About the TV license potentially being extended to streaming services?

[Haruka]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/01/28/netflix-users-could-forced-pay-licence-fee/

I already pay enough for the services themselves. I don't watch live TV and especially not the BBC. I am fed up with this potentially becoming a lack of choice; it feels like extortion and yet another tax.

I know that in other countries any device capable of receiving live TV and/ or radio needs a licence (including car radios, laptops, iPads and smartphones), but in this day and age it's taking the piss potentially having to pay for a service I don't even use, just to get access to things that I do.

AIBU to take a very dim view of these proposals?

I'm surprised I haven't seen any other threads on this yet, but maybe I'm blinded by fury 😆

no, I didn't vote labour

I haven’t had a TV licence for decades, except for a few years about 20 years ago. I don’t watch any sort of TV except for occasional bits on YouTube but I have a work laptop, a personal laptop and an iPad. I’d be well pissed off if I had to have a licence for those.

But watching Netflix is not watching live, it’s streaming.

I declare it and it’s fine, but some people make a passive aggressive point of not buying a licence and also not saying that they don’t need a licence

They can extend it to streaming services if they like, it won't make the Licence any more enforceable, the fee any more collectable, or give the Capita officers any more powers beyond the absolute none that they have currently.

In short, it won't make the blindest bit if difference, and more and more people will just continue to stop paying the archaic nonsense like they have been for years now.

In defence of those posters. I have declared on 6 occasions in the past few years that I don't need a TV licence and yet I still get letters so it's not always about being passive aggressive. I've done my bit but they still send them so not sure what else they expect of me.

Is it because stuff like the boxing is on Netflix, tennis is on Prime, stuff like that, which are live shows

And this is exactly what I'm worried about.

And once everyone pays it will just keep getting more and more expensive. People are dependent on smart phones, cars (with inbuilt radios), some kind of internet-enabled device at home for all sorts of things and will have no choice but to pay.

I can’t read the whole article as it’s behind a paywall, but i have been without live tv for years, I would not be impressed at having to pay tv license for streaming services, that have nothing to do with the bbc

You are weirdly angry.

I agree that the BBC has lost its way on a lot of its programming - but that needs correcting, not the whole thing scrapping.

You are very wrong about bbc3 being an artsy channel - it’s the youth focussed one.

BBC1 tonight is a lot of sport, plus Eastenders and a documentary on knife crime. Free to air sport doesn’t interest me, but plenty of people can’t afford to watch it any other way.

BBC2 has a documentary about a murder trial, then a John Simpson doc, then one on Auschwitz.

BBC4 has several docs - canal boats, Yorkshire, Himalayas, a science show about the universe then some popular history stuff about the 60s.

I can tell you that none of them - except the WW2 doc and maybe the Himalayas one with a different presenter - would be commissioned by the streamers, and by extension, by any channel that relies on audience free market.

You might not be interested in any of the above, but you also don’t understand the cultural importance of PSBs.

Passive aggressive by not telling them you don't need/ want a license?
You do realise there is no obligation at all to tell them you don't need one?
if you do your weekly shop in tesco do you email Asda, Morrisons etc. and explain to them you don't need their service?
Do you write to all the internet compaines you don't use and explain you don't want their services?
Do they then send threatening letters accusing you of breaking the law and threatening to send "enforcement" officers round?

@Feelslikewinter my mother is a 70 year old woman who doesn't watch the celebrity stuff but is quite happy with Sky's offering (I can still hear the law and order theme)!

We (34) have most of the streaming services on rotation current selection - sky, Netflix, Disney plus, prime and Hayu we never watch anything on BBC.

News - aljazeera or sky

Now if BBC got all the premier league sport DH would give them a considerable amount of money!!

Problem is that not enough people would subscribe I expect given that the Bern’s output is drivel. Based on the Times today, I imagine they’ll do something to make it progressive so the less well-off get a free licence and then the licence fee goes up and up depending on household income. There’ll be more BS measures like this as time goes by. The government is desperate for money and RR has created some enormous black holes all by herself.

I'd rather have my tonsils removed by a coconut crab than vote for this shower of shit. This is so typical of them. Greedy, miserable, stupid and incompetent, just like the last lot.

YABU to take a blind bit of notice of what the Telegraph says about anything, but in particular the BBC and the govt.

It used to have lots of good journalism, now all it does is foam at the mouth like a mad uncle.

Anyway, I think it’s more likely the costs of the BBC world service will get passed to govt rather than license fee payers, and the BBC will start charging a sub for premium content.

In terms of the license fee, I think good public service content with a UK focus is important and well funded journalism is a cornerstone of democracy (and god knows that needs shoring up) so I don’t mind paying it, although it could always be spread over a few platforms.

I won’t be paying, if it’s extended to Netflix then I shall cancel Netflix.

BBC are losing fee payers. That’s their issue to resolve not try to grab more this way. The gov too

@Feelslikewinter
I'm not angry.
have you ever seen the content on eg. Netflix? the documentaries can be incredible. As good, or better than the BBC with content from all around the world.
you obviously prefer a more insular, Uk based programming which is fine, but personally I have no interest in funding that

Ok, my ILs are 80 odd and almost exclusively watch BBC. They have never had Sky but do watch a little on Netflix.

Not sure I understand your point.

A sky package isn’t within the reach of everyone - especially pensioners.

And as well as their enforcement officers are run by Capita and practically fraudsters and use underhand tactics.

Never mind they take people to court who no mental capacity or are terminal.

That's before even getting into he BBC lack of even safeguarding.

People act like we owe BBC something which we don't. If you want to keep it you pay for that shit.

Same!

At one point I lost a relative in death in a really traumatic way, was pumping cortisol through stress and the nasty letter arrived with 'Prosecution imminent' threatening and aggressive. I hit the ceiling! I was really anxious until my brain caught up to what it was and I put it in the bin. Every month without fail nasty letters come. One day it will push the wrong person over the edge.

I'd actual welcome a visit so they could come in, see there is no TV at all, not even for streaming and then sod off!

We haven’t had one for years. There is zero live tv I wish to watch on any channel.

Bbc needs to appeal to more people if they want the cash it shouldn’t become basically another tax.

They can't 'detect' a television, and never could. It's just another tax.
' They' may as well add it to income tax and get rid of the all the bureaucracy they currently have in trying to collect it.

If Lloyd George was still alive I think he would agree with me.

@Feelslikewinter

"A sky package isn’t within the reach of everyone - especially pensioners."

Sky tv starts from £10 per month and the most popular one is £15 per month ( £5.50 more per year than the TV license from this April)
netflix is £10.99 per month
disney + is only £4.99 a month, considerably cheaper than the BBC.
Most people I know have one subscription at a time. By the time you've cycled through all the sub, channels the first ones have huge amouts of new content to watch.

It will probably end up that everyone will pay unless on pension credit or other similar benefits, there was mention of means testing, bit like the WFA