that comes into my house, I'm not drooling over loads of ones-and-zeros. I'm thinking about all of the great content that I can download. Content carriers have made billions on the back of content producers, and the producers have not seen a commensurate benefit by any means.

Here, the broadcasting unions BECTU and the NUJ have done the groundwork that OfCOM should have done. Obliging carriers to invest in public service-standard content is a proposition that is long overdue. Read it and spread the word - it's a hugely important piece of research - and you can't expect it to be talked up by many industry lobbyists....