That would be a welcome departure from the current mutual resentment between the network PSBs - which feel lumbered with quotas and targets - and nations and regions endlessly complaining about those figures being massaged and missed.

Certainly, network production and portrayal for Northern Ireland is consistently terrible. Many broadcasting professionals here feel they no longer have a chance with the networks.

And portrayal from the centre is now so thin on the ground, watching TV in Northern Ireland is like being invited to a dinner where the host bangs on endlessly about himself. That's not a sign of a healthy industry.

The history of UK television tells us that real outlets for talented broadcasters who don't buy into the London thing is crucial to counter that south-east mindset. Ask yourself, would Coronation Street have ever seen the light of day in a centralized ITV?

And therein lays the problem: both the money and decision-making have become concentrated in London – and are wholly inside the public service broadcasters themselves.

That's why many of my colleagues here in Belfast believe it's time both money and decision-making were devolved, meaning – here anyway – direct PSB funds, straight to Belfast, administered in Belfast and quality-controlled in Belfast.

Ofcom touched on this with proposed "independently financed news consortia" to fill Channel 3 regional news slots, but a full PSB fund goes further, taking care of all PSB genres: current affairs, childrens, religious and arts programming.

How it works is: producers and broadcasters apply for money to make content. The fund guardians– public-spirited individuals who don't profit from the process – have to be satisfied that the proposal fulfils a public purpose or supports the sector in the home base.

So a nations/regions fund is both a source of money and content for cash-starved broadcasters – and it incentivises them to genuinely engage with the nations and regions.

The fund administrators or guardians are the critical element. Because they're closely involved in the projects, essentially becoming co-commissioners, they can provide real oversight, holding producers and broadcasting commissioners to quality and budgetary promises in a way Ofcom says it can't.

Many producers in Belfast have experience of such funds and found them to be fair to deal with and efficient - don't believe the nay-sayers who suggest they're bureaucratic.

Fair distribution of opportunity across the UK, cheap to run and bringing much-needed accountability to commissioning and programme quality. What more could you ask for?

But the big broadcasters don't seem to like it. Ask them why, though, and they come over rather vague.

Lord Carter is doubtless being peppered with the thoughts of all-comers at the moment, some of them far more powerful than the squeaky voices he'll be hearing during his 90 minutes on the periphery in Belfast.

I hope, though, he can hear more than a whine; PSB needn't be difficult to achieve in a digital age, whatever the established broadcasters claim. And perhaps the greater the spread of people involved, the richer the result will be for all – the viewers and the industry alike.

Ruth O'Reilly is co-founder of Belfast-based Below the Radar, which specialises in factual and current affairs, and became part of the Ten Alps group in 2009.