TV licence numbers

[topcat2014]

Do we really believe that none of the half million licence fee payers who stopped paying are not watching any live television?

94% use bit 80% pay.

You don't have to pay for it if you don't use it.

Seems fair to me.

We will if this ridiculous notion of replacing the Licence with a levy on utilities is pushed through.

What more evidence do you need that it's a moribund, archaic white elephant?

They can't get enough people willing to pay for it voluntarily, so the first recourse is to make it involuntary. It's an outrage

Cancelled our license about 5 years ago and have zero things I miss watching that I needed a license for.
I don't watch much TV at the best of times and DH manages well with Netflix, Prime and the other providers you don't need a license for.

I find enough on the main uk channels to watch month by month to justify paying it and do watch live tv, I thought the BBC and ITV did a great job with the World Cup. I dropped Netflix though as I found loads of it to be shows I had already watched. So just buy it for a month when something like Adolescence is on and catch up with the True Crime and other shows. I am actually impressed people find stuff to watch on Netflix for months on end.

I do like BBC dramas like The Split and some of the drama is still outstanding like Elizabeth is Missing from a couple of years ago plus I watch the BBC documentaries, true crime and shows like Ambulance. Also watch foreign films and dramas and old films on iplayer. For example I recently watched the film Get Carter and the old 80s drama Edge of Darkness on iplayer.

Loads of people abroad use VPN’s to watch UK TV so I don’t think the viewing figures are accurate. But like millions I do enjoy video games as well and understand that younger people probably aren’t even watching dramas or films much anyway. So the whole media business is probably in trouble.

There are two different things, watching BBC and iPlayer which you could easily subscribe to and then the separate live TV bit which is a whole load of other channels including Sky, Netflix and Prime and any other streamer which shows live sport, which I'm not quite sure why it's the licence that pays for all this, can't Sky, Prime Netflix, etc pay that bit as it's their channels that show it. Why would you have to get a BBC licence to watch WWE on Netflix, surely their subscribers should pay for that.

Live TV sport does use national infrastructure that traditionally the main broadcasters would look after but so does other forms of TV even late to broadcast shows. Once the streaming services start to be real broadcasters rather than just servers there probably is an argument for some kind of payment from them towards upkeep and security.

Yes, I thought this too. It's very easy for them to spin it that more people use their services than pay for it - even though, if you only listened to Radio 4 and actively wanted to pay a fee for it, as it is unequivocally free: every single one of us by default pays the full required fee for BBC radio and the BBC online resources, whether we use them or not.

I also wonder if they're trying to have their cake and eat it in their proclamations: considering that you legally have to have a licence to watch other companies' live TV, are they maybe guardedly telling us (but also carefully not telling us) that, because lots of people are watching regular ITV, Channel 4 and the rest (but not the BBC), that somehow 'proves' how essential it is that we keep paying for the BBC?!

I don't believe it's none, though I come across many people who never watch mainstream tv (at least other than say football at a pub) at all, which I never did even five years ago.

The BBC continue to provide a simple argument for licence fee abolition which makes it hard for me to defend them- Mrs Browns Boys.

I'm not getting at Choux personally, but I think this is a main part of the dominant thinking: the basic assumption that everybody must want to watch all of these things - along with much of the BBC's other output - and so there's just no concept that people can and do live their lives perfectly happily without them.

The irony is that, recently, BBC1 & BBC2 would often be showing either Wimbledon or football on both channels at the same times - meaning that, as well as all of the faithful licence-fee-paying non-sports-fans being snubbed, even the most obsessive tennis and football fans who also pay would have to miss half of the matches!

But it's precisely because of the shrinking customer base of the BBC - people who neither use nor pay for it - that one proposed 'solution' is to charge a levy on every internet connection.

Currently, the analogous situation is that people who buy beans from Asda have to pay Tesco for them... but the suggestion means that, if lots of people go off beans and stop wanting to buy them from anywhere, they would automatically have to pay Tesco even just for buying broccoli or toothpaste from anywhere, or even for baking their own bread - to enable Tesco to keep making as much money as they want to from the fact that they have beans on their shelves.

I’d agree with you but there are plenty of places in Europe where every household pays via utility bill whether they have a tv or not so I can understand the idea.

We have one however neither of my 2 sons do as neither watch tv. I don’t think they are alone in that either, it’s very much a generational thing.

In Italy it is added to the utility bill but you can opt out by registering not having a TV.

I hate the way they advertise (yes, ironic) that all they do is only possible because everybody who watches any live TV is forced to pay them; but if that were true, how would commercial TV channels, radio stations and news websites make it work?

I for one am heartily sick of all the adverts that they have on the supposedly advert-free BBC - but for themselves rather than specific commercial products.

It seems especially irritating that they waste so much airtime either advertising the licence fee or boasting about how great they reckon they are because of it, when one of the whole points of the licence fee is that you (allegedly) don't have to sit through adverts!!

The BBC’s suggestion is to put a surcharge on OTHER services like Netflix to fund them.

It’s like choosing to ship like at Tesco because they have what you want and having to pay an additional fee to prop up Morrisons who are struggling because they’re shit.

Shop at Tesco, no idea where “ship like”
cane from

I didn’t have one for a year and I didn’t watch any BBC or any live TV and I didn’t miss it even slightly. I bought one because I’m wanted to watch the Queen’s funeral live. I could quite easily go without one and not watch any live tv of bbc.

They seem to be suffering from an extreme corporate version of main character syndrome. They arrogantly assume that they're utterly amazing as they are and their only slight concern is finding the best way for them as to how people need to be made to pay for them... and anybody who objects to giving them money is either a freeloader, wanting their content for free; or otherwise a liar, claiming ridiculously that they somehow aren't interested in their unmissable content.

@ ParsleySageToiletDuckAndBinBags that is so brilliant 👏 that's exactly what they are like. As if how could anyone possibly exist without them! your post is what I would have said if I'd had the eloquence. Fantastic !

It is, they are stuck In a time warp, like only one TV in the street to watch Queen Elizabeths coronation and the cutting edge technology of the Detector Van was a distant future dream 😂

Same here. The quality may not be what it was decades ago - yes, I’m old - but it’s still way above other providers. I could not live without Radios 3 and 4, so I’m happy to pay.

If there was no Beeb, other providers would increase their advertising to US levels. Believe me, you don’t want that. Not to mention all those US series that are written by committee. We only tend to get the best here - but the amount of dross produced in the US is unreal.

@ParsleySageToiletDuckAndBinBags
Also seemingly blasé about all the sex offenders they have employed, as if its not really a big deal, there are a lot, not all in the public eye. I think its sinister.

Yes, indeed - apart from one certain very questionable former DJ, it would seem (D'ye ken?), who still seems to fly under the radar and escape any criticism.

They instantly throw up their arms in horror as though they (the BBC) have been appallingly wronged, without the slightest acknowledgement that they clearly have a disgraceful track record in choosing suitable presenters - such that would make many people question who is actually running the corporation.

Im assuming they ignored me telling them he has died

You will do if Birt gets his way (and Nandy is busily trying to look useful and backing his model).

Birt wants the licence to apply to anyone using not just live TV but any form of streaming/media consumption within the household. That makes it a household tax.