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.

Its not either or. Most US watchers I know use streaming, just like here and all channels here including the Beeb show dross (including US dross) but there used to be plenty I actually wanted to watch.

My irritation with the Beeb is much the same as my irritation with NPR and the same irritation I’ve heard from colleagues supporting public broadcast in other countries - they all have the same issues and all blame the audience rather than looking at themselves. NPR went up its own arse ten years ago, the Beeb still manages to produce some quality content but suffers from the same naval gazing attitudes toward the plebs that you find in other public broadcasters.

In an era where most people get even live content through an infrastructure not managed or maintained by the public broadcaster it is hard to justify a mandatory monthly fee higher than any of the large catalog streamers.

They may be recruiting enforcement officers but you don't have to engage with them or allow them into your home. Good luck on getting me to answer the door unless you have an appointment or are a courier holding a package.

I would love one to come round so I can tell them exactly what I think of the BBC. They often send letters threatening to come on a particular day and v th never do (cctv shows no one came)
Letters are just more waste from the British Biased Corporation.

I would love one to come round so I can tell them exactly what I think of the BBC. They often send letters threatening to come on a particular day and v th never do (cctv shows no one came)
Letters are just more waste from the British Biased Corporation.

Not paid for years . Don't want to pay to hear the bbcs lies and disinformation. Get letters but throw them straight in the bin Looks like increasingly lots of others feel the same way

Just to say once streamers like Prime or Apple start showing live Sport or events like a normal TV channel they are broadcasters and will be using the same infrastructure as everyone else and they have to follow Ofcom rules for live broadcast like everyone else.

The streamers usually buy these services in but to say they are somehow different to all the other broadcasters just because you watch on the web isn’t true. It’s why the argument for some kind of payment towards the security of our infrastructure and the cost of Ofcom itself is valid in my opinion. I expect that is the thinking of the government too.

Like most people I have problems with the BBC but it isn’t going anywhere under any establishment government and I think requiring a license to watch any broadcaster is the way they will go.

The only person I know that actively brags about not paying is a person that watches gb news.

It's been immensely annoying during the world cup coverage on BBC the constant droning on about buying a licence.

@ParsleySageToiletDuckAndBinBags

https://www.yahoo.com/news/bbc-used-paedophile-drivers-30-165500105.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFrhMNNPCfvAkam5HCNw9p0JjM93hyStlGssIOi5oaP8oBIUCF8inxzifZqxMtiDvUNeS1PZaRP94VEnpm6x0fg3ZHq6-bxEejoV_9WRSmFea8v34oDNk3j6_C55U9KnviqAWoyfyLvHLSn0C0insmWP9vcSYE9rNj7b2klAULAb

Shocking, whilst I get it was a few years ago it’s truly horrific

No. Judging by the noise coming from various pubs I suspect it was watched elsewhere or not at all.

A lot of people don't like watching football, myself included.

If there was no Beeb, other providers would increase their advertising to US levels. Believe me, you don’t want that.

If you are watching a streaming or catch-up service, then there are simple ways to kill the advertising stone dead so you never have to sit through it in any case. It's dependent upon whether you are watching via a Smart TV app, or via browser, and if it's the latter you can watch pretty much anything without ever having to sit through an ad, including ITV, Channel 4 etc.

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

I don't see the relevance unless you are suggesting that changing the income model for the BBC would inevitably mean no more BBC produced content and everything they broadcast being bought in from US commercial producers. I can't see this being the case when they are already bleating about a decline in licence revenue but still churning out precisely the same content. A more secure revenue stream shouldn't change that.

If you don't watch that stuff in the first place, then this is neither here nor there, because even in this doomsday scenario the BBC would just be yet another channel showing committee-written nonsense which you don't watch anyway, and some of us don't watch the BBC as it is.

I haven’t had a tv licence for years. I don’t watch any live tv or use iPlayer. I’ll be extremely pissed off if I have to fund the BBC when I have no interest in their content and believe them to be institutionally corrupt. And paedophile protectors.

I don’t think anyone on this thread is confused about what constitutes “live”.

The key point for the licence currently is that to watch anything live, whatever the form of delivery you need to pay for the licence. This was supposed to cover the infrastructure used in terrestrial broadcasting.

However if you watch your live/real time content through a streamer you are not using the BBC/terrestrial infrastructure. So what exactly is the licence for? The justification for the licence has always been that even if you only watched ITV you were using the BBC maintained broadcast infrastructure but most people no longer use this infrastructure even to watch the BBC content.

Like I said in my original post you are using the infrastructure of live broadcasting which is exactly the same for terrestrial and streaming. It all has to obey Ofcom rules too. Once streamers started broadcasting and stopped just being content servers they must have known they were would be caught out by the licence fee because they were broadcasting live. The BBC/ ITV stream live content which you have to have a licence for why would Amazon Prime be any different? Bringing in the live feeds all uses the same infrastructure and has Ofcom obligations. It doesn’t magically change just because you are watching on an app.