It was another wonderful week on the Net. Free this, free that and even free promises of universal surfage from Tony Blair. Who cares about the fine print when everyone's scenting zillions? But maybe Fleet Street and the BBC should start to care: they'll be going to war soon over this uniquely rich greenfield site.
The warning figures are there for the Beeb, buried in another of the reports they love to commission from McKinsey. Net usage in America is growing almost exponentially, and it's beginning to hurt TV viewing figures. Now such hurt is coming to a living room nearer home. You can't surf and cook couch potatoes at the same time. You have to have a huge stake in the new media, because it will be a huge part of your future.
And, of course, top newspaper executives have identical research forebodings shivering the timbers on their office desks. Here the warnings are starker yet. Five or 10 years on, will there even be a market place for printed words on paper?
Migration to the Net is not some optional extra: you neglect defensive action at your peril. You have to be a player - which, in the torrent of mergers and takeovers, means being a big player. Watch this cyberspace.
The BBC has certainly been doing that, and the news from its briefings is euphoric as well as highly convenient. Put together the Corporation's existing online services, add many more around the world, make strategic liaisons - and you're talking amazing wealth. If revenues hit their estimated £1.4 billion by 2006 (with the usual Internet premium added) the worth of the Corporation's commercial arm could turn Rupert Murdoch green.
At the moment, all the commercial stuff contributes around 4 per cent of BBC revenue: shrimp statistics against the annual £2bn-plus from the licence fee. But that balance is changing with bewildering rapidity. Who, Greg Dyke may shortly ask, needs a fat licence increase to feed our digital ambitions? The £1.5bn of imposed 'savings' over five years may be easy pickings.
Rosy scenarios to make almost everyone happy. The Beeb finds a crock of gold and becomes a true world force; the politicians don't have to keep on taking nasty licence fee decisions; the viewer gets more money spent on programmes and channels while paying (absolutely or relatively) less. Where's the catch?
It is, of course, in what happens all around - to a competition out-gunned. BBC Worldwide, the aforementioned commercial arm, already has trouble on that count. When Gavyn Davies looked at Corporation funding last year, he found ITV, independent radio, the Advertising Association and many more queuing to complain about unfairness; and Davies wasn't unsympathetic. 'Very real issues arise when a public service broadcaster enters the commercial arena and, as usual, the devil is in the detail.'
Thus far the BBC has sought to silence such devilry through an elaborate code of practice ensuring 'clear separation between publicly-funded and commercial activities', but the Net is a Hellfire club of complications.
Take BBC Online, already Europe's most significant portal, boasting more than 100 million hits a month (half of them outside Britain). A service without advertising to you or me, sitting at home in the UK, because we're licence fee payers - but not necessarily so, as it's run out across the world in related sites such as BBCAmerica - and vestigially 'separated' from Beeb.com, Worldwide's existing commercial shop window.
You can't put BBC Online down. It's a lush package of news and information. But then it should be. Even last year it cost £23 million to run (11 times the cost of BBC Parliament) - which, give or take the odd bob, is the editorial cost of producing a national paper such as the Independent. The marketing is vast and constant, but cheap. Almost every TV and radio programme automatically cross-refers to the website. BBC branding naturally dominates. We pay for it. We can't, in the nicest sense, get away from it.
For the user, though, this isn't like ordering a different cable channel. A single key stroke takes you from Online to Beeb.com; they're two peas in the same electronic pod. But the overwhelming reason for logging on to them is Online's commodious news service which, unlike that of every other competitor, real or potential, doesn't even have to think about making a profit because the licence fee covers all that.
Newspapers don't have the luxury of throwing up their hands and retreating. They, too, are having to pour millions into the Net, putting their own news online and swimming in red ink as a result.
There are sites that will reap big dividends. (The FT pounds on). There are sites that win prizes and may, in time, produce a good revenue stream (such as Guardian Unlimited , with 12 million hits a month). Yet the BBC already sits in the middle of the essential battlefield, replete and vastly strong.
Like anything else as the Net balloon heads into the stratosphere, today's prediction may be tomorrow's small print apology.
BBC Worldwide management isn't universally beloved by those who work with it. Post-tax profits of £12m last year on a turnover of £420m wouldn't set any normal business world alight.
But make no mistake: Mr Dyke's Beeb is parked right in the firing line - and newspapers, when they look around them, are bound to start shooting.
