Cap'n,
Not sure what the Radio Ballads have to do with it, while they drew from the tradition for their inspiration they were creations of three revivalists, MacColl, Parker and Seeger.
The term 'folk' was never intended to apply to everybody. The standard dictionary definition gives folk as a specific group or kind – ie 'city folk', and folk music as 'music and song originating among the common people of a nation or region and characterised by a tradition of oral transmission and usually anonymous authorship'.
William Thoms, an English antiquarian, first applied the term to 'primitive' culture in 1846.
The Funk and Wagnall Standard Dictionary of Folklore says, "How well it was received is attested by its immediate and continued use. The word has established itself in several languages as the generic term under which are included traditional institutions, beliefs, art, customs, stories, songs sayings and the like current among backward peoples or retained by the less cultured classes of more advanced peoples".   
A bit patronising – but there you go.
In 1954 The International Folk Music Council adopted the following definition of folk music based on Sharp's Some Conclusions:
'Folk music is the product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. The factors that shape the tradition are: (i) continuity which links the present with the past; (ii) variation which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.
The term can be applied to music that has been evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by popular and art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of a community.
The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.'
Nowadays it's all academic as 'folk' culture has been replaced by a universal one which is more-or-less passively received rather than participated in. Folk music is now in the hands of a revival made up largely of outsiders who took it over and (hopefully) took responsibility for its well-being.
The above definitions are the ones we signed up for when we became involved in the revival and, as far as I'm concerned, any re-defintion has to be based on them.
It would be nice to think that people are queuing up round the block to get into our clubs, or buying our albums by the million, but it ain't like that unfortunately.
Jim Carroll
PS
Folkiedave; - What Adams didn't take into consideration was..... ah, sod it.
Sorry, meant to apologise for not including the Sheffield Carols in my list. I always think of them as a custom rather than songs, but that's not really fair.
We were there once many years ago (along with Tom Munnelly) and enjoyed it very much, but I have always worried that it would turn into a folkie event and spoil the local nature of it - hope this is not the case.