How to stop paying for my TV licence

[caravantulips]

I like the BBC and have never really begrudged my monthly direct debit but seeing the news that the licence fee is £180 this year it’s made me question it’s value as it’s only me who watches it.

I never watch BBC live (except for the news back in Covid times) but use iPlayer a lot. Should I just cancel the direct debit and delete the iPlayer app from my TV? Is this enough?

I do have the BBC news app on my phone and it’s my sole choice for news as it’s (supposed to be!!) impartial. Do you know if I can still use this? What about the videos on the BBC news channel?

Just stop paying, never engage with them again and do not invite them into your home. The TV license people that knock have no more right to enter your home than a random guy off the street. I have no idea why anyone who doesn't watch live TV pays

I think if it became more of a subscription service people wouldn’t pay it. To me it’s the cost of both Amazon prime and Netflix where there is SO much more content plus Amazon music and prime delivery. It isn’t a good deal.

Ive considered cancelling and taking it out for a month or two over Xmas and to watch the traitors. I don’t watch any live tv but use the streaming services. I’d be terrified of not having a licence and still watching it and getting caught.

I can't see that's anything to boast about!

Why what do you think will happen?

The TV license is an anachronism. Some would say the BBC is too.

Nothing will happen. They have no right to enter your home without a warrant unless you invite them and the Licence detector vans were just a ruse to scare people

I've always enjoyed a lot of the BBC's content - TV, radio, online - in spite of rhe many, many problems with the corporation at their very heart.

I agree that the TV licence is wholly anachronistic now, in the age of the Internet (for everything and not just for TV) and streaming. It was originally a pretty safe bet that most homes would have a TV, and that much of their viewing would be BBC content. Things have moved on so very far from that now.

I also don't think the BBC does itself any favours with the huge amount of adverts that they show now - whether for other BBC programmes, other BBC content, the TVL itself or whatever. You can call them trailers all you like; but they're just adverts.

It's all going to change in the next five years, though - probably much sooner than that, actually. Let's see what replacement they come up with.

I am a bit torn on this, I don't agree with everything the BBC does/has done (Jimmy Saville and others, that was a national disgrace, plus they are biased on certain issues). But on the other hand I think it is important that we keep a sort of independent, non-commercial national broadcaster. It's telling that it's mainly the right wing who want to destroy it (Reform and bloody Trump).

However I absolutely hate, hate, hate the way they allow Capita to go about collecting the licence fee. They harass people tbh and in these times they shouldn't be proceeding as if watching live TV is the default, that's no longer the case. The BBC and the government are deliberately disengenuous about that.

Plus at £15 a month I think we've arrived at a tipping point, the limits of what many people can afford. People are struggling. And of course people will compare it to the basic Netflix and Disney accounts which are cheaper and you can dip in and out. BBC make it hard to do this with the license fee.

If they introduced a subscription model I would probably subscribe, but people should have the choice. Maybe BBC News and children's programmes could be free to everyone as a public service? The government could partly fund them directly too. Also they need to become smaller really, restrict the salaries they pay out etc.

@Pemba in respect of Jimmy Savile, what did the Beeb do wrong? Genuine question. I believe he was reported to the police a couple of times and they either investigated and couldn’t find enough to take it further or didn’t do anything. Plus he was also visiting NHS hospitals throughout the time and wasn’t stopped from that.

It was known I believe. A lot of people who worked at the BBC were aware I thought? Although never made public. Perhaps the full extent of his activities wasn't realised. Wasn't John Lyndon (Johnny Rotten) censured for saying it out loud decades ago?

And a lot of other creepy abusive behaviour from minor players like Huw Edwards, John Barrowman, Gregg Wallace has gone on over the years. Of course what they did cannot be compared to Saville (no children involved, just making junior staff, usually women, uncomfortable with inappropriate behavior) . Oh Rolf Harris of course, and he did molest kids, didnt he? But there have been so many of them!

Just shows what a toxic atmosphere must have prevailed in some parts of the BBC and management apparently did very little.

I assume everyone in the media knew about Saville, it wasn't just a BBC cover up. I knew as Popbitch used to post about him (Mr Jingle Jangle) way back in 2003.

With respect to Gregg Wallace, weren’t most of his programmes made by an external production company and therefore that company would be the ones with the main process for reporting etc? Rather than the Beeb?

Re Huw Edwards - the BBC suspended him and started an internal investigation as soon as the allegations arose (in the Sun).

IIRC, Chris Evans did a number of similar things to GW whilst his programmes were being aired on Channel 4. Sadly, in every walk of life (see the Epstein files, for some) there are odious sexual predators. And their companies/chains of command may well not know.

I would also not point to the actions of a corporation 15 years ago (the suppression of the Newsnight report on Saville in 2011) as a reason not to give them my money today, if I felt that attitudes and policies had changed (as I think they have).

In no way am I excusing any of the abusive and unacceptable behaviour, to be clear.

Yes

They didn't have to keep renewing his contract and offering him work.

Understood.

The last time he worked for the bbc was 2006, about 5 years before he died. As this was 20 years ago, I imagine most/all people involved in giving him a contract have left or retired.

So I don’t really see that as a reason not to pay the license fee now, which was where the discussion started.

The BBC could also remove the statue of Eric Gill from outside the front of their building - or at the very least put a covering in front of it to hide it from public view.

Leaving it there in full prominent view, and lovingly maintaining it, does very strongly give the impression that they happily and proudly celebrate well-known paedophiles as a part of their central ethos.

It’s a 1933 statue by Gill, not of Gill.

It’s part of the facade of a listed building and - following restoration after vandalism - the BBC added an explanation panel about Gill, similar to what the National Trust has chosen to do with assets linked to slave trade monies. Their approach on this is supported by Historic England.

Calling it a happy and proud celebration of paedophiles is quite a stretch.

OK, I stand corrected; it's a work by him - of an adult clutching a naked child with the child's genitals on full display - and not actually of Gill himself.

It's still a very unfortunate coincidence, isn't it: how often the BBC seems to become associated with paedophilia and other prominent employees allowed to get away with sexual exploitation and abuse for a long time.

The work is a statue of two characters from
a Shakespeare play. It is not uncommon for statues to be of naked forms - there are thousands in galleries across the world, both of adults and children.

I don’t know if the BBC employs a higher share of abusers than any other large corporation, or if it is simply that - by nature of them being a media company - such abusers attract more attention than those being dismissed or reported to the police in transport or consumer goods companies, both in recent history and over the last 20 years.

The BBC moved quickly to suspend Huw Edwards in a recent case, which was the correct move by them.

I noticed this story on BBC today apparently they need to knock 10% off their spending due to less licences being sold. I wonder if there’s any regrets at the top?

BBC to make hundreds of millions of pounds of cuts www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyzg6n7pplo

They might have suspended him quickly but left him on paid suspension for months at a cost of hundreds of thousands of pounds when they knew the severity of what he was charged with. It was an appalling decision.

@HermioneWeasley i might be misremembering but I think you might be in HR/law?

If so, what would the right process be if someone was arrested on suspicion for something (HE in Nov 2023) but not actually charged (HE resigned April 2024 and was charged in July 2024)?

The problem is that if a private company employs paedos and other bad people, the consumer can stop spending money on their services.

yes they’re so fab

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26852406

pay them your hard earned if you want to but don’t feel aggreived if others don’t want to

That won’t be difficult - they can cut back on the hundreds of employees they send to ‘Glasto’ 2026 and maybe put them up at less than £300 a night hotels and cut down on their helicopter transport and let’s not get started on the pension funds