As the BBC sets out its strategic plan for the years ahead, Today presenter John Humphrys has conducted his own review into the corporation.
Read his thoughts below and listen to the results of his investigation.
When I started working for the BBC rather more than 40 years ago I was based in Liverpool as the district reporter and I had to work for both radio and television.
But my boss took me to one side and said don't worry about the radio too much - television is what matters, radio has had its day.
That was indeed the orthodoxy of the time. It was wrong. Radio is stronger today than it's been for decades and growing stronger.
What would Lord Reith make of the current direction of the BBC?
The BBC's been wrong about plenty of other things since then. And right about plenty too. And like it or loathe it, it's been at the heart of public life in Britain for more than 70 years.
Its first Director General was Lord Reith. When the nation faced its abdication crisis in 1936 it was his voice we heard on the airwaves.
But times have changed. If we faced another abdication the monarch would probably have to do a web cast on You Tube as well as appear on the BBC.
Corporate crisis
There is a new orthodoxy now that calls into doubt not just what the BBC does, but its very existence. It goes way beyond the various crises that the BBC has faced since I've worked here and Lord knows there have been enough of them.
The BBC has managed to fall out - sometimes spectacularly - with just about every prime minister from Harold Wilson through Margaret Thatcher to Tony Blair.
The BBC has upset its audiences for being too toffee-nosed and for dumbing down. It has been accused of being too liberal and too censorious, for behaving like a bit of a yob and like a boring maiden aunt.
And it's always being accused of wasting the licence payer's money with its bloated bureaucracy, overpaid bosses and generally extravagant lifestyle.
And it's survived all that.
But now we are in the age of digital broadcasting and that has changed everything.
Television viewers are no longer the passive slaves of the mighty schedulers. We can watch what we want to watch when we want to watch it.
In my years at the BBC we've moved from the family huddled together in the living room waiting for the test card to end and the black and white programmes to begin, to mum and dad choosing between several hundred channels on their Sky Plus menu while the kids in their bedrooms flick from one programme to another on their iPlayers, maybe pausing for only a few minutes on each.
The BBC has changed substantially since John's days as a correspondent
Who needs schedules any longer? And even more threateningly from the BBC's point of view, why should anyone pay a licence fee any longer when we can get so much information and entertainment free on the internet?
And why should one organisation have its income guaranteed whatever it does when other broadcasters (and newspapers) struggle desperately to attract the viewers and readers and advertisers they must have if they're to survive. Isn't the BBC simply too mighty for its own good?
These are tough times for the BBC - certainly the toughest I've ever seen. Can it survive? If so, how much is it going to have to change? More to the point perhaps, should it survive?
The BBC itself has been looking at its own future - whether it is the right size and what its role should be in the ever changing digital landscape.
The results of that inquiry are set to be published and reports suggest it will include closing two radio stations, the Asian Network and 6Music, as well as cuts to websites.
As with anything with a great institution like the BBC it has already provoked a furious reaction: from angry listeners and trade unions wanting to save their services on one side, and on the other from BBC critics who say the cuts don't go nearly far enough.
But what do you think? Is the BBC too big? Will the latest review set it on the right course? Let us know using the form below, or or join the debate on Twitter.
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