One of the benefits of living in New Zealand is that we do not have to pay any television licence fees. The television licence in the UK is expensive – currently £142.50 per year for a colour television – and it only funds the BBC, contributing to their radio, television, and internet services and to some foreign-language programmes they produce for other channels. Although the BBC does provide some quality programming (Planet Earth springs immediately to mind), the vast majority of what they broadcast is of little or no interest to me, I don’t use their radio service, and there’s little news on their web site that I couldn’t get elsewhere. When we lived in Northern Ireland we had a cable connection and almost exclusively watched cable channels, not terrestrial ones, and rarely if ever switched to BBC (I did watch the soaps on ITV and Channel 4, but neither of those channels benefit from licence fees; they rely on advertising for their revenue).
Over the last few years it has become increasingly difficult to avoid paying a television licence fee in the UK even if you do not have a television. The licensing enforcement authority, TV Licensing, apparently finds it difficult to accept that a person truly doesn’t watch one, and if there is any sort of device in the house which can receive any sort of television broadcast then you are expected to pay for a licence. It doesn’t matter if you use it or not. Oh, and the licence is not per building either, it’s per household. You’re a student with your own privately rented room in shared accommodation? You’re expected to pay your own licence for that little TV in your room, or that computer with a TV card installed. If you buy or rent a device capable of receiving a television broadcast, the dealer you buy or rent from is required to notify TV Licensing. If TV Licensing catches you without a licence when you should have one, they can impose a fine of up to £1000, force you to buy a licence at full price, and saddle you with a criminal record to boot.
The BBC has stated that a licence is not needed simply because a television receiver is owned, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the enforcers have a hard time accepting that somebody in this day and age might actually not want or need to watch television. And of course they take no account of whether you use or benefit from any of the services which are funded by licence fees; even if you only ever watch Comedy Central on Sky you’ll still be expected to cough up annually in support of Auntie Beeb.
Because of the frustration and sense of injustice that I felt whenever I had to purchase a TV licence in the UK, I am doubly pleased that New Zealand has no such thing. Channels here rely on advertising, and licence fees were abolished in 1999. Although having American-style ad breaks every few minutes is very annoying when watching broadcast programmes, we mostly use our television for watching DVDs or playing games and so the ads are less intrusive than they could be. And they’re certainly less annoying than being forced to spend our hard-earned cash on something that we neither want nor support!
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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3 comments:
Interestingly enough I never had a licence in the UK because I never needed one. It's not as difficult to take care of as some people would suggest.
Provided you're honest with them it's fairly painless. I don't watch TV so I didn't need one. You only require the licence to view or record TV signals as they are being broadcast. Since I didn't I told them that, a guy came round to check that was the the case (TV not tuned in) and that was that for 2 years when they ask if the situation has changed.
I do think it's outrageously unfair though that it is for the BBC and nothing else. If you don't watch it why do you have to pay, more importantly, when they have a strike why don't you get a refund?
Even when we did have licencing here, I don't think many people paid it. In Japan they have it too, but when they came to the door whe just said (in our worst Japanese) "We only watch videos, we can't watch Japanese tv, we can't understand." Which was mostly true, actually.
I managed to avoid paying a licence fee when living in Ireland. We had a television - the flat had one for years before I got there, sans licence - and occasionally got threatening letters asking for money. We just ignored them and nothing happened (sometimes more letters arrived). Our landlord told us to just deny all knowledge of said television if they came to the door; no problems!
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