# BBC, TV licenses, and DVDs **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 29, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992 "2009-09-29T15:58:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 9:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/41 "2009-10-01T09:14:35Z")
IIRC, it’s the property that is licensed, not the individual. So if I, as a responsible adult, get a TV licence for the TV in my house, that;s no help to my feckless adolescent offspring who keep a television in some other house. They need a licence which covers that property; my licence is for my house, not theirs. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 9:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/42 "2009-10-01T09:33:08Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > So households in the UK pay about $225/year, for the privilage of watching broadcast TV, even if they are already paying for cable/satellite services. That money is used to run BBC broadcasting, even though the licensee may be watching only non-BBC programming? And if you don’t use/pay for the license, you get hounded because “you can’t really mean you don’t watch TV”. > > Wow. I’ll stick with commercials or pledge drives for public television. > [@snoopygal](#): > > The licence is a tax basically, to provide commercial-free television. Most people are happy that the BBC exists, while at the same time wishing it was a bit cheaper. It’s fantastically good value though, especially when you take into account its radio stations and online services. > [@Candyman74](#): > > Luckily it doesn’t sound that it’s an issue for you. > > IMO, the world would be a poorer place without the BBC. And the BBC is unique in its funding, and better for it. It’s a national treasure, and I’d fight to keep it. > > Given the choice, I’d stick with the BBC as it is. Because, frankly, it’s friggin’ _amazing_. Yes, I’m delighted to pay for the BBC to produce world-class nature programs, costume dramas, unbiased news, films with no commercials\* and Doctor Who 😃 . \*UK commercial channels have about 8 minutes per hour of advertising; the US has an astonishing 18 minutes of ads per hour! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/43 "2009-10-01T13:07:35Z")
Pity us poor sods in Ireland. We pay a tv licence fee and still get ads and shit programmes. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/44 "2009-10-01T13:16:21Z")
Bah. In the US you pay a TV license fee equivalent\* whether you’ve got a TV or not and our publicly-funded broadcasts are… 30 year old BBC sitcoms. And the Antiques Roadshow. \*since public broadcasters are supported by the federal budget. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/45 "2009-10-01T17:06:49Z")
In spite of the gradually decreasing acceptance of the licence fee as a means of funding public service broadcasting here, and the multiplication of channels and ways of paying for them, it still commands a wide measure of acceptance/compliance here. It’s normally the case that stores will attempt to get you to comply with the notification requirements when selling you a set, to the extent that they may well refuse to complete the sale without it. Of course, private sales are effectively unregulatable; sets are regularly given away on freecycle. The Irish Republic only got a State TV service in 1961. It was to be the then-new 625-line standard, however many people in the border counties had bought 405-line sets and been receiving 405-line signals from BBC Ulster and Ulster TV for years so the service had to be duplicated to keep them happy. On the eastern and south-eastern coast of Ireland it was just about possible to receive signals from England or Wales, providing you erected a whacking great antenna on top of a sixty-foot pole. There wasn’t much the BBC could do about this, although the weather forecast maps mysteriously ended (and still do) at the Northern Ireland border - apparently the Republic doesn’t have any weather. Nowadays BBC programs are carried on cable/satellite throughout most of the Republic, so presumably some sort of financial deal has been done with the providers to pay for it. Rupert Murdoch hates the BBC as the only serious rival to his dominance of broadcasting and, through his mouthpiece, made a strong attack on its continued existence recently. ---
**Author:** ![ming\_the\_merciless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/58956e/32.png) [@ming\_the\_merciless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ming_the_merciless)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/46 "2009-10-01T17:22:37Z")
A slight hijack here but somewhat related to the discussion . Recently in the UK we now have to pay a licence fee to the Performing Right Society for the right to listen to music via a radio or other means, this doesn’t apply to homes yet but if you want to listen to music at work or in a bar etc a licence fee has to be paid every year. More information here > **[PRS for Music](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRS_for_Music)** > > PRS for Music Limited (formerly The MCPS-PRS Alliance Limited) is a British music copyright collective, made up of two collection societies: the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS). It undertakes collective rights management for musical works on behalf of its 160,000 members. PRS for Music was formed in 1997 following the MCPS-PRS Alliance. In 2009, PRS and MCPS-PRS Alliance realigned their brands and became PRS for Music. > PRS represents their ... And here > **[PRS for Music: royalties, music copyright and licensing](https://www.prsformusic.com/)** > > We protect the value of music by licensing music usage and collecting royalties globally for our members. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/47 "2009-10-01T18:12:21Z")
> [@Candyman74](#): > > Luckily it doesn’t sound that it’s an issue for you. > > IMO, the world would be a poorer place without the BBC. And the BBC is unique in its funding, and better for it. It’s a national treasure, and I’d fight to keep it. > > Given the choice, I’d stick with the BBC as it is. Because, frankly, it’s friggin’ _amazing_. I agree - because of the BBC’s funding model, they can take risks that commercial channels might fight shy of (if a possible outcome of those risks happened to be detrimental to ad revenue, for example) - and they don’t just have to do whatever is popular. Looking back, I’m not sure we’d have had things like Monty Python without the BBC being the way it is. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/48 "2009-10-01T18:43:14Z")
Given the current state of the BBC, programmes like _Python_ probably wouldn’t get the go ahead today, or would be cancelled before they had a chance to bed down. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/49 "2009-10-01T18:48:41Z")
Dunno - there are still channels for experimental stuff (BBC Three and Four mostly) - but i’m not sure there is as much ground left to be broken today as there was in the past. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/50 "2009-10-01T22:16:31Z")
> [@psychonaut](#): > > [Correct. As long as you’re not using iPlayer to watch shows that are being simultaneously broadcast live, you don’t need a licence.](http://tvlicensing.metafaq.com/templates/tvlicensing/main/answerPage?_mftvst:answerRef=%24http%3a%2f%2fapi.transversal.com%2fmfapi%2fobjectref%2fEntryStore%2fEntry%2fhttp%3a%2f%2fwww.metafaq.com%2fmfapi%2fMetafaq%2fClients%2ftvlicensing%2fModules%2flicensingInfo%2fTopics%2fgeneral%3a138369%3a3&_mftvst:moduleID=%24licensingInfo&_mftvst:topicID=%24&id=VUKDGAVMPADDLCJP09CFE6B4RQ) I accept what they say, but it just doesn’t seem to make any sense, I get the shows, without paying for them in effect. Is it some sort of legal loophole that stops them having to hassle people who have a tape of a show recorded in someone else’s house? > [@Mk\_VII](#): > > The Irish Republic only got a State TV service in 1961. It was to be the then-new 625-line standard, however many people in the border counties had bought 405-line sets and been receiving 405-line signals from BBC Ulster and Ulster TV for years so the service had to be duplicated to keep them happy Ah, I think I remember Dad asking for “dual standard” TVs in the past, and having a black and white set in my room as a kid with two dials, one of which tuned in the Beeb and the other RTE. Was it VHF vs UHF? I remember having to fine tune the BBC knob, but the other had set points that it clicked round to. No way of testing that now, the sets got old, dusty and were chucked out. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 2009, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/51 "2009-10-01T22:46:15Z")
We had one of those dual standard TVs too (the conversion to 625-line standard took some time in England and not all areas changed at the same time) and I remember the two dials, one clicking. My family wasn’t going to pay good cash money for a colour set when the monochrome one still had life in it so it wasn’t until the mid-70s that we got colour TV. ---
**Author:** ![shefDave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/77aa72/32.png) [@shefDave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shefDave)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/52 "2009-10-02T08:38:39Z")
[QUOTE=Ximeanean] I have been asked for my address, but no effort was made to verify it. Out of an instinctive feeling of “it’s none of your business” I just gave them a made-up address. They happily entered it in the form and proceeded with the transaction. This was at Currys, not some dodgy corner shop. So it may be a legal requirement, but it doesn’t appear that anybody is enforcing the law. [/quote] The retailer isn’t required or expected to verify the information, just to collect it. The details are then sent to TV licensing who check it against the database. If the name and address match a license-holder, great, if it doesn’t a vaguely theatening letter gets sent out to the address telling you to buy a license. So as long as the retailer captures a name and address, they’re complying with the law. [QUOTE=psychonaut] That’s an obligation on the part of the seller, not the buyer. A seller interested in complying with the law may insist on asking for these details before completing a sale, but if he fails to do so, there are no legal consequences for the buyer. Many television retailers, large and small, routinely ignore the reporting requirement. That’s their problem, not ours. [/quote] You think businesses would routinely ignore an opportunity to capture personal information on their customers - and then if challenged on why they’re collecting it, can honestly say that it’s a legal requirement? ---
**Author:** ![ColdPhoenix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@ColdPhoenix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ColdPhoenix)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 9:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/53 "2009-10-02T09:08:19Z")
News story today: - Firms issued TV licence warning \* Businesses could be breaking the law if staff watch live TV on their computers when the firm does not have a TV licence. > **[BBC NEWS | Business | Firms issued TV licence warning](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8285474.stm)** > > Businesses could be breaking the law if staff watch live TV on their computers when the firm does not have a TV licence. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/54 "2009-10-02T09:20:08Z")
> [@shefDave](#): > > The retailer isn’t required or expected to verify the information, just to collect it. The details are then sent to TV licensing who check it against the database. If the name and address match a license-holder, great, if it doesn’t a vaguely theatening letter gets sent out to the address telling you to buy a license. So as long as the retailer captures a name and address, they’re complying with the law. I guess you’re right. AFAICT, the law says that it is an offence for the retailer to “knowingly or recklessly furnish any information which is false in a material particular” ([Wireless Telegraphy Act 1967 (repealed)](http://www.opsi.gov.uk/RevisedStatutes/Acts/ukpga/1967/cukpga_19670072_en_1)). And I doubt that a court would consider it “reckless” to trust that the customer is telling the truth and submit whatever details they provide. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/55 "2009-10-02T09:31:56Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > So households in the UK pay about $225/year, for the privilage of watching broadcast TV, even if they are already paying for cable/satellite services. That money is used to run BBC broadcasting, even though the licensee may be watching only non-BBC programming? And if you don’t use/pay for the license, you get hounded because “you can’t really mean you don’t watch TV”. You don’t “get hounded.” I got a letter about the TV license, called the number on the letter, explained to the nice gentleman that I didn’t believe it applied as I didn’t watch TV. “Oh, so you don’t have a TV?” “There is one in the flat actually, but it isn’t even connected to the antenna outside.” “All right. And do you watch TV over the internet?” “I watched a couple of Doctor Who episodes once, but nothing for months.” “DVDs or anything like that?” “Yes, I’ve got several, both movies and TV series.” “OK, then you don’t need a license, I’ll make a note. Thank you and have a nice day!” If you consider that “get hounded,” may you never figure out what the expression actually means! ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/56 "2009-10-02T10:04:06Z")
> [@shefDave](#): > > You think businesses would routinely ignore an opportunity to capture personal information on their customers - and then if challenged on why they’re collecting it, can honestly say that it’s a legal requirement? Hey, I didn’t say it made good business sense; I just said that it was fairly routine. Some smaller stores (non-chains) may not have the administration in place to do data collection and mining on their customers. And some larger stores may have policies in place to do so, but don’t do a good enough job of making their employees follow the policy. And some stores will follow the law only to the extent that it doesn’t require that they collect any information they don’t already collect. For example, if you order a TV from [Amazon.co.uk](http://Amazon.co.uk), they don’t make you fill out any special form. They probably pass your name and billing address on to TVL. But they certainly don’t ask for the address where the TV is to be installed, which is also a legal requirement on their part. ---
**Author:** ![Rayne\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/df705f/32.png) [@Rayne\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rayne_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2009, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992/57 "2009-10-02T10:15:25Z")
If you buy a TV from Argos and use the in-store self-buy facility via that key-pad device, then you have to enter your address before you can complete the transaction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bbc-tv-licenses-and-dvds/511992.md?page=2)