The obvious counter-arguments
are
i) this would have just allowed them to have achieved a bigger and better cock-up, probably American .com related. The average British manager of that era was not very bright and easily taken in (things have, I think, improved, if only because camel-hair-coat-manager's generation has retired by now)
ii) Those fine British aggregations BL and ICL
I am with Charlie Brooker on this one, TV has had a nervous breakdown and is sitting in the corner shaking. The only things I can face, more or less, are police procedurals and the news. You know where you are with police or $police$ procedurals, you just know that anything higher concept is going to be a big disappointment.