Asymmetrical Information

The good news: a license is half-price if you're blind.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/licencefee/

I take this as evidence one picture actually equals one word. I'm curious as to whether the black-and-white telly discount means there's still a UK market for B&W sets.

there's always those who don't upgrade...

actually the technology they use to catch people is amazing. they can pinpoint which houses have a television on and which don't, much harder to do that in apartment's and dorms.

of course your television has to be on for them to catch you. It's not a bad price really for the BBC... and at least they dont have radio police.

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The specific enforcement methods do sound silly, but is the British setup really more unjust than the American system, whereby everyone is required to pay tax dollars to support PBS and NPR, whether or not one owns a TV or a radio?

Not to be overly obvious, but if you've ever seen the Monty Python sketch about the Cat Detector Vans....this is what that's about.

Tom T. wrote:

The specific enforcement methods do sound silly, but is the British setup really more unjust than the American system, whereby
everyone is required to pay tax dollars to support PBS and NPR, whether or not one owns a TV or a radio?

NPR is a not-for-profit corporation. NPR gets tax dollars only indirectly, as grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That money is not guaranteed, ie: CPB could fund some other not-for-profit broadcasting organization.

I forget exact figures, but I believe that something less than 10%-20% of NPR's budget is from CPB. The rest comes from fees charged to stations for program material, and from contributions from the public.

Would it be better if NPR were entirely privately funded? Sure. But the fees for TV owners for the BBC are hundreds of pounds per year. The money from one taxpayer's dollar going to NPR is probably relatively miniscule.

I agree that it would be better in principle if NPR were privately funded. But comparing NPR to BBC is just hyperbole. NPR has been increasing its ratio of private/public funding for many years now.

Why do British people put up with this? Because they are sheep. They do whatever they are told to do by their government supervisors. This TV license thing is a great example.

Americans have no idea how spineless British people are, at home, and would be shocked if they did. Even French people resist their government's intrusions once in a while.

One more odious thing about the TV licence (I’ve been caught up in the system of trying to show that I don’t have one, a TV that is) isthat a significant number of people are in jail for not paying the fine. Seriously, jail time for not paying the BBC.

After living in the UK on and off for the past 7 years, I think I might have to echo what ZF says. However, every few years, the mob rises up in the UK to let the gummint know what it thinks. The Poll Tax Riots are a good case in point. I think we are about due for some mob action here, soon, but it usually takes something to spark it off.

I find the compulsory license fee (which is common in most European countries) odious. Plus, I don't like the biased nature of their news programming, and I don't like paying for it. On the other hand, if it was a voluntary subscription based service, I would have no problem paying the equivalent of what I pay now because their radio and children's offerings are good value for money; much better than private sector, cable or satellite.

But the fees for TV owners for the BBC are hundreds of pounds per year.

No they aren't. The fee is per household, not per television, so nobody pays more than the standard flat fee of £121.

Why do British people put up with this? Because they are sheep

Nobody I know has ever returned from their first experience of watching television in the US other than utterly horrified - not about the shows, the best of which are among the very best, but about the relentless dominance of the advertising sheep-like americans seem willing to sit through to watch them. One of the interesting effects of the licence fee is that it not only keeps the BBC ad-free, but it also has forced the channels which are supported by advertising to be slicker and more sophisticated in their approach.

The NYT is right that the only real losers from this approach are those without televisions who have to put up with the hassle. I too endured that for several years, and the assumption of guilt until innocence is proven is deeply offensive. But that hasn't changed my view that paying £2 a week for all that the BBC provides is both remarkably good value and that the licence fee is a perfectly reasonable way (though obviously not the only way) of funding a public good.

The rest comes from fees charged to stations for program material, and from contributions from the public.

Yes, and a great deal of the stations' funding comes from direct government outlays (especially state and local) and from the CPB. It's a pretty impressive shell game of funding.

The charitable explanation is that it's designed to respect federalism and keep the individual stations mostly independent. The ancillary benefit is that NPR is able to carefully use language to underestimate how much of its funding is ultimately taxpayer-derived.

John Thacker wrote:

Yes, and a great deal of the stations' funding comes from direct government outlays (especially state and local) and from the CPB. It's
a pretty impressive shell game of funding.

Point understood, but NPR isn't the only one. Among the nonprofits there's PRI and various state "public radio" nonprofits, not to mention non-NPR subscribing college radio stations at state-funded colleges.

My primary point was that the British receiver licensing scheme is much more onerous and intrusive than the USA spending tax moneys for "public broadcasting", and that NPR has moved away from government funding for years. NPR may not have moved fast enough to suit everyone, or even me. But they have been moving away. For those reasons the comparison of NPR to BBC is inapposite.

I say this as one who has served in management of a small but 100% subscription funded radio broadcaster. By that I mean zero, zip, nada, zilch gummit money, directly or indirectly, unless you count charitable donation tax writeoffs as "tax expenditures". I know the difference between asking for donations and collecting them at, effectively, gunpoint.

No question that just asking is better, more honest and fair, and makes for more independent programming. But I also give NPR credit for moving in the right direction.

As to Marek's point nobody pays more than the standard flat fee of £121, I rest my case that 121 is 1.21 hundreds.

My local public television station broadcasts BBC programming which, ostensibly, it pays for with viewer money. British citizens may contentedly pay their license fee like sheep, as a commentator here remarked, but I won't be party to it.

If my local public television station wants my financial support, they should stop broadcasting BBC, or pressure the BBC to go public, as it were. I told them as much in writing when I declined to renew my membership. They never wrote back.

Somebody has to pay for the shows that are broadcast in the UK, and the BBC charges the people who have TVs and watch them. Sounds fair to me.

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