"TV Licensing"

If you have a TV, you pay a licence fee. ~£160. It funds the BBC and its operations. I consider the quality of BBC news to be much better than US news. I do like PBS though.

American journalists are so shrill, inarticulate and strident, must of the time.

That man is not intimidated. Daily Mail is a rag. Their readers are trash.

In Germany it is worse, you must pay a tv tax even if you have no tv.

Great, I have to pay for the privilege of being brainwash by their propanda, which is on top of being spied on 24/7. What a dumpster fire of a country.

Rude old codger. Doesn't he know that the BBC needs that money to fund Dancing With the Stars!

How could free people tolerate such a thing? We are fortunate not to be European.

The licence fee doesn’t just fund the BBC, it funds the telecommunication infrastructure of the UK. For example the licence fee partially financed nation-wide broadband installation, and it funds the technology that other (commercial) TV providers use.

Plus it is optional. You can watch TV and even watch the BBC perfectly legally without it. You only need a licence to watch “live” TV.

Back when radios first came in, the government sent radio inspectors into the community, they would visit every house and make sure they had a radio licence. Governments are always ridiculous.

That's outrageous. Corporations are people too and the money should all go to private capital. Why should the gummint be involved in anything except fer buildin' bridges and the army? You want communications infrastructure, let the corporations build it (after taking advantage of research at public universities) and charge the fair market value! Poor Brits are havin their freedom taken away. Don't even git me started 'bout their communist medicine.

In this era of cheap to free mass communication (broadcasting views of every persuasion), there is no need for a public broadcaster.

Taxes or license money should not be funding light entertainment, watered-down educational content and biased 'news'.

One doesn't need to allow them in, if they do turn up on your doorstep. They used to have little trucks and vans roaming about trying to sense if you were receiving a signal. I think those are gone now, but being an expat, not quite sure. Many view television without the licence. The old fellow in the article does have a point how agressive the letters can be.

He looks like a Datalounger.

The Murdoch press and the Mail loathe the BBC and constantly dig up/solicit this sort of story.

R5 You’re joking, right?

OP, how did you post a successful link to the Daily Mail when no one else can? Are you in the U.S.? Did you post the link a special way?

Yes, r5, if only there was a Second Amendment for this outrageous infringement.

OP here. As it happens I am currently in London, UK (aka BoJoShire), R14; soon to return to the land of the free/home of the brave (aka Trumptonshire). The BBC say they need the licence fee (that's how it's spelt over here) or their pristine output would be tarnished by vulgar advertising. What the BBC don't say is that BBC America carries advertisements; so I suppose their output is not quite so pristine Stateside: they are hypocritters. R10 : here is a learned article on their "detector vans" which look rather sinister in an amateurish sort of way (so British!).

^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

Didn't they (the UK) used to have electricity (or gas?) that you had to pay for by putting coins in a meter on your heater or stove or something?

Gas meter above the front door. I had one. Broke it open and used the same coins over and over again for endless gas.

They were for poor people who struggled with monthly bills, R18.

Aren't TV licences common all over Europe?

R20 They were for poor people who struggled with their daily bills, let alone monthly bills.

[quote] Broke it open and used the same coins over and over again for endless gas.

I had a burrito for dinner. Don't tell ME about endless gas.

The after effect of a burrito is both a gas and a solid.

Gross

R21 I know they are in Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, and for radio as well. Probably most places.

"For example the licence fee partially financed nation-wide broadband installation"...

Do you have nation-wide broadband?

In Germany they have a Church Tax. Is that like the BBC (not big black cock) licence (sic) fee?

TV licences are a throwback to a bygone age, we got rid of them here in 2000, and they were obsolete then. They grew out of radio licenses which originated in the 1920's and 30's. Completely unenforceable these days and as R6 and R10 point out plenty of people watch without a license. That was already widespread here when they got rid of licensing here, part of the reason they gave up on it. If a public broadcaster is really needed (and as R9 points out there really is no point these days) it can be funded from general taxation as it is here.

I'm astonished they have persisted with it so long in the UK, must be one of they last remaining holdouts left in the world. I can quite see why OP finds it perplexing, it really makes no sense and hasnt since the 80's. TV itself has been decline for years since the onset of streaming services etc, the whole idea of a licence for a TV set when you can pick up a perfectly good used TV for $20 just seems incredulous and laughable

Is he current on his doily tax?

BBC America is a completely separate entity from the actual BBC, dumbass at r16. BBCA is an American commercial entity.

The fact BBC America doesn’t exist in the UK should be your first clue.

The Dumbass at R31 doesn't understand the value of goodwill in business. BBC America is a sham and R31 sounds like he works for them.

They send letters to all addresses, if you don't watch TV shred/bin them. What kind of sad sack keeps ten years of licence reminders?

R31 But the fact that the BBC has many commercial channels across the world, means that they should make enough money to not require the licence fee at home.

R34 They are flogging their international reputation to make money; their international reputation has been made on the back of the licence (sic) payers. Inside the UK the BBC are regarded as rather suspect: buggers broadcasting communism; big black cock; "Auntie" - stuff like that. The BBC still want the licence fee and have recently abolished the exemption for over-75s, 'cos the BBC needs the money, cunts, to develop BBC Zimbabwe etc, double-cunts, at the expense of pensioners who have paid the fucking licence fee all their televiewing lives. To cap it all, with the intimidation of the viewing public a lot of people probably pay the licence fee out of fear even though they don't have to: this is because for decades you had to pay the fee if you simply owned a TV, whether or not you watched anything from the BBC.

R35 That's my point the license payer's money built the BBC's reputation, so now they should get a break and the BBC can fund itself, based on that reputation abroad.

“American journalists are so shrill, inarticulate and strident, must of the time.”

How does one “must” with one’s time?

R9: WRONG! A public broadcaster is extremely important for news quality in a society. We here in the US have no real journalism thanks to the commercial media's tabloid bias and no public broadcaster to balance things out. And no, PBS and NPR do not count as they are not public but privately financed.

R36 The licence payer is not getting a break. The overseas BBC do not repatriate their ill-gotten foreign earnings. Now in the UK even the over 75s now have to pay the fee. The scope of the fee in the UK is expanding.

The license goons have actually shown up at people's homes with the police trying to force their way into homes.

I used to be hooked on the TV License goon YouTube videos. Those slags would be beaten in many parts of the US if they tried the crap they try in the UK.

When I was a student in the UK and had better things to do than watch TV, I regularly had old babuskas turn up on the doorstep, wrapped in blankets with belts in the winter to ask why I didn't have a licence. These poor old women, who would have been better off on a state pension in the old USSR, were sub-contractors of the BBC's who probably paid them on collection only.

I wonder if this is how the pub culture developed in the UK? Pay for a pint and watch football.

R42 It was not: the pubs did not have TV because they had no entertainment licence. Guys used to go to the pub to get out of the house (in the house); the frau would meanwhile be dressmaking in the house. The screen-soccer in pubs came with Sky.

R39 Can you not read? That was the whole point of my comments. Not that licence payers are getting a break but that they should, and that the BBC's foreign assets should be footing the bill.

R44 We post in English here. Get your boy toy to translate and ditch GoogleTranslate.

R45 There is nothing I wrote that wasn't in English. I am a native English speaker with a linage that goes back to before William the Conqueror. You, however, are just a cunt.

I haven't had a TV for over ten years. Every 2-3 years they write to me to ask if I have a TV, and remind me that I need a license if I do. I follow the instructions on the letter, go to the TV licensing website and fill in my details. Then I get another letter a week or so later saying "Thanks, we'll contact you in a couple of years." And that's it.

Never had a menacing letter, never had a visit from an enforcer.

This is the Daily Hatemail shit-stirring. It's not quite National Enquirer, but not far off.

R46 Alas poor boy, the Conk (like you) did not speakeee zeee Inglisshhe. I guess your linage (sic) goes back to the bog or the Soviet Union somewhere.

Blocked

[quote] Blocked

There goes Ivan.

Honestly, some people on here have gone crazy with calling other people Russian. I said nothing that could been considered Russian talking points. The BBC's commercial assets in the rest of the world SHOULD be used to pay for BBC operations and the British Licence payer SHOULD get relief. There is nothing in that position that would appeal to Russia.

No TV, no internet, no smartphone. This dude has it all figured out.

R51, you have to remember, there is a nest of total mental cases on this board on a daily basis.

R12 You say the Murdoch press and the Mail loathe the BBC while it's well documented that the Sanctimonious BBC propaganda-apparatchik hate the Murdoch press and the Mail.

We can choose to ignore the Murdoch and the Mail but we are COMPELLED to pay for the BBC propaganda.

and you're happy to pay for the privilege!

Why don’t people demand that it be abolished, and why don’t the politicians run on do so?

R38 - but you must get your balanced news from somewhere? Perhaps the internet?

BBC, like the Australian ABC, is very biased. They admit they try to bring balance, not by being balanced, but by going to the extreme of what the mainstream provides, to them provide 'balance'.

As I said, people have a variety of news sources that are free or cheap, and they can then decide is proper journalism.

To say the BBC is balanced, and honest journalism, is to really kid yourself - I thought you were smarter then that? It may not be Fox fluff, but it's not that far off from being 'fluff'.

And looking at the BBC's newsreaders, you would think the UK was mostly Asian (sub-continentals proliferate).

And it's 'educational' programming is light-weight - lots of padding, dumbing down with lots of unnecessary explanations and amusing 'graphics' on basic concepts. Plus over relying on annoying presenters like Brian Cox, who is all smiles and not much substance. So smart he doesn't realise he doesn't need to make a 'gg' sound with words ending in 'ing'. 'Lightnin-gg'

R56 To scrap the BBC means scrapping Coro Street! That's like killing a Northerner! Booooo! And you want to kill Doctor Who? More boooooooooo!

Make the BBC a subscription service.

R38 You can't expect "a public broadcaster" to supply "news quality". EVERYONE is biased nowadays.

I agree with R57. The 'public broadcasters' at the BBC and ABC are ludicrously Woke and Sanctimonious.

People all over the UK are demanding the Licence Fee be abolished, r56, but no major politician is willing to go up against the all-powerful BBC by campaigning on abolishing it.

The fact that they can potentially put people in jail for being unwilling to pay 175 a year to watch their bald propaganda is, frankly, an outrage. But it won't change anytime soon.

R58 Coronation Street is on ITV. Eastenders is BBC.

I could understand the license (sorry-licenCe) fee back in the day when not everyone had a TV, but once they became ubiquitous, why didn't they just add a fee on to some other service, or just have it funded out of tax revenue?

R60 You could be a candidate and run on abolishing the BBC, and you would have the mainstream media provide you with free publicity, because the mainstream media is struggling to compete with all the money that BBC throws at marketing and expanding into digital platforms. They would love someone to come along to kill the beast that is the BBC - first scraping TV licences, and then a push for it to be user-pays and radical defunding.

[quote]Those slags would be beaten in many parts of the US if they tried the crap they try in the UK.

Not beaten. Shot.

BBC is better quality than most US news. But you know what? So is NPR. The NPR was all but defunded decades ago.

BBC can find an alternative revenue stream. Britain needs to just cut the chord and defund it already.

You have to pay the licence fee whether or not you watch the BBC.

I hate the BBC.

The BBC is as impartial as Channel 4 which employs the ancient newsreader named Jon Snow.

He joined the crowd of nubile Lolitas shouting ‘F*ck the Tories’ at at Glastonbury while Jeremy Corbyn made a fool of himself on stage.