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?

Once more for the people at the back…No content is free to make, people who make the programmes don’t do it for free and need to be paid. If advertisers didn’t pay to be on the streaming services as well as live TV or commercial radio then none of these services would exist. If you watch a BBC programme on Netflix- it went out on a BBC channel first, paid for by a licence fee payer. So, no you’re not stealing from Netflix, but you are watching a programme that wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for licence fee payers in the first place 🤷‍♀️ .

Is it right that a person who is registered totally blind is expected to pay why should she pay for something she can’t use

@StillCreatingAName the BBC would have sold that to whoever, that’s how they get their revenue, along with licence fees. I was actually responding to a poster who said that some people can’t afford to pay for anything other than the BBC Licence fee. All those channels are free to view becuase of advertising.

its 50% for someone who is blind and their household

If you watch a BBC programme on Netflix- it went out on a BBC channel first, paid for by a licence fee payer.

its not paid for by a licence payer though, the revenue BBC makes isn't just from licence payers - they make another £2bn on top of the revenue from club membership

So you have iPlayer which you watch a lot. You have the BBC news app. No doubt you listen to a bit of radio 2/3/4 too?

Why is it you don’t want to pay?

It is also sold to Netflix for a handsome fee the BBC dont give their programmes away out of the goodness of their hearts.

And SOLD to Netflix

All in all, I like a lot of the BBC's great output - and when the licence fee is scrapped soon, I will gladly subscribe... but much as it likes to sell itself as impartial and supposedly only broadcasting verified truth, it has an agenda, biases and fallibility like every media outlet.

As a producer of much quality content, I value the BBC; but as an organisation that frequently refers to males as 'she', covered up Savile and all of the others for decades and proudly displays a statue of Eric Gill as a figurehead of what they stand for, I absolutely do not regard them as any kind of arbiter of morality, truth or impartiality.

I think a lot of people get confused over the definition of 'live TV'. It doesn't just mean programmes that are broadcast live, but also pre-recorded programmes that are shown at a particular, scheduled time. Even if it's a vintage film from 1954, if it's shown on scheduled, linear TV, it's considered 'live TV'.

As the definition goes, for the purposes of the TV licence, it's only not live TV if you watch it online on a streaming service where you could watch it at a time of your choosing. Thus ITV showing a pre-recorded show at 8pm is 'live TV' for which you need a licence, but watching that same programme on ITVX at any time after that is not 'live TV', and thus no TV licence is needed.

To be clear:

The BBC doesn’t directly make all programmes it airs. It will often be paying an external production company to do so. It may be doing this alone or in conjunction with one or several other broadcasters (for example, the BBC/Disney collaboration on Doctor Who, sharing initial costs and initial broadcast rights)

Any deals with external production companies will include certain streaming rights. For programmes originally aired by the BBC, there may be a time limited exclusive (eg a year) for which the programmes are available on iplayer. Thereafter the production company is free to make a further deal.

Just because a programme once was aired on the BBC doesn’t mean that the BBC can make money from selling the programme on. If the streaming rights are with the production company, they would receive the monies. And depending on the deals with the talent involved, the writers/actors/directors may receive a portion of such monies.

Yes most people are not stupid 🙄

I'm just going on what many people say/ask on threads like this and irl conversations on the topic.

To be fair, it's deliberately confusing, as 'live TV' to most people means a very different thing from 'live TV' as TV Licensing define it.

They also charge you a £ extra fee for paying by direct debit so it actually costs £29.10 a month!!

Exactly, and the BBC have been selling programs to other enteritis for many years before Netflix came on the scene

It does seem strange when people refuse to pay the TV licence on principle, because they object to paying a corrupt, biased organisation like the BBC - but they are curiously happy to keep watching and filling their heads with that same organisation's programmes.

Surely you either pay and watch the BBC (whether indiscriminately or with an open/critical mind) or you don't pay and do without the BBC and their TV content. Anything else is just blatant unprincipled hypocrisy and/or theft.

If you have virgin or sky just because it makes your internet cheaper, do you need to pay the license? I’ve always paid because I was led to believe I “could” watch it if I wanted do because I have virgin. We never watch anything live and DH only watches F1 on catch up. Everything else is streamed and not through the virgin box. Guidance is not clear at all.

So if a TV Productions company makes a TV show and sells that show to both Netflix and to BBC, does that mean I shouldn't watch the TV show on Netflix as the BBC purchased the same tv show?

I don't buy a tv licence as I don't watch live tv, nothing to do with principles - I just got sick of it

If you go on the website to cancel it will tell you you need to call them to cancel
NOT TRUE.

Just scroll further down and you can do it on line

Any equipment you own or use, any means of receiving BBC output, is entirely inconsequential for the purpose of determining whether or not you need to pay for a TV Licence.

The language in the act is succinct and unambiguous. The BBC's own licencing reminders state "If you watch, or intend to watch...". So regardless of the fact you have Virgin, Sky, or any other subscription service, if you neither watch nor intend to watch output covered by the licence then you do not require a licence.

I have an internet connection, over which I could watch BBC output if I chose to do so. I also own a huge TV. I do not watch BBC content, so the fact I have an internet connection and a TV is neither here nor there, just like your Virgin/Sky subscription is neither here nor there provided you are not watching or intending to watch content which falls within the scope of the TV Licensing Act.

No, I think that's very different from the BBC's own in-house content/commissions.

I don't think people criticising the BBC for corruption and having an agenda (including me) would extend that to a film or other independently-produced programme that the BBC (amongst others) happens to pay for the rights to show at some point.

The guidance from the BBC and Capita is deliberately vague.

Unless you are found actually watching a program for which you need a licence you cannot be prosecuted. The ability to watch a program does not require a licence.

They have no right to enter your home without a warrant.

They rely on admissions and naivety. Their " officers" ( they have no officers, it's a deceit designed to make it appear they have authority) have no more power that anyone else. In fact they have considerably less authority than a some
occupations that do have the right to enter your home.

There are now numerous ways of watching TV without a licence without breaking the law.

The game is up but the BBC can't admit it yet. So they are their partner company bully and lie.

They're clearly going to change/replace the TV licence before very long - maybe within a year or two; especially as linear broadcast TV won't exist for a lot longer.

One of the proposals is to make it into an overall tax on having an internet connection (so maybe many per household if lots of people have phones and tablets etc.), which seems phenomenally outrageous to me. That sounds like finding a way to replace an unfair requirement with an even more unfair one.

It's not a coincidence that the BBC have started with their never-ending 'we can only do it all because of you' and 'we're all in it together in funding it all' advertising.

Thank you both. Assume if you record live tv that counts as watching it and therefore the need for a license? Like others I’ve stopped watching bbc years ago but have always been too scared to stop paying it. When I looked into cancelling it, I thought I couldn’t because I have a virgin recording box.

Another sneaky tactic, thank you for highlighting this Munchy