As far as I know television advertising is a tax right off in North America so in a sense all taxpayers are supporting commercial advertising.
Personally I would prefer a user supported system like in England. That way I know that my news programs aren’t influenced by their sponsor du jour.
>> As far as I know television advertising is a tax right off in North America so in a sense all taxpayers are supporting commercial advertising.
I will kindly assume you meant “write off”. You are obviously not an accountant and probably do not even know what “write off” means. Advertising is a business expense like any other. Do you have a problem with that?
>> Personally I would prefer a user supported system like in England.
Or like in China, or Cuba or North Korea, or Iraq or. . .?
>> That way I know that my news programs aren’t influenced by their sponsor du jour.
No, they are influenced by the government du jour. How is that better? The last thing I want is the government controlling the media.
>>I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable characterising it as a tax. Yep, it’s compulsory if you own a teevee. . .
It’s a tax by that name or by any other name. President Clinton did the same thing: “lowered” taxes by renaming some of them as “user fees” and other fancy names. In my book the TV tax is a tax and I am very comfortable with the word if not with the concept.
I have a very serious problem with the government using its power to sell a product people may or may not want very specially when the product is information and news. Why should people who have NO interest in watching BBC be forced to pay for it? There is a very simple solution in scrambling. You want to watch BBC? You pay the fee. But you are free to NOT watch BBC and NOT pay for it.
The idea that the government goes around in vans spying to see who has a TV and uses purchase records and other private information to see who owns a TV is completly repugnant to me. But then, I am not British. maybe if I was I would be comfortable with the idea.
At any rate. Can they detect if you watch TV on your computer?
Like the other 'merkins here, I was pretty angry too, about the gov’t taxing you for the continued use of an object you already own in full.
But the alanlogy to a car seems very apt. Just as the fee for registring you car each year helps pay for upkeep of the roads, the British TV Tax halps raise the general quality of the programming (at least in the eyes of those creating the public programming).
Now, I want to hear more from the 'merkins: Suppose our gov’t would continue to help fund PBS and the other “public” networks, but they’d change the financing so that instead of being paid out of general taxes it would be paid by people who actualyl own a TV, would that be so terrible?
Thanks for pointing out the homonym mistake sailor, now I’m exposed to the world as a non-accountant. Well I would say that advertising is a business expense that is not like any other so yes I do have a problem with it. It does not add to the product merely cons people into buying it.
sailor- “No, they are influenced by the government du jour. How is that better? The last thing I want is the government controlling the media.”
How is it better? Well in my country we elect the government so in that sense it is better. How is that worse than corporate control?
Besides, if you read London_Calling’s post you will see the difference between user fees and government control. We would probably agree that the media should be as independant as possible; I just don’t believe commercial T.V is the way to get there.
ps- friendly advise “You are obviously not an accountant and probably do not even know what “write off” means.” - being so arrogant and dismissive is only going to get you pigeon holed as a knee jerk neo-con. If you want to actually affect anyone else’s opinion rather than just thumping down your own then you might want to look into changing that habit.
>> Well I would say that advertising is a business expense that is not like any other so yes I do have a problem with it. It does not add to the product merely cons people into buying it
Interesting view. So what would you do about it?
Prevent companies from spending money on advertising?
That would also result in no commercial TV so we would all be watching the government controlled, high quality (snort), programming.
You might like that idea. I don’t.
No, I think that’s the flyback transformer, and it runs about 15 kHz (in the US, PAL would be somewhat different), so it’s not coupled that well to the far field.
The local oscillator generates a radio-frequency signal that’s mixed with the incoming signal from the antenna, therefore converting its frequency down to the “baseband” where the rest of the TV can operate on it. Since the LO runs at around a hundred megahertz or more (again, in the US, I’m not sure about European standards), some of it is coupled out to the space around the demodulator, and antennae can pick it up remotely.
How many more times does it have to be said thet the BBC is not ,repeat not , Government controlled. It is completely independant and established this fact many years ago. A former head of the BBC once said that if he can upset all the political parties at the same time he is doing his job well. Not having to depend on advertising revenue means that programmes do not have to be dumbed down to the lowest common demoninator just to please the advertiser. We do have commercial TV as well so we can see both types of output.
Whether the BBC is government controlled or not we disagree but that is not the main reason I oppose the tax. If you read my post you will see that my opposition is based on the fact that I do not think I should pay for something I do not want to buy. If they want to charge people for watching BBC they can scramble it but people who do not want to watch BBC should not be made to pay.
You can say that about any tax. If you prefer, think about it an inexpensive check & balance on corporate control of the media.
What the BBC has to say about it.
Also, back on topic (and although it doesn’t say anything that’s not already been said, here is the BBC’s page on detection.
FTR, in Australia our non-commercial Australian Broadcasting Corporation is funded out of consolidated revenue - thus, whether you own a television or radio or computer or not, 8 cents per day of your taxes goes towards keeping the ABC alive.
I suspect we changed to this system from the old TV licences system when televisions stopped being a luxury item in this country. The annual licensing fee in the UK certainly sounds high (you could buy a new television for that money here), but the budget of our ABC probably sounds fairly high too.
If our tax-dependent ABC disappeared tomorrow, there’d certainly be a lot less quality locally produced television on our screens (the commercial networks tend to go for soap operas and quiz shows to meet the “local content” requirements), and we’d the only access we’d have to British drama or documentaries would be on our multicultural channels or on pay TV.
I - for one - think it’s vital that we retain a government owned and funded broadcaster in Australia, and I think every single dollar we spend on maintaining it is money well spent.
sailor – the BBC is not owned, run or in anyway controlled by Government or corporate interests. There have to be a couple of aspects in which Government involvement is necessary (agreement on the forthcoming year’s level of License Fee and, presumably, broadcasting restraints re decency, etc) but that’s it. Someone has to act as a check and balance regarding funding an organisation that’s uniquely constituted (by Royal Charter).
FWIW, it might be inconvenient that the way it’s funded doesn’t sit in a convenient box, but it’s equally important to get the facts straight.
On your second point, perhaps technology might allow for that now but will I also be permitted to pay (considerably) less for my weekly shopping if I scramble the commercial teevee ?stations
Bromley said “You can say that about any tax.” – I think sailor does. 
Come off it, UK dopers - the BBC might not be directly controlled by the government, but its revenue is extracted by legal means if necessary i.e. by the state. It’s disingenuous to claim that the BBC is not influenced by the government, even if governments of every persuasion claim that the Beeb is biased against them.
On the other hand, the BBC’s independence is something of a sacred cow in Britain, woe betide the politician who is seen to interfere with it. But the licence fee survives only as long as the British voter’s love affair with the BBC continues. In the old days the Beeb was where we’d turn to first for innovative programming, but these days it’s just as likely to be Channel 4 or satellite or somewhere else. With the ever-increasing number of non-Beeb channels available in Britain, it’s only a matter of time before the licence fee is reduced, capped, or abolished, IMO.
Well… to try and make a long story shorter, a translator is a unit constructed on a mountain top to relay TV or radio signals from one side of the mountain to the other.
Since radio and TV signals pretty much travel line of sight, translators are a necessity in mountainous terrain.
In my case, the county owns and operates the system most folks use here, although there are a couple of private, homeowner or co-operative systems that provide a signal to those that are unable to get any reception from the county system.
In my particular case I get no reception from any of the translators and instead, rely on satellite transmissions, barely. If the mountain were another couple feet higher in front of my house, I wouldn’t get that either!
Of the two major dish providers, I only have line of sight to one of the providers’ satellites, the other is over the horizon.
Pardon ?
OK, “woe betide the politician who is seen to interfere with the BBC’s editorial policy”. The government has influence over the BBC’s revenue.
Again, I am not British so I am in no way telling the brits how to do things and they can do them as they like best. I am just stating my opinion which is that people who want to watch another channel and not the BBC should not be made to pay for the BBC.
If the country wants to pay for a TV channel then it should come out of the general taxes, like in Australia. I would object to that too but less than the British system which seems to me very unfair.
Ideally for me the BBC should be paid by those who want to watch it. You want quality programming with no commercials? Fine, you subscribe and get to decode the scrambled signal.
You should be able to choose what you see and what you support. You want “free” TV paid for by commercials? Then you tune in and the advertisers pay for the broadcast. If nobody tunes in, nobody advertises and there is no station. You prefer no advertising? Fine, you subscribe to no advertising channels and pay your fees (as is the case in most other countries). You can have a mixture of both: less advertising and lower fee. Whatever so long as it is voluntary. But I object to the government making me pay for the BBC just because I happen to own a TV.
Newspapers are financed through a combination of advertising and buyer price. Publishers are free to seek the combination which works best for them, from 100% advertising to 100% buyer. Fine but if I decide I want to read the Daily Post I do not want the government requiring me to also finance the official government newspaper or any other. If the country needs to have a government sponsored newspaper it should come out of the general budget, not out of the pockets of readers of other newspapers.
Anyway, just my opinion.
I’m trying not to stray into GD territory here, but I find this comment interesting. Does this mean you will only pay taxes for things that you personally will use? Does that mean you will personally use every National Park, highway, footpath, public library, Government funded welfare service, public hospital, etc in your country?
The Government and people of Britain have long been able to make and sustain arguments that organisations like the BBC have what economists term public good aspects and present positive externalities for their communities in much the same way as the goods and services I list above.
You could take issue with the scale and benefits of these public good and externalities and hence argue that the Government shouldn’t provide them (and I’d probably agree with you) but it’s not really a sufficient argument to say that you wouldn’t pay because you personally wouldn’t use this particular government service.