Television Licence - Time to abolish it?

[William Ess]

I do not watch BBC television or radio) yet I have to pay for it. I watch Sky occasionally but shoud I wish to stop it, I can do so and keep the money. The money from the BBC licence goes into its entirety to the BBC and I have to pay whether I watch the BBC or not.
Is this fair or is it time for a change?
WE

No, it's not fair. I hardly watch telly, but pay it just in case...

They have a van that detects TV signals and whether you're paying or not.

[Rapunzel]

I was under the impression that the BBC license money paid for serious programmes to be made and enabled there to be less advertising on the BBC.

Personally, I like the adverts, they're usually more entertaining than the programmes! (Although Sky seem to run 6 minutes of ad's, 4 times per hour, which is extremely frustrating!)

However, I do appreciate the serious drama's particularly those of Jane Austen.
(Although I loathe anything by Catherine Cookson! )

I do think the License fee is far too high and obviously someone at the top is funding an expensive lifestyle, but unfortunately we have little choice, so I find the best thing is to break the payments down into quarterly payments and just pay them!

On reflection though, why is there a monopoly on the License fee?
Shouldn't we have a choice of companies from whom we can choose to purchase our license?

[Rapunzel]

Originally Posted by Crème brûlée

Do you have to pay per tv? About how much does it cost?
how much is sky?

You can have as many TV's in your house as you like and one TV license as long as the house is all yours. A black & white TV license is cheaper than a colour one. A colour TV Licence costs £131.50 and a black and white licence costs £44.00. Thats probably about $250 or $80 annually, as a rough estimate. You can pay monthly, quarterly or annually.

If you are sharing a house, eg. students, then you each have to buy your own Licence.
Here's a link for you:

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/index.jsp

With Sky you buy a basic package and pay extra if you want movies or sports or kids channels added on. To work it out in dollars, just double the amount quoted then knock off about $10, this should give you a rough estimate of costs.

http://shop.sky.com/ordersky/joinsky

Hope that helps, CB.

[William Ess]

Originally Posted by Crème brûlée

so how does this work? how do they know if you have a tv? It's not like it's cable right?

They start with the presumption that every house has a TV and check their database against licence renewals.

[spot]

Originally Posted by Rapunzel

Shouldn't we have a choice of companies from whom we can choose to purchase our license?

I think not - then there would be programming changes to see who could be most popular, which would see both quality and serious focus disintegrate.

I wrote the following comment less than a week ago to another poster here, it fits the thread quite well:

A lot of their production is contracted out now, but they do made programs - Doctor Who isn't just filmed in Wales, the entire production unit is based there. The regions are fairly autonomous, with production centres in york, bristol, manchester, birmingham, cardiff, norwich - I'm just banging in cities where I know programs are made, there's several more.

The funding for the BBC is curiously achieved. They're banned from advertising or product placement, they run... 7 national 24-hour TV channels that I can think of, at least 7 national and 30 regional radio channels that never close, they're quite big. They sell programs to foreign stations. They sell rights to broadcast their back-catalogue. To be very approximate, the BBC takes a £130 a year mandatory fee, directly, from every household which has access to the means to receive or store terrestrial TV or cable TV broadcasts, regardless of whether the household watches any BBC channel, and that forms the bulk of their income (a ballpark figure for that income is... between £2 and £3 billion a year? Of that order, anyway. It does improve the mental health of the nation so it's well worth the cost).

[theia]

At my old place of work we had a television just for showing training videos...I had a hard job convincing the licensing authority that we didn't use the set as a receiver...

actually, I don't blame them for trying...we did cheat once when my deputy wanted to watch the Queen Mother's funeral

[William Ess]

Originally Posted by spot

The BBC takes a £130 a year mandatory fee, directly, from every household which has access to the means to receive or store terrestrial TV or cable TV broadcasts, regardless of whether the household watches any BBC channel,

This is the nub of the issue. The BBC may be the best or the worst of media channels but should it demand a payment from those who do not use it or do not want to. I have Sky and can terminate my payments tomorrow if I wish. I can stop watching the BBC tomorrow but still have to pay for it so long as I have a TV set.
Would it be right if, everytime someone brought a newspaper, they had to pay in addition for a copy of the Times, irrespective of whether they took it?
The arguments in favour of the TV licence may have made sense 25 years ago but with the advent of Sky and Cable, it seems to me to be an anachronism.
WE

[William Ess]

Originally Posted by theia

At my old place of work we had a television just for showing training videos...I had a hard job convincing the licensing authority that we didn't use the set as a receiver...

actually, I don't blame them for trying...we did cheat once when my deputy wanted to watch the Queen Mother's funeral

The law says that if an Inspector catches you with a TV that has the arial plugged in, then you are deemed to be guilty of evasion. If the arial is unplugged then the inspector has no case. You do not need a licence if the TV simply plays video/DVD matter.
WE