In spite of its predictability, the BBC's decision to saturate its output in both TV and radio with the Olympic Games from September 15 is acutely disappointing.

How can the Corporation get it so badly wrong?

Of course the Games must be comprehensively covered. They are an important sporting event.

There is a large audience wanting the reports. But it is far from being the BBC's whole audience.

BBC2 was created as an alternative channel to BBC1, not a supplement to it, and there is a huge audience of licence payers who have little interest in wall-to-wall sport, even Olympic sport.

One of the channels should be serving their tastes. Instead, an astonishing 350 people are being sent to Australia to produce more than 330 hours of televised sport and the BBC director general Greg Dyke boasts proudly: "Our schedules have almost been totally handed over to the coverage of the Olympics, which is only right."

Only right! Has the man completely lost his marbles?

Sadly, the answer is no, he has not. The depressing truth is, he is a multi-millionaire from commercial TV who has no inkling of what public service broadcasting is about or any comprehension of the ethos of the BBC.

He is, never let it be forgotten, the man who created Roland Rat for breakfast TV.

He succeeded Lord Birt who was a creature of commercial television. His boss is Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of the BBC, another creature of commercial television. Is it any wonder the BBC has lost the plot?

Is it any wonder the corporation is well down the road to a commercial future where the licence fee will disappear and it will be left to scrabble for audiences, ratings and advertising like any other station?

And that is the whole point. The BBC should not be like any other station anywhere in the world.

It is unique in the way it is funded.

It made its international reputation by producing programmes of wonderful quality. That should still be its remit. Someone has forgotten.

While increasing numbers of commercial TV stations scrabble for a decreasing share of ratings in this digital age, the BBC should remember its strength.

While others dumb down to the lowest and cheapest common denominators with talk shows, game shows, soaps and DIY trash, the BBC should feed a resurging worldwide hunger for real quality - whether it is drama, comedy, news or whatever. That is what our licence money is for.

The BBC does not need two new television channels costing £150 million a year, or 24 hours a day news costing £50 million that no one watches, or Radio 5, or all the local radio stations, or 330 hours of Olympic sport.

And it is still top heavy with expensive bureaucracy, in spite of Dyke's recent boast of losing 1,100 jobs.

Remarkably perhaps, there is still much public goodwill towards the BBC. But no one will support a licence fee forever for just another, ordinary commercial broadcaster.