007 may be licensed (US spelling) to kill, but I’m licenced (UK spelling) to watch TV in the UK for another year. My new license came in the post today:
That’s £126.50 for the right to receive signals on my television for a year, about $225.
Bear in mind, this doesn’t guarantee me the right to actually have signals transmitted to me. As you’ll find in this PDF document from the TV Licensing folks:
Your TV licence does not guarantee the quality picture you receive.
For example, the UK’s fifth channel — five — doesn’t reach our area. That’s just too bad for me. My TV licence doesn’t entitle me to get those transmissions. Similarly, none of the digital terrestrial signals reach us (despite us being only nine miles from the fairly major city of Salisbury).
Most of the licence fee goes to support the BBC. The big plus to this is that the BBC does have a variety of programs of high quality, since they don’t have to worry about commercials. Indeed, the BBC’s renowned for its quality. Compared to PBS in the US, you get an overwhelming amount of great material without feeling the organization has to beg for its life each year. And for parents, CBeebies is fabulous — think Nickelodeon without any commercials at all.
In the past, the BBC also helped ensure all the other channels kept their standards high. But over the past few years, I haven’t bought into this as much. You only need to look at the programming on the “alternative” Channel 4 to see this isn’t the situation so much now. They’ve churned out an increasing amount of Big Brother, shock programming and other junk that’s not particularly educational. Plus, they have a lot of American imports — but hey, that’s good for me!
Overall, I’m glad the BBC’s there and supported by the licence fee. I don’t want to see it abolished, but it would be nice if they somehow could reduce it or link it to the channels you actually watch. We watch the BBC channels far less these days when there is greater choice out there. Our licence fee payment doesn’t reflect this.
Also, every time the BBC does some home improvement / clothing improvement program where they hand someone money to go shopping, I keep thinking, “Hold on, that’s my money!” Not getting any of the digital TV or radio channel over the air is also annoying. OK, we have Sky satellite and get them that way — and the same equipment would get them even if I didn’t pay for on of the Sky packages. But still, getting the signals over the air would be nice.
For those not aware, the TV licence is seriously enforced here. The UK has these creepy vans that drive around and try to detect television signals from residences known to be without licenses. Occasionally, they try to scare you with equally creepy commercials warning you that you’ll get caught. Then you’ve got people who don’t have TVs at all. They have horror stories of being chased up for a licence anyway, because the authorities can’t believe they don’t have one.
Want to know more? Got a few links for you:
- Lime@Marmalade.net: Get your horror stories here about those chased up for a TV licence despite not watching TV.
- The “Do I need a TV Licence if I only watch pre-recorded videos?” mini-FAQ: And the answer is, no.
- Abolish The TV Licence: Lots of stuff here, from pictures of unlicensed warning letters to updates on various court cases, including on from Jonathan Miller who so far has lost an argument that requiring a TV licence is a violation of his human rights.
- Guardian Licence Fee Guide: Pretty short, but answers some common questions and lots of interesting comments.
- TV Licensing: Word from The Man itself and actually pretty sparse. Good PDF document here, though.
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In Norway we also have licensing, but we actually pay a lot more even if you are a student. And we only get 2 channels from it (NRK1 and NRK2).