YESTERDAY'S strike at the BBC presents an opportunity to assess the institution's importance to the nation.

The licence fee is £2.42 a week, and yesterday's lack of current affairs will have reminded many people how much they get for their money: from early morning radio wake-ups, to breakfast TV company, to snatched lunchtime up-dates, to regional early evening briefings to bedtime after the ten o'clock news.

You never miss something until it is gone. The licence fee is good value.

Yet, by blacking out some BBC news coverage, the strikers will have driven news junkies to other sources. Those opposed to the licence fee ask why everyone should be forced to pay a television tax when they can receive the news from elsewhere?

Particularly, they argue, when the BBC is guilty of "dumbing down". It is hard, though, to see how the BBC management's plans to ditch one in five of its employees and use the services of profit-driven private TV companies will "bolster up" the IQ of the BBC's output.

Both sides in the dispute yesterday used cliches about holding the door open to negotiation. Let's hope someone is brave enough to walk through it and begin talking.

Yesterday was historic in that not since the last BBC strike in 1998 was the news not 24/7. It didn't roll; it stuttered on the hour.

But did the sky fall in? Did the world stop turning?

No. Everything proceeded as it ever does. So does so much of the licence fee need to be spent on constant news where every insignificant action is over-analysed to fill 24/7?

And, finally: why did the strikers have to target something as harmless as the Chelsea Flower Show while the new Big Brother will begin unhindered on Friday? Getting that blacked out would have won them many converts.

Amazing Durham

WHAT joy to see Durham County Cricket Club opening the season so splendidly. That they didn't win their fifth consecutive match yesterday was down to both doughty Yorkshire bowling and downpoury English weather.

Our cricket correspondent describes it as "a wonderful top-of-the-table contest, which had more twists than the Hampton Court maze".

Part of the club's ambition is to put the North-East on the international cricketing map - we can only hope that a very weak Bangladesh side draws on the pluck and resolve Durham have shown so far to make the Test match in 11 days' time competitive.