By Torin Douglas BBC News media correspondent

Lord Birt's speech was eagerly anticipated by broadcasters

This was his first major speech on broadcasting since he left the BBC five years ago, and he remains a controversial and divisive figure.

In an earlier McTaggart lecture, he was famously vilified by the TV dramatist Dennis Potter, as a "croak-voiced Dalek".

His radical shake-up of the BBC - affecting its journalism, management and output - made him highly unpopular.

His critics claimed he cared more about management systems and cutting costs than good programmes.

"Blue skies" thinker

But his supporters said his reforms had saved the BBC from the threat of privatisation, strengthened its news and current affairs, and - most importantly - prepared it for the digital age and the internet.

Lord Birt is now a policy adviser to the prime minister, charged with so-called "blue skies" thinking, and one reason broadcasters were looking forward to the lecture was to hear - from the horse's mouth - whether or not he had any influence over broadcasting policy and, if so, whether the views attributed to him in the press were true.

It was reported that he had intervened in the debate over the BBC's future, to press for the licence-fee to be shared with commercial broadcasters, a policy known in the jargon as "top-slicing".

That view was opposed by Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and subsequently rejected by the government.

Former regime

It was also widely reported that he had opposed many of the changes made by his successor Greg Dyke and the appointment of the current BBC chairman Michael Grade, with whom he had fallen out badly when they both held senior positions at the corporation.

Hopes that he'd use the lecture to end such speculation proved unfounded.

Far from clarifying his views on the future of the BBC and the licence fee, he scarcely referred to them - the term "top-slicing" did not feature at all.

He made no mention of the Dyke regime and his only reference to the BBC chairman was to remark that "incidentally, Michael Grade and I, like Pink Floyd, have made it up after 20 years".

Public service contribution

He made passing criticism of the regulation of the BBC, saying he was hopeful that Grade could "take the governance of the BBC to the very different place it needs to be".

He praised public service broadcasting's huge contribution to the economic and social development of Britain over the past 50 years, both on the BBC and commercial channels.

And he warned that such public service broadcasting was increasingly threatened in the commercial sector, as competition intensified in the digital age.

He said it was vital that Channel 4 was sufficiently well-funded to be able "to snap at the heels of the BBC" and that consideration was needed over whether "ITV's unique contribution to public service should be saved or revived".

But did that mean they should receive some of the licence fee in years to come?

He didn't say - nor did he offer any solutions to the threats and dilemmas that everyone in broadcasting knows are facing them.

Disappointment

And here lies the disappointment that some felt after the lecture.

John Birt was one of the few people in broadcasting who predicted and planned for the huge impact of the digital revolution and the internet.

These developments are now speeding up, changing the economic and social life of the UK more quickly and radically than had been foreseen.

As the government's "blue skies" thinker, he was perfectly placed to suggest answers to these problems - to look ahead and give his view as to how public service broadcasting can best be preserved and built upon in this new age.