Advertising free children’s TV (and radio) may have delayed the onset or rampant consumerism fuelled by commercial TV elsewhere.
The BBC microcomputer project is arguably the origin of ARM CPU’s.
Initially the license fee was for radios, I can’t find a reference but I remember being told as a child that politicians saw the risks of radio propaganda and legislated to mandate broadcast media to be politically unbiased .
It’s interesting seeing suggestions on the recent threads about EU funding for a WhatsApp alternative - perhaps the license fee could also fund the infrastructure for something like signal.
What is absolutely clear from history is commercial media outlets fuel political bias, and it seems to be increasingly damaging to society.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_...
It is really bad the way they do this, and having seen the threatening letters they send out they could be very frightening. The letters were on the lines of "Our detectors have found that you have a TV and you have to pay the license fee or we'll send bailiffs around, take you to court etc", and the one I received once (when i too didn't have a TV) was printed on red paper.
It occurred to me that with the rise of consumerism (apparently skyrocketing starting in the 90's) we've had more and more advertising telling us, "If you just buy this product or service you will [be loved | get more sex | be prettier | get more sex]"
When it was just TV and billboards advertising to you it was bad enough but at least you could look away and/or turn off the TV. With the rise of the Internet there was obviously another increasingly pervasive channel through which advertisers could reach you. But then came the smartphone and now it's like we're carrying a TV with us 24x7, flooding us with messages convincing us we're not good enough. Couple that with ad-supported apps that purposely try to be addictive and we are bombarded even more because we can't just be still anymore. Our constant need to be stimulated has become piggy-backed with messages telling us how inferior we are.
I find this statement hard to square with the make up of the economy of this country and the rampant consumerism that seems to exist.
We seem to have taken the biggest hit to the economy by covid because our economy depends so much on rampant consumerism (I'm obviously simplifying)
This is not to say that I think ad free TV is bad, quite the opposite.
Why like signal? Signal has no protections to avoid the same abuse as WhatsApp.
While I would agree with the sentiment, I think that if EU funds anything it will just as likely be much worse than WhatsApp than better than it given their track record (e.g. stupid popups on every damn website that makes life just that extra bit worse).
But there is some hope in that both the french and German governments have adopted Matrix. The benefit of this manner of funding (through adoption and payment for actual services) is that there is actually a customer/provider relationship - and the potential for more direct feedback. That way if it totally sucks you don't end up with a situation where the people authorizing payment/funding are not affected by how badly it sucks.
I think something like signal could reasonably have sufficient protections from both a technical and legislative perspective. And for that matter matrix too.
I was not intending to highlight signal as the only possibility, by like signal I guess I meant a small a capable organisation with a clear non profit agenda.
Public broadcasting fuels political division a lot. The most worrying is that you don’t notice it.
It is increasingly worrying because when people are exposed to the other side, they immediately « catch fire », wonder why they have been lied to, and never trust public broadcasting anymore. With luck, they may smoothen their beliefs a bit later in life, for the most centrist ones.
To me, public TV, especially BBC, shouldn’t be one-sided as it is now.
I don't mean to dismiss the complaint. Public media news is weird: it's funded by the government, but it should criticise the government. There's a tension there. But looking at the US news landscape I see that for-profit news is just as if not more compromised.
I do feel that in recent times, the BBC's big name current affairs programmes have often given politicians of all parties an easy time in interviews, which I think is more worrying as a trend. I think the BBC should still challenge government representatives to explain and if necessary defend their policies, and should also still challenge the Opposition and smaller parties when their own representatives make dubious claims even if they're not currently in power to implement them.
Compare this to people who watch commercial TV, see an opposing view, and immediately wonder why they're currently being lied to, and go back to trusting their single source of commercial programming.
I don’t think it is, and it’s certainly not meant to be. The law in the UK is quite clear and there is a framework and regulatory body to enforce it.
From https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-co...
“To ensure that news, in whatever form, is reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.”
Personally I occasionally find that the BBC news website misses the mark, more often on quality than bias but they have a very transparent and available complaints process online that I suggest you use if you have noticed specific instances of bias.
My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "tax the rich" that it probably was intended to do in the early days.
That would make the BBC dependent on the government for its revenue, which definitely isn't desirable. The current system, where the BBC collects its own revenue under the authority of a royal charter, is intended to help insulate it from political interference.
Some people don't watch broadcast TV, and the BBC and its agents have been infamous for getting heavy-handed and harassing those who choose not to and who perfectly legitimately and legally do not have a TV licence. This is backed by a controversial law that criminalises the failure to have a licence if you do need one, which under any normal circumstances would only be a minor civil matter.
Meanwhile, today the BBC is very much a multimedia institution, but the licence fee remains tied specifically to broadcast television, a historical anomaly that could be fixed.
A different funding model that broke that link and removed the need for a separate licence fee could fix all of the problems with licence evasion and heavy-handed enforcement that have been a black mark on the BBC's history, as well as providing a fairer system where the public service is funded from public funds rather than singling out a particular group.
Everyone seems happy enough with the idea of paying tax for public libraries or parks or other social institutions they may never use because it benefits society, but bring up the tv license and it's like arguing with a brick wall.
Also, the appeal of this funding model makes it independent of Governmental cuts and the politicisation of programming.
Source: I don't have a TV.
I recognize that in the UK at one point this licensing model made sense due to combination of funding broadcast equipment, and the BBC has given a huge amount of value over the years - but I honestly think the quality of their content has decreased significantly since then, especially the documentaries. The licensing model no longer makes sense in a world where they are just one of multiple payed on demand services usually delivered over the internet for which we are already directly funding. It should be opt-in not opt-out.
I'll never pay it again.
https://www.pbs.org/publiceditor/blogs/pbs-public-editor/how...
I'm not sure how it all breaks down when you look at funding that goes to local stations and various other entities involved.
What riles me up personally: the ludicrous sums of money that these broadcasters pay for rights to broadcast the olympics and other major sports events. I really don't understand why I should be forced to give money to corrupt organizations like FIFA and the IOC to hold sports events that I don't watch and otherwise don't have a stake in, just because I happen to live in Germany, to make this stuff more affordable for other Germans.
Another thing that I find infuriating about the German system: You have to pay even if you don't watch and don't even own a television and even non-residential addresses and addresses used solely for business purposes have to pay. The only exception is that a home office within a residential premise doesn't have to pay twice. But in some cases you might actually have to. For example if you have a residential home and run a car repair shop out of your garage, then you have to pay a second set of fees for the shop on top of the fees that you already pay for the residential home, even if there is no programming ever being consumed in either of the two.
I also find the collection tactics highly questionable: When you register your business, they send you an invoice for paying that second set of fees for the business and never advise you of the home office exemption. It was only because of how infuriated I was that I did some legal research and then managed to claim the exemption after exchanging some letters with them. I bet most people don't do that and just pay up, which adds to the unfairness of the system.
State media has to broadcast some content that's actually popular, that most people want to watch, otherwise they'd soon lose political support. I hate it too, but fact is that these events are extremely popular, especially among people watching a lot of live TV. So I think it's a necessary evil unfortunately.
I don't think its necessary at all. Why is it necessary? It's just something we have grown accustomed to in Europe, because of our big government way of doing things, where group A wants wealth transfers from group B, and if group A is a majority, they get their way.
There are a lot of things where that makes sense:
Group A, healthy and rich individuals, pay for health care for group B, sick individuals who can't afford health care. I'm on board because it would feel cruel and heartless to me to let them suffer.
Group A, rich people regardless of whether they have children, pay for the education of children from group B, poor people with children, so that all children regardless of their background get to have a good education. I'm on board because I think that everyone should have access to the opportunities that come with a good education.
Group A, everybody regardless of whether they use public roads, pay for road maintenance so that they can be used by group B, people who make a lot of use of public roads. I'm on board, because I think it would be bad for the country if it had regions that are only poorly accessible.
...in each of those cases, you can make counter-arguments. Those are just my opinions.
Group A, everybody regardless of whether they like football, pay for group B, people who do like football, so that they can watch football. Hold on a sec... What the... What did I just say? ...that makes no sense! Why would I be on board with that? Now, as a taxpayer-licensepayer I'm just paying so that other people can get the things they like. That's clearly going too far. I just don't understand how so many people in Europe are no longer even weirded out by this stuff.
I know at least three countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) which do the same (edit: according the Wikipedia [0], such a fee exists in basically every European country, Japan, Israel, South Korea and Namibia). In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. When I was a freshman student 10 years ago, things were a little bit different: an inspector (the "GEZ man") came by my apartment a few months after I moved in. He wanted to have a look inside. I declined. He came back a few times, but I didn't open the door. I never paid the fee (and I didn't have to, because I received BAföG [1]). Even if I would have had to, there was just no way for them to prove I was actually owning a television. Here, those "detector vans" have been an urban legend for 60 years. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that they never existed and where basically "created" to fear people into paying the fees.
[0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundfunkabgabe
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesausbildungsf%C3%B6rderun...
Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous. Targeted at 70+ pensioners, but why should I pay for their entertainment...
My girlfriend would gladly pay for being able to access BBC UK series, but that's apparently impossible. They've made some horrible contracts with BBC International that seem to prohibit that. It makes no sense that she has to resort to illegal streaming even though she'd love to be a paying customer.
Another problem is also that BBC International creates and distributes US productions that are far below their normal standards. So if you're looking for BBC nature documentaries, for instance, you have to manually sort out all those trashy international productions that are like National Geographic commercials. As I've said, it's a shame.
small demography of 9MM, so the only way to differentiate themselves against bigger German channels is to produce content specifically for that niche. Shows in Austria/CH only value-add are a "local dialect" of actors, or setting the plot/story within Austria/CH. Other than that it's either a poor local copy of German shows (which are often copies of international shows).
Having been spoiled by British quality TV for a couple of decades I'd say the BBC is an incredible high yardstick, impossible to reach not just for Austria, but there is nothing like it in DACH.
One of my biggest annoyance by far is the dubbing of OC into German. They have only a handful of voice-over actors who they rotate for these jobs so the lead-act of every other movie has the same voice[0].
As a child I thought one of the reasons Eddie Murphy was so funny was because of his incredibly high-pitched voice[1]. Once people sit through the dubbed content most of the meaning and jokes are lost.
While other Europeans grow up watching things like Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses and such classics in their __original__ language, I have not 1 German-native friend who is able to follow English language on TV (even there are subs) and they will never get to appreciate other excellent shows like Norseman, Gomorrah, Suburra, because it's "too difficult to read the subs" and they didn't have to since they were kids.
[0] Dennis Schmidt-Foß has given voices to Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Eddie Murphy and others. In fact the situation with E Murphy was so bad/ridiculous that they decided to give him a _new_ voice!! That's right the same person now has a different voice and nobody thinks that's odd.
Indeed very few programmes appear to be made by the BBC.
It seems like what happened/happens is that producers form their own private company, do the work for the BBC but the public don't get to keep the benefit of the work paid for the benefit gets locked away to provide private gains.
Long running programmes are now made by third parties when they could easily be made by the BBC proper, Gardeners' Question Time, say.
In part is to serve 'talent', but BBC's remit is to fill the gaps where commercial programmes don't go, to be distinctive, so they should never be paying £millions for a talk show host.
If you're going to use public money then you should be benefiting the public as much as possible, not carefully twisting it to get private profits.
This is by notorious awful tv station Channel 5, and is not paid for by the license fee. (In fairness, it's not amongst their most terrible content; about half of their programming amounts to "Look! Poor people! Haha!", and despite the name this isn't really an example of that.)
Everyone else often had cable or SAT, which gave you all the German and also Swiss networks, particularly the private ones, where the program is aimed at different demographics (also possible because of vastly larger pockets: German ad market >> Austrian ad market)
At least ORF tried to modernize its image, but do you want to lose your main demographic as well? Can you compete (financially) with German private TV and pay TV? Not to mention Netflix, Disney+, etc? There is not really a way out.
So were stuck with Skiing, Austrian Soccer, Tatort and Gaming show clones. At least there is a lot of cooperation/joint shopping with German and Swiss (public) stations.
The self-created German content could be worse though. Tatort can be quite nice, it is not aiming to be CSI - and that can be a good thing.
I do have to agree, so, that the home-grown entertainment sucks. In Germany as well. It is funny, so, that german public TV is not allowed to create their own streaming service and a lot of content has to removed from their online offerings after a certain period of time. Which kind of sucks. Especially since the rights catalogue of the public German networks, ARD and ZDF, used to be quite impressive. They just decidded to never show any of it before midnight, if at all.
This is the kind of TV program that I think has contributed to the UK's extreme stinginess and bureaucracy of benefits; in aggregate it's probably got people killed. Cherry-picking the most lurid stories to make people look bad.
It's also not a BBC show, it's by Channel 5!
I'm with a lot of people that the BBC can produce great stuff, but only when it remembers to be Reithian and the managers aren't looking. These days most of the BBC content I watch comes from BBC4, plus the output of David Attenborough.
(ORF produce exactly one show with an international reputation: the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, which is lovely)
The show that demonizes, humiliates and dehumanizes working class people by filming them being evicted?
This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-watchers is justified as it benefits society as a whole. I must say, I've now found some of the programming on the publicly funded TV stations is actually pretty good.
Then you'll see a plethora of really well-made documentations about regions in Germany, regions in the world, culture, archeology etc.
The third programmes are also where new comedians, hosts and artists are given a chance to refine their show concepts and prove themselves.
Taxes are not free to manage and collect so this also provides cost savings.
We have this debate periodically in the UK. The argument against abolishing the TV licence is usually that a dedicated tax ensures a larger independence of the BBC, which is not "at the mercy" of the government for funding, but I think this is a rather weak argument because the government already ultimately decides the amount of the TV licence fee, which is a tax.
Edit following the "reactions": By the way, in the UK it is not allowed to criticise anything related to the BBC (and the NHS) as you can see. Is it the same in Germany? :(
Nobody owes "society" past that point, but it's extremely profitable in the West, specifically, to double tax people with guilt trips into having artificial indebtedness to "society".
Do they really believe these things? This is the Kool-Aid you have to drink as a society, in order not to go crazy when you pay for things you never use and benefit from.
If you ever move out, make sure to let them know, otherwise they will keep hunting you for ever.
Not that they have time to anymore since almost every single public service got their budgets slashed.
We actually do have detector vans - they belonged to the RegTP, now Bundesnetzagentur, and are used to pinpoint pirate radios, malfunctioning equipment, and check if private point-to-point radios requiring licenses actually have licenses: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunik...
In 2019, the BNetzA was out in 4.700 cases of radio interference - mostly it was WiFi routers using bands that are not allowed in Germany, but there were also 1.200 cases where interference hit sensitive communications like police radio or airplane communications: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/gadgets/bundesnetzagentur-be...
But public broadcasters also have expansive web/IP presence, and even use Facebook for public communication (ZDF), when in their news/opinion pieces they rant against social media LOL.
Public broadcasters today seem just to create a self-serving and self-referential media presence for politicians, in these times of Coronavirus more than ever. Tonight, they're going to push for even stronger measures including curfews (!) even though infections are going down; needless to say, without parliamentary participation. The whole thing is getting out of hands with irrationality fast right now.
Basically 2.5% starting from income after 14000€ and maxes out at 163€ collected.
https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/newsroom/visual_aids_for_pre...
The law is such that the inspector can look into your home from public areas but you don't have to open your door to them or talk to them. They are unable to determine if you own any device which can be used to watch state TV. This is quite silly. People actually fear this and gladly pay up.
In some countries, the mere existence of a TV or radio in your household means you have to pay. These are publicly broadcast channels.
(Emphasis mine)
This "playing fast and loose with language" that they do (and that you inadvertently did too, just now) makes me so irrationally angry.
Why would the burden of proof be that low? They need (should need?) to prove that you received broadcast television, not that you simply owned a TV.
We hear these stories about TV detector vans as if finding a TV set was ever sufficient evidence.
The vans would be detecting radio activity; there's nothing to detect if the TV is off.
Not really, we have that in Slovenia too.
In the past, you could avoid it by claiming you had no tv (and a grey-legal area of letting them verify). Then they expanded and added the "radio" part, where you paid less if you have a radio (and no tv), including car radio.
Then they added internet streaming, and expanded the definition of "tv" to "any device, capable of viewing streamed content" (pc, smartphone), so if you have a smartphone, you have to pay for tv, just because you have a device capable of watching a stream.
There have been many calls to just encrypt the over-the-air broadcasts, and create usernames and passwords for paying customers for streaming, but they prefer the "catch-all" definitions of "tv", so they can collect monthly subscriptions from pretty much every household in the country.
Our private tv stations are not much better... the most viewed one, did a nasty deal with the cable/iptv operators, wanting either a lot of money for their tv channels as a searate option, or less money if their tv stations are put into "basic"(=cheapest, smaller) cable packages, so they forced a price increase for every cable/iptv subscriber and there's no way to cancel just their channels.
There are so many little things, whether its TV licenses, overpriced interactions with the DNV equivalent, overpriced tolls that were promised to be eliminated. The list goes on.
Fortunately most European countries have an awesome statistics office that gives visibility into government wastage. Unfortunately, the the social democracies historically(?) stuffed their public sectors in lieu of full employment policies, and bureaucracy is an existential threat over here.
The BBC is license-fee funded rather than tax funded so that (in theory at least) they don't have to rely directly on the government for funding - private citizens directly fund the corporation.
This goes some way to ensuring more independence, and fairer news output.
In reality, the government holds the BBC to ransom every eight years when the royal charter they operate under is re-written. There will always be claims of political bias on both sides.
The idea of a van watching you is enough for many to change their behavior
Intelligence agencies used receivers to snoop in on CRT computer monitor signals and could re-generate the display output, I remember watching a TV program where some electrical engineers built a home-grown version and demonstrated how it worked. It was only effective up to about a dozen metres IIRC with their setup, but theoretically could work at longer range with better hardware.
I remember chatting with friends about it because we were playing an espionage RPG at the time so of course we wanted our characters to have access to the tech.
And the design was ridiculous. A working detector doesn't need to look anything like an aerial stuck on top of a minivan.
And the only record of them being used in a prosecution is for optical detection of combined RGB. Plus some handwaving. Not RF.
So they were pretty much a psy-op.
It's relevant that the license fee collectors - who belong to Capita, one of those curious quasi-private-with-state-support companies that buzz around the British government like flies - rely almost entirely on self-incrimination for prosecutions.
Just because the technology exists, doesn't mean the BBC actually used it. For one thing, it would have been far cheaper to put out the word that the vans are on the streets and patrolling, than to actually buy them, equip them and staff them with trained personel that could operate the devices.
Alternatively, perhaps a few of those vans really did exist and the rest was smoke and mirrors- rumours, fake vans without any active technology, etc.
Note that the reason I'm finding this likely is that the TV Licensing people are known for using psychological warfare tactics. For instance, I don't watch TV [1] and yet I periodically receive threatening letters from the TV licensing authority telling me that if I'm found to watch TV without a license I'll be fined, etc. Clearly, they send those letters to all addresses in the UK that don't have a license, under the assumption that most addresses without a license actually need one and that by sending out threatening letters en masse they will scare some of those shirkers into compliance- regardless of how many people who don't actually watch TV they end up threatening in the process. I've also seen some really startling public campaigns with posters showing bullseyes on houses, creepy slogans about being watched and so on.
Their tactics are a veritable nuisance and their mass mailing campaigns may or may not have the effect they want, but they sure have the effect of bothering random, uninvolved people with threatening government spam.
_____________
[1] Er, well. I do occasionally watch TV shows, or rather clips thereof- on youtube. But that's not covered by the licensing. You need a license if you're watching TV programmes as they are being broadcast. So for example, I had a TV set for a few years that I used exclusively with a PS2 and I didn't need a license for it- but I'm pretty sure that if I had ever been visited by one of the TV licensing agents, I'd have been forced to pay anyway. How exactly do you prove that you have a TV set but don't watch TV? Most modern houses have aerial plugs - mine sure does. The only thing that really stopped me from connecting the TV set I had to the aerial was that I basically dislike TV. How do you prove that to an agent hell-bent on collecting?
And where is the detector van union? Memorial service for the driver who crashed? Job postings?
So look at the pattern of changing colours through curtains, and compare to a TV in the van with something to diffuse the light over the top.
Of course, the even simpler approach is to tell people you can do this and just send around / threaten to send around random vans.
when i read that article years ago i went in to a huge rabbit hole about side-channel attacks. A lot of the information from that reading spree has stuck with me
Funny detail, the reporter asked "Can this devise detect all televisions?" to which the fake interviewee answered, "well if you wrap your set in aluminum foil no, but otherwise yes". The next day aluminum foil was sold out nation-wide.
[1] https://www.facebook.com/AndereTijden/videos/1-aprilgrap-jou...
http://www.buckman-hardy.co.uk/portfolio/television-detectio...
According to the article they were not intended for convictions but instead to get a search warrant and then gather evidence for a conviction.
So who knows how many convictions were started because of the vans. Though I agree that the fear factor probably did help more than the search warrants.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/science-technology/6976...
It’s really all a big scare tactic though. The best way to detect iPlayer being used wrongly will be to see who registers for an account with an identifiable email address.
Anyone that's put an AM radio next to a CRT TV knows it emits em noise.
The CRT itself is, to over simplify, a high voltage capacitor. It's one of the most popular devices used to power hobbyist Tesla coils...
I don't know why everyone seems to think that just because TVs were "receive-only" devices, that they wouldn't emit any sort of easily detectable signal.
Also, when this enforcement began, broadcast was the only source of TV content, so the presence of a TV was generally proof of watching broadcasts. There wasn't really any need to prove the TV was tuned to any particular content.
Now, whether it is a practical, effective method of enforcement that was actually used is another matter.
They surely can't get too much of a return paying people to check up on only potential licence 'evaders' so investing in a fleet of actual vans with drivers and operators would further reduce any return.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)#Public_rese...
I had assumed it was complete scare tactics, I never once thought that they had existed in some previous era.
The technology is completely sound, MI5 invented the rough idea for hunting spies (Operation RAFTER), but whether it was widespread or not? Seems unlikely.
This is actually pretty common and almost everywhere in Europe. I will never stop being surprised by how little my fellow British people know about other countries.
While the detecting technology can work in theory, it will perform poorly in practice. Think of any dense settling, such as apartment blocks. It will be kind of impossible to determine the exact source of radio signals from the street, at least in the frequency domain and signal strength in question.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_Italy
But here they solved it by a much easier way.
* once you got married, you were automatically assumed to have a TV set.
* any tv that was sold were reported to the communication ministry.
* a car owner would pay by default. Assumption was all cars would have and use a radio.
* to show you don’t have a TV set or it’s not receiving any over-the-air broadcasts you were suppose to wait for random check ups. Once finally someone came, they can decide if you don’t need to pay.
But the most interesting story any Israeli know is the “mehikon” (Eraser in Hebrew) and its counterpart (anti-mehikon).
Back in the days, the countrie’s manifest at least was socialism. It wasn’t “fair” someone would have a color tv while others can’t. So the communication ministry required the broadcasters to wipe colors. So even color tv was shown as b&w. in order to “fix” that, The anti-mehikon was made. A device to “restore” the faulty tv signal and get the colors back.
People suddenly had to pay licenses for at least 7 years with fines and interest that shot up the "price" by a 1000% The public television involved lawyers as collection agencies and threatened people with writ of execution.
Good riddance.
Your point about random checkups is probably how it was done in most countries. You could opt out, but you would have to allow them to enter your home for a checkup. If you refused, you would have to pay again.
According to the story, DR never had the technology (or new it existed) to do an actual TV detection.
I heard the story from an old interview from a retired DR manager, who said that they did this. So source wise it is pretty weak, but still a funny story none-the-less.
Until the mid 2000's they also hired free agents that were paid a commission for every "black sheep" they got to register. Of course these people regularly overstepped their mandate and found creative ways to intrude people's homes, some would e.g. pose as TV technicians and ask if they could have a look at the cable as the neighbors reported some problems, only to reveal themselves as the GEZ guy once they were inside and saw the unregistered TV set. Of course all of that was illegal, and in 2007 (I think) the system was finally changed so that a given household would pay a fixed fee instead of a fee that depended on the number of receiving devices they had, which made using the "collection mafia" unnecessary. Still, the GEZ is by far the most hated agency in Germany and the subscription fees (around 18.5 € / month) are among the most hated taxes people pay. Some people go as far as voting for an ultra right-wing party (AfD) only because they promise to do away with this fee should they come into power. Personally I don't mind paying for it, though I'd prefer to be able to pay more selectively for services I use. Then again, less than 20 € / month in additional tax for a single household isn't anything to really get worked up over.
Given the sad state of journalism across the big pond (actually pretty much everywhere for various reasons), I'm glad there's such a system in place (and that there is a large viewership in the first place!).
Quality has its price, though I agree, maybe one should be able to pay more selectively for journalism and less for football licenses. But don't change a running system...
You don't have to understand Dutch to understand what the doorbell and the "uhooo" at the end of the commercial means... The whole text of the commercial is a hilarious attempt at intimidation. Basically it's about how it's all fun and games until somebody gets busted.
It's just yet another tax. Moving to Germany feels a bit like they pretend to keep "tax rates" low by splitting out various things and making it "not a tax". In the Netherlands I had income tax and that was it, from that the govt just pays development aid and old age money (AOW) as needed. Here, you have church tax (if your parents signed you up for that party), new states support, broadcast fee, pension contribution, and probably more I'm forgetting.
So, if you watch something live on Amazon Prime or YouTube, you need a TV licence. I don't know if the BBC define what 'live' actually means, there's always a delay.
I have a TV but don't have a TV licence. I don't own an aerial cable and it's been factory reset to detune all the channels (I used live in a house that had a TV licence). I use it with a Chromecast.
I have one of the 'threatening letters' next to me right now. They're all addressed to 'The Legal Occupier'. That's not my name. They can go **** themselves.
Live TV is awful.
I expect it could be made to work, but I have no doubt people would complain about it. And the license fee is not a pure private contract - there is government involvement (hence all the political arguing about whether the BBC should be allowed to increase the fee or get rid of the exemption for senior citizens). So if there's a big change that lots of people complain about then it might be blocked for political reasons even if it actually makes sense over all.
I remember paying 300 quid for a VCR and giving them a fake name and address before leaving with my JVC under my arm.
I heard in Japan there isn't any penalty for not paying, and I was captivated by a Murakami story of the "NHK man" who raps loudly on apartment doors and can only yell at these closed doors trying to shame non-payers.
Quite frankly it's ridiculous - imagine needing to pay a "fee" to CNN/Fox News/NYTimes/Yahoo/whatever-well-connected dotcom just because you have an internet connection and web browser.
This comparison is ridiculous. The license fee is a little outdated in certain aspects but it covers more than just broadcast news as the orgs you mentioned do.
The BBC has a broad remit to inform, educate, and entertain. Not in itself radically different to a lot of other broadcasters, and typical for a public service broadcaster, but the universal license fee is a key differentiator.
In requiring everyone with a television to contribute, the BBC has a duty to serve the entire population of a country, regardless of their income or demographic. This enables the BBC to produce content that may not be commercially viable for privately funded broadcasters that in term can serve communities that would otherwise be overlooked. BBC's Three and Four channels tend to best exemplify this aspect with content that can often be slightly niche and, in the case of Three, regularly have casts and production crews that are far more diverse than the industry averages.
The license fee is also independent of the state budget. The Government does have the power and oversight to adjust funding every 5-11 years, but the royal charter ensures that funding is separate from typical taxation and avoids the Treasury. This also ensures (in theory) that there is more autonomy for accurate, fair, and unbiased news reporting.
The BBC has also for most of its existence operated and maintained a lot of shared broadcasting infrastructure (which admittedly is less key as viewing moves away from terrestrial broadcast and towards IP services, and to a lesser extent cable and satellite). In the previous charter they also had a responsibility to improve broadband infrastructure in rural areas.
There's also a final aspect to this in that the BBC performs a lot of public service open research into emerging technologies as well as the social impact of them and different forms of media. Most media organisations don't care about anything other than how much of a person's attention they can capture at the expense of everything else. More eyes on a media org = more advertising sold. The BBC's model means they can actually give consideration to what healthy consumption is and how to promote digital wellbeing etc., as well as ensuring younger audiences are better catered for (there's a great article on how YouTube Kids has severely let down its young audiences in the past here: https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... )
These are contracted through slimey companies like Serco and Capita (Crapita).
I don't normally say it but it really is an example of the nanny state.
Check this video out, it's an eye opener https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXcLqvFjMhE&t=608
Also worth noting that there is a campaign in the UK to get non-payment of license fees decriminalised and made into a civil offence.
"In 2017 (latest data available), 72 per cent of all prosecutions for TV licence-fee evasion were against women.
This figure is so high that licence-fee evasion accounted for 30 per cent of all prosecutions against women, the single most common charge."
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/tv-license-sc...
It was designed so that the BBC essentially had independence from the government, and as such, they could more easily be politically neutral (if they were funded directly by the government, there would be more pressure for them to cover the government favourably in news programs etc.).
Problem is that these days the licence fee is outdated with lots of people just watching Netflix/Amazon etc.
A lot of the "right wing" here also think the BBC has a left wing bias, which I think is a bit ridiculous really, as a lot of the "left wing" also think it has a right wing bias. But the consequence of this is that a lot in the current government want to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. This would basically mean that there is no consequence to not paying the licence fee, and assuming the government didn't come up with an alternative way of funding it, it would amount to death by a thousand cuts for the BBC (which a lot of right wingers are actually quite open about wanting).
It's quite a tough problem in my opinion. Direct funding from the government would solve a lot of problems, but also make political impartiality a lot more difficult to achieve. A direct subscription like for Netflix would likely result in a significant drop in revenue.
Hard to see a good solution here.
This would be quite damaging for the UK as the BBC is a great way of projecting soft power, plus it provides quite a lot of great resources (as has been pointed out in other comments).
I'd be more in favour of a system like Germany has to be honest.
If your society is principled enough to require warrants to execute "searches", then it should be principled enough to recognize that this principle, by default, excludes any activity which has no measurable impact on society from criminalization.
The first piece of evidence in any investigation should come without a search.
Nobody bought it and they went back to politely pleading with people to pay their TV licenses.
And I'm really not sure I believe that they correlate room light fluctuations with broadcast programming, or even that this is technically/economically feasible. Sounds more like disinformation to me.
If we ignore the distinction between a license and a tax, France still levies a TV tax. I believe other European countries do this as well. The van is the unusual part, not the license fee.
The nature coverage on BBC is an order of magnitude better than anything else on TV.
The science coverage on BBC is better than anyone else on TV.
The news coverage on BBC is better than anything else on TV.
And that's just the starters.
The podcast revolution were in right now? Brits have had that since the 70s with radio 4 producing great audio programs. Everything from science to history to drama to comedy. Their programming makes up a big chunk of the best podcasts and another chunk are ripoffs of BBC shows.
Streaming? BBC iPlayer was the trailblazer in that space.
And we're still not done.
The UK has a similar problem to US media: its mostly owned by crazy right wingers and what isn't spends a lot of time navel gazing and sharing cat in tree stories. Not the BBC, they keep breaking big stories. They don't care or have to care about the editorial line or commercial interests of their advertisers or even their viewers prejudices. And educated, informed voters are one reason we have maintained (just) decent healthcare and a semi working benefit system. They actually force other media to be better. That's why we don't have Foxx news and our antivaxx movement is smaller than the US or Frances.
I'm not saying they're perfect. I'm not saying they're always right or they couldn't do better.
I'm just saying, we need more than just the commercial model, be it ads or subscription based. There are 1001 things it doesn't do well. It does other things great. But it can't give you everything. Why not keep both?
Thanks for reading my rant.
I used to think the TV licence was oppressive, until I moved to the US - and quickly realised I’d happily pay the licence if I could.
I agree with what you said, but given there's only so many hours in the day, and I only watch TV to "switch my brain off", I didn't feel it worth the cost given that Netflix et al fills that hole just fine- for far less.
To get my science / nature / news I turn to podcasts.
b) Even if it did, I still would not pay for a license, as a reaction to its overreaching approach, obligatory character and dishonest reasoning. They are claiming that you need a license to watch any type of content made available in public in real time, with Youtube LIVE mentioned explicitly as an example -no particular reason this wouldn't include even things like gaming video streams a school kid would share for fun.
I don't think BBC should profit from the consumption of content it has contributed nothing towards. I'm not sure if that's more absurd when that content itself is provided for free by its authors, or when it's content you have already paid for.
This is an understatement. It would be fairer to say they constantly spam you with scare mail.
> In the event this fails, they may arrange a visit from enforcement officers.
That's what they want you to think. In practice it never really happens. Too expensive. Hence the spam.
> These officers aren’t empowered to forcibly enter homes, so in the event a homeowner declines to cooperate with an investigation, TV Licencing will apply for a search warrant.
I would be quite surprised if this has actually ever happened.
It's pretty obvious they don't do any fancy detection these days (if they ever really did). It's just way too expensive.
This makes me feel bad for the people who actually do need and pay for a TV license since a chunk of that money is wasted on this scum instead of being used to fund the BBC or whatever the license is supposed to fund.
In the UK, we have a legal theory called the implied invitation, which means that it is implied (because it would otherwise be ridiculous) that any member of the public is invited to walk on your property up to your front door. This allows the postal service to put letters through your letter box, and people to knock on your door to say hi. However, this right can be revoked. You can write to Capita and state that you are withdrawing the implied invitation to all its members and agents, and that they are not welcome on your property. Then, they are not allowed to enter your property and are trespassing if they do, and you can call the police straight away without even warning them (because you did warn them already by post). Capita (despite its many faults) does seem to obey this.
I did this for my property shortly after I moved in. A little while later, a group of people did wander down the road. Half of them came onto the property and knocked on the door, claimed to be from Sky, and asked if we wanted to get satellite TV. The other half were wearing a different uniform and stayed outside the property. I strongly suspect that half was Capita agents who asked some Sky employees to help them out. Unfortunately, it was my wife who answered. Although she told them to go away, I would have been angry at them, because they had made the Sky employees into Capita agents, and therefore they were trespassing.
The threatening letters are atrocious. They are scary for anyone who doesn't know what they are doing, as they almost imply that your door is going to be broken down and you'll be hauled off to prison. I called Capita out on this. I wrote to them declaring that any further threatening letters from them would be classed as harassment, and that the police would be involved. They stopped sending them.
It happened to me. A very nice man knocked on the door and delivered a speech about the licence fee. I told him we just use the TV to watch Netflix and Amazon Prime. He filled in a form and we haven't had one of those annoying letters since.
> I would be quite surprised if this has actually ever happened.
Per the BBC/Capita own data available via FOI [0] (though not without them dragging their feet and making a simple process a protracted one... not to mention they tried to withdraw the documents provided [1]), in FY 2014/2015 there were 351 enforcement requests made for all of UK, the Capita/TVL Legal made 256 applications to court for a warrant, 167 of those were granted and 115 were actually executed after being granted.
If they think they have grounds they will absolutely try to get the warrant - and note that there is a disparity between what the "commercial" arm of the enforcement thinks they can push on (351) and what the court system thinks is actually suffcient (167).
That count does not include the times where Capita/TVL managed to get enough without going that fair (the 170k cases they managed to get without warranted visits, for instance).
[0] http://tv-licensing.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/bbc-releases-tv-l... [1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/monthly_performance_p...
"175678561
This is a case number that has been assigned to your property and will be used for all investigations.
An investigation officer may be sent to your property to interview you under caution.
... "
They do send people round though. They probably just hope to peek through the window and hope gullible people will let them in and sign paperwork.
So you'd have to add an extra 1400 quid onto the price of every TV as tax. That'd easily triple the cost of your average TV
What was/is? existing is that every for every TV sales, you had to give your name to the shop, which would transmit it to the taxman.
If printer companies managed to get legislation written that allowed them to send people to knock on you door and check your printers are only using authorised ink.
Or Microsoft agents checking your OS licenses are in order.
MIKE: Good thinking, Vyv! We need information! [they run to the sofa]
VYVYAN: No! I'm just in time for Afternoon Plus! [leaps on couch between Mike and Neil. Rick turns on a the TV. We see a test picture and soft music.] Well turn it over then! [Rick changes the channel. Test picture and soft music]
VYVYAN: Well, you might as well try the other one!
RICK: Alright! Alright! [Rick changes the channel. Test pictue and soft music. The boys groan, Rick turns off the TV]
RICK: Absolutely pathetic! There's nothing on at all! Humph! Don't know why we bother to pay our license!
MIKE: We don't.
RICK: But, haven't we got a license?
MIKE: No.
RICK: But that makes me a criminal! [thinks about it] Right on! Yeah, this will shake them up at the Anarchists Society! Occupying the refectories! So what? This is the real stuff! I'm a fugitive! A desperado! I'm going to form a new union society, right? With me as president! 'People Who Don't Pay Their TV Licenses Against the Nazis!' [takes out pad and pen and starts writing] This is only the beginning!
“Ministry of what?”
“Ousinge. It were spelt like that on t’ van”
“Van? What van?”
“The Cat Detector Van.”
“... You _are_ a loony.”
I think most of their TV and radio programmes are as good as they come. The Brits are lucky to have it.
"But Netflix, Prime!.." - sorry, that's 99% dopamine inducing mindless entertainment, Idiocracy-style. I want more than that, for me and my family.
They can never replace quality programmes done without so much pressure for investment returns, engagement etc.
But I don't think attacking American providers is a strong counter at all, the days when the BBC led the world in quality are long gone, HBO set the standard for modern drama which no British service has come close to matching; Netflix and Prime provide plenty of quality programmes too.
The BBC/C4 still compete on non-fiction, comedy and radio, but not drama.
Advocates vastly over estimate how much educational content they put out. It's very small compared to the mindless entertainment part.
If you only paid for the education side of the BBC, you licence fee would probably be around 20 GBP annually.
I am not from the UK, but quite a large chunk of things I watch on YouTube are british panel shows. I'm just in love with them. Which seems funny to me, because as a non-uk twenty year old, I don't think that I'm the target demographic for these shows.
"8 out of 9 cats does countdown", "Would I lie to you?" and of course my favourite, "Taskmaster". Thanks for all of these great shows. "Blackadder", "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" and "Monty Python" are great as well...
The current government would love to kill it completely but they can't do that directly.
Jon Richardson's view on many things is realistic and hilarious at the same time.
It makes a bit of sense - a local outfit probably has far more marketing reach, a bigger local audience, can schedule release at the optimal moment not during some local sport match, and can tailor the content locally (translations, censorship).
[1] Example: Sky Sports F1 is pretty big budget, but they're still stuck using [knock-off version of The Chain] rather than the real thing, whereas the BBC can break out a really expensive song (e.g. Money for nothing by Dire Straits) for a throwaway segment.
Seems like state TV still has a long way to go.
The state forcing you to pay for their publishing is forced speech.
Working for a company like the BBC can not be ethical, if ethics are universal.
AFAIK, it's perfectly legal to speak in support of, say, an active terrorist organization. I doubt it is legal in many places to donate money to support an active terrorist organization.
If you believe that money=speech, the law is inconsistent in this matter. Assuming you want the law to be consistent, there are really only two ways to resolve the inconsistency:
1. Speaking in support of terrorist organizations should be illegal, or 2. Donating money to terrorist organizations should be legal.
I disagree with both these statements, so to me, money /= speech.
