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A PLEA to leave the BBC alone until the country has switched to digital TV has been made by brown goods makers association Intellect.

"It is essential that any significant changes to the funding and structure of the BBC are held back to well after digital switchover," said Intellect director of consumer electronics Hugh Peltor in a letter to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

"The achievement of digital switchover by 2010, or as soon as possible thereafter," he said, "will rely heavily on the BBC's continued vigorous promotion of digital television (and digital radio should be included)."

His letter was in response to the review of the BBC's Royal Charter. As he pointed out to the Department, the statutory requirement to review the BBC's Royal Charter unavoidably coincided with the need for the broadcaster to carry out detailed planning for the wholesale conversion to digital of the existing terrestrial broadcasting network.

"The BBC is pivotal to the continued success of Freeview which has done so much to win more than 3.2 million homes to digital television" since its launch in November 2002.

"It is essential that the BBC is allowed to continue to promote and facilitate the Freeview services, thereby persuading nine million more homes to migrate to digital television." He pointed out, it is generally accepted that half the homes in the UK--12.5 million--will not want to subscribe to digital pay TV.

And his letter was not restricted to digital TV. Mr Peltor also referred to the BBC's role not only in also deploying digital radio, but also in research and development.

The engineering operation at BBC Kingswood Warren has a good reputation and BBC engineers have great influence both nationally and internationally, Mr Peltor said.

Calling the BBC a world-class centre of excellence from which the UK derives enormous benefits, he added: "It would be a tragedy for UK plc to allow the BBC structure to be broken up and divorce BBC Engineering and R&D from the Corporation."