Why we're here:
This blog is to highlight the unjust persecution of legitimate non-TV users at the hands of TV Licensing. These people do not require a licence and are entitled to live without the unnecessary stress and inconvenience caused by TV Licensing's correspondence and employees.

If you use equipment to receive live broadcast TV programmes, or to watch or download BBC on-demand programmes via the iPlayer, then the law requires you to have a TV licence and we encourage you to buy one.

If you've just arrived here from a search engine, then you might find our Quick Guide helpful.

Disclosure

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sunday 11 November 2018

TV Licensing's Annual Black & White Licence Propaganda


Every year TV Licensing fills the newspaper with hundreds of creative statistics about the number of black and white TV licences still in force.

Let's be honest - does anyone really care that there are only 7,000 black and white licences in force across the whole UK, of which 15 are said to be in Salford and 6 in Basingstoke?

Not really is the honest answer, but churning out locally-targeted statistical dross provides TV Licensing with the ideal opportunity to publicise its key message - get a TV licence or else.

Remember that TV Licensing's PR harlots write these articles and distribute them en masse to the local media. The local media isn't too discerning about what it publishes, so will nearly always print TV Licensing's words verbatim. That's despite the fact that a lot of TV Licensing claims don't withstand closer scrutiny.


Some people on Twitter have been querying the fact that anyone can still have a black and white TV licence. It is still possible to have a black and white TV licence, but only in the following limited circumstances:
  • The licence holder is now using their old black and white TV set connected to a digital set top box. 
  • That digital set top box must not be able to record the signals it receives.
Contrary to what TV Licensing would have people believe, it does check up on those properties where a black and white TV licence is in force. You can read more about so-called "monochrome challenge visits" in our earlier article on the subject.

If you've found this article useful please consider using our Amazon link for your shopping or downloading our free ebook.

4 comments:

Wildswimmer Pete said...

A lot of black-and-white TV sets are used by vintage radio and TV enthusiasts. Check out the "405 Live" website amongst others.

Terminator said...

So what if I found a working Black & white set in a charity or second-hand shop? Would I have to pay the paedo's for a colour license? Not that I would pay the paedophiles anything. The only thing I don't like about TV sets is they revert to BBC1 if you are told there is an upgrade available and install it, why can't they build a TV set that once you upgrade the thing it goes to the previous channel it was on, in my case the local radio to listen to away games of my local team. A PC browser can be set to that so why not a TV set?

Anonymous said...

The BBC are devious what they are doing is creating a false narrative to justify their Goons using underhanded tactics to enter people's home in order to manipulate and gaslight them to prosecute them.

Fred Bear said...

If you look at all the press releases over the past 10 years or so you'll see they are pretty repetitive:

https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/media-centre/news.app

I do note though that they are not now so keen on giving an idea of the overall number of "code 8s" they get per year. Maybe because the numbers have dropped off massively in the past couple of years.