The BBC's recent announcement that it is tightening the eligibility criteria for the over-75 TV licence has reignited debate about whether the TV licence should be abolished altogether.
Many moons ago, in a time long before lecherous old perverts stalked the corridors of BBC Television Centre, there was something called the Broadcast Receiving Licence. At its 1922 inception the licence covered the reception of radio programmes, as there was no television service at that stage.
In 1946 the licence was extended to cover the reception of VHF 405-line monochrome television programmes. In 1964 the first UHF-625 line colour television programmes were broadcast on BBC Two. On 1st January 1968 a "colour supplement" was added to the licence fee for the first time. On 1st February 1971 to radio-only portion of the licence was abolished and the TV-only licence came into existence. That's the way it has been ever since.
Technology has changed enormously in the 70 years since the TV licence was first introduced, but the legislation has changed very little. In 1946 there was a single TV channel, the BBC Television Service, which you could only watch for a few hours a day and you had to let your set warm up for 10 minutes beforehand. The BBC was arguably an important national service in post-war Britain. It educated and informed its audience and gelled them together in a sense of national identity and camaraderie. Back then the £2 combined TV and radio licence fee might have seemed value for money.
Step forward to 2019 and there are now hundreds of TV channels available around the clock and from across the globe. People now want to choose what to watch and when to watch it. The BBC now provides a tiny proportion of TV channels, but the £4 billion in TV licence revenue still goes exclusively to the BBC. However woeful its output or sordid its scandal the BBC continues to receive £4 billion on a silver plate as of divine right.
A TV licence is needed for any property where equipment is used to receive TV on any channel, BBC or not, at the same time (or virtually the same time) as it is broadcast to other members of the public. Additionally, from 1st September 2016, a TV licence is required for any property where equipment is used to watch or download BBC on-demand programmes via the iPlayer.
The legislation means that anyone watching a non-BBC channel, even if they've paid a hefty subscription for the privilege, still has to stump up £154.50 for a BBC TV licence. Anyone who refuses to pay for a TV licence, even if they do not legally require one, is harassed to the nth degree by the BBC's aggressive revenue generation arm, TV Licensing. Anyone who goes to the trouble of confirming their licence-free circumstances to TV Licensing, not than anyone is legally obliged to, is dismissed as a liar and threatened for payment regardless.
The TV licence is now irrelevant, outdated and unenforceable.
It's about time the BBC was forced to survive on its own commercial merits, just like every other broadcaster has to.
If the BBC continues to churn out dross and squander public money then it deserves to wither away and sink into oblivion.
If you're an over-75 due to lose out on the concession, there has never been a better time to adopt legally-licence-free viewing habits.
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7 comments:
The BBC should have gone behind a paywall on 1/1/13 then we would see how many would pay to watch the crap they turn out. Admittedly it's not all crap but 99% of the stuff is then they put their crap on boxsets at a premium price and on the Iplayer APP.
Even a blind person can see that the BBC is more than capable of standing on it's own two feet without the need of a licence fee. The BBC's one and ONLY reason for not wanting to let go of the licence fee, is greed, pure and simple. They could have switched over to a subscription service at any time over the last 20+ years, but they're just too high on the fact that they can get their fee on a silver platter and that they don't have to really work for it. Why else would they choose not to switch to a subscription service?! There is no other reason; they're just greedy.
More evidence that the BBC's TV licence racket is on the way out.
Of the 6 people taken to court for so-called "TV licence evasion" in Scotland in 2017/18, one was found not guilty, three were given a verbal admonishment and only two were fined. The average fine was £120.
See FOI request:
https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-201900001374/
The BBC do not tell the truth. People should not be paying for lies. They employ secret trannies and pedophiles. They are a Freemason network of crooks, that get away with scamming the public. They should be closed down. No other religious group would get away with what the Freemason infiltrators get away with.
the bbc says it does'nt want ads but uses subliminal ads on most of its soaps i:e the apple symbol on most computers seen on the bbc
if they can use it like that they can use it openly and stop ripping the viewers of
recently we've been forced to watch hours of football because the powers that be changed the shedule so when we set the recorder for the programe of our choice we come home to find hours of football if i want sport i will get sky sports
I recently signed the abolish tv licence fee on gov.uk petitions. It recived almost 250,000 signatures but the reply from parliament was approx 80% of 190,000 wanted to continue at no point did it mention where this figure came from
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