In Britain, every home with a TV set must pay $US248.63 per year.

Cafe Society
141

Actually, there are similar arrangements in most European countries, as far as I know.

One should remember that at least here (and I suppose in other countries too) there used to be only public-owned channels at some point in the past (I think in France the first channel belonging to a private operator appeared only during the late 80’s). So, it made a lot of sense, at least at this time, to have to pay a tax (or whatever you call it) to benefit from what was exclusively a public service.

Now that there are many private channels, it’s of course more arguable, but I still have no issue paying to fund public TV channels, especially since amongst the 6 channels broadcasted here (I don’t have the cable nor satellite), 3 are still publicly operated channels, and are, in my opinion, vastly superior in content to their private concurrents, in particular the Franco-German ARTE (of course it depends on taste). And I’ve no issue with people wanting to watch only some privately-owned cable channels having to pay for my enjoyment since after all, I pay for schools despite not having kids, for highways despite not owning a car, and so on…
The only thing I think should be reformed : taxing only TV-owners at this point is quite ludicrous, since 98% of the population or so owns one (*) . It would be much simpler to just add some amount to taxes and fund directly the TV public service from the general budget. Owning a TV hasn’t been a luxury for quite a while, so the TV public service should simply be paid for in the same way any other public service is.

(*) That’s so true that the service in charge of recovering the tax send threatening letters to anybody not already paying it, assuming that most people in this situation are simply cheaters. For several years, I received mails demanding that I declare my TV set, mentionning the various consequencs (fines, etc…) if I refused to comply in timely fashion, etc… Note that they didn’t ask me if I actually owned a TV set. The letters were written the way they would have been if they had known for sure that I owned one and hide the fact. By the way, when I eventually got one, it has been a major pain to actually declare it (I had to hunt down the service in charge, which was not easy since they happened to be situated in a countryside town, then they were unreachable by phone, except at odd hours during which their phone was always busy, and eventually I had to write them a letter, politely asking “please, tax me”).
By the way and for the record in case people would be wondering, here, when you buy a TV, you must state who will use it and the retailer must then forward this information to the service in charge. That’s how they get most of their database. (In my case, the set was an used one I was given, that’s why I had to declare it myself.)

142

Yes, that has been my experience as well, in general, not Montana specifically.

That’s why I said I didn’t understand amarinth’s statement that in Seattle in 2006 the only choice is “It’s cable or no tv at all.” Are there fewer broadcast stations in a metropolis like Seattle now, than there were in Montana 30-odd years ago?

Or, more likely, what am I missing here?

Sorry for the hijack, I was just curious.

143

Some points:

A Licence is only needed for the actual receiving of TV signals from a live broadcast.

Cite: http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp
*
If you use a TV or any other device to receive or record TV programmes (for example, a VCR, set-top box, DVD recorder or PC with a broadcast card) - you need a TV Licence. You are required by law to have one.*

To be shown to have broken the law, the TV Licensing authority must show that you were actually using the equipment to receive a live signal. They do this by either obseving a TV being used for live programming or by showing by the use of a hand held meter that there is a tuner operating in the house at the frequency of a TV receiver oscillator on a frequency which can be used locally to receive a TV signal. Using a TV receiver tuned to a locally neutral frequency to view RF DVD or Video signals is legal without a licence. They might try to bully you, but it is OK in law.

“The TV Licence” also funds local and national radio stations, and the transmission system for all terrestrial TV (unlike in the US where the local stations own and operate the transmission antenna).

The breakdown is given here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/

Although people claim that there is a majority of people against the licence fee, this depends on the manner in which the question is asked. If a poll merely asks "Should the BBC be funded solely from the TV Licence or from other means, people are likely to vote for the lower cost option. If the question was worded in the following way:

The Licence Fee is used for the following:

It pays for:

144

Britain is not the only country

Also Sweden, Norway and Denmark

145

Sorry; Premature Posting Syndrome.

It pays for:

Local Radio Stations without adverts
National Radio Stations without adverts
Minority Language Radio Stations without adverts
Eight TV Stations
The Transmission Equipment for TV and Radio

It also provides a high quality service which improves the quality of commercially produced stations as they need to compete with such a high quality service.

The Government has decided that the above valued services would be seriously damaged if a move was made towards commercialization of the service or to a subscription service.

The choice, then, is not between the TV Licence or paying nothing. The choice is between the TV Licencing and paying for the above valued public services out of general taxation, say by increasing Council Tax by about 10%.

The advantage of the TV Licence over a TV service funded by taxation is that the Government is less able to influence the output of the TV Service when funding is decided over a long period and is not open to renegotiation.

The Government believes that the amount spent on the non-TV services (local, national, minority language radio stations etc as well as transmissions services) should continue to be met from either a licence fee or through general taxation.

You have three choices:

1/ Keeping the TV Licence

2/ Raising Council Tax by 10%

3/ Paying only £30 per year by Licence Fee or Council Tax to provide the minimum radio service and TV transmission service.

If faced with such a choice, I am certain that there would be a majority for the status quo.

There are major challenges to all broadcast TV to be faced over the next decade, but that is another topic. It may, however, lead not only to the demise of the licence fee in the UK, but also to the wholesale overhaul of US networks.

146

Yep, let’s just pick some random numbers out the air.
Raising council tax by 10% to replace license fee.
Where did you get that figure from?

147

I’m guessing Pjen’s council tax bill is somewhere around £1310 :wink:

148

I wonder how much the BBC would raise from putting advertising on their website, as I believe they are considering for non-UK visitors?

149

This is not to support a Council Tax increase, but the average cost of CT per household across the UK is currently about £1,100 per annum.

A 10% uplift would result in a shortfall of about £20 per annum in licence fee revenue if collected in this way. This figure fails to consider those people who default on TV licence fees and/or Council Tax payments.

150

Average council tax about £1300 per annum approximaters to 10% extra for a TV Licence

151

Correct. Band D. £1347 for one house, Band C £1290 for the other.

152

What is Council Tax?

153

Council Tax is what we in Britain pay to our local councils for the services they provide, rubbish uplifts, street lighting, parks, libraries etc

In Scotland our water rates are included in this bill but I think elsewhere in the UK this isn’t the case.
Most people pay it in monthly installments with the unemployed, disabled, low income getting discounts.
You also get a 25% discount if you live in the house on your own.

It’s based on the value of your house, each house fitting within a band so the more expensive the house the higher the bill as the higher band you’re in.

154

You get eight channels (plus a lot of non TV shit that nobody cares about) and pay about $20 a month in license fees? Brit dudes, I think in terms of value for the dollar, you guys are gettng royally screwed by your government. $30 a month will buy you somewhere between 30 and 70 channels here in the states. Of course, some of our channels are crap but not all of them are.

155

Bzzt, wrong. Almost everyone loves BBC radio and listens to at least one station once a day. It’s a pillar of our culture. I’m serious. And the website’s not too shoddy.

Also, Freeview, currently funded by the license fee, gives us the following channels for free, apart from a one-off digibox purchase, currently around $40 for the cheapest version.

And I’ve seen US cable TV - while HBO is probably the best TV station in the world at the moment, and the Comedy Channel is OK at times, there’s not a lot much else I saw on my basic cable package that is worth opening one’s eyes for.

156

I’d agree.
Most people will listen to a BBC provided radio station at some point during the week.
Every working environment that I’ve known that allows a radio on usually defaults to BBC Radio One or Two.

They also have a radio station that provides sports commentary.
Very handy when working late in the office :wink:

Almost everyone I know uses the BBC Website on a daily basis as well.

The non-TV stuff is pretty good.
However, there will be people that don’t use any of it.

157

Whoah! BBC radio is great, and an insanely high proportion of the population listen in on a daily basis. And you can lose yourself in the BBC website - it’s enormous, and their aim is to put as much as they can of the eleventy-billion hours of archive material online (at least for UK residents). My nephews and niece (age 7-12) are addicted to it, lots of the bits they go to are geared to learning, tied in with school curricula. A public service and a public good.

158

Most of those are commercial channels funded by advertising, not the licence fee. And the BBC only has eight channels in the imaginations of the BBC marketing department. They have two proper channels, a news channel (simulcasting with BBC1 much of the time), and four minor channels which are on air for a few hours a day and largely show material that has been or will be shown on BBC1 or BBC2. I can stomach BBC4 being counted as maybe a quarter channel, because it does go very far back into the archives and shows other stuff that I have never seem elsewhere on the BBC. Anyway, BBCs 1, 2, 3, 4, News, CBeebies, and CBBC, that’s still only seven. Is BBC Parliament supposed to be the eighth?

159

Agreed, but the broadcasting of the digital signal is funded by the license fee (to the best of my understanding).

160

See, that’s the other thing that would drive me crazy…paying a tax so I can watch the govenment-mandated and controlled TV stations. I imagine this was even worse in the 50’s and 60’s, before satellite was even a dream. I object strenuously to government-controlled media in any form. Apparently there is no way to vote with your pounds (well, euros now) either. Here, if a station wants to broadcast something, it does, paying for it by selling commercial time. If the show sucks or people hate it for other reasons, it fails because nobody sees the ads and the companies pull their advertising. In Britain, it seems you get what the BBC decides you should get, and that’s that.

Am I essentially correct here?