Poll: Who has a TV licence?

I’d also like the fee scrapped - I never watch iPlayer (not only does it not contain what I’d like to watch but it’s horrendously designed!), and we get all our fixes via Amazon, nowTV or Netflix.

I stay in a hotel during the week for work and in the background I’ll put on BBC Parliament - not sure if this good or bad (at a personal sanity level) to be honest but I do think it’s good to broadcast this sort of stuff.

And then I appreciate that there are programmes that would never be made without such a fee…

It’s a difficult one… just a few ads could subsidise heavily. I think maybe principals have been adhered to too strictly - there are options to help everyone out by flexing a little. But I do feel that there are programmes that should be broadcast even without commercial viability (BBC Parliament for instance…) but this will require a regulation of sorts (or free broadcasting via government provisions).

In short, I appreciate what the fee can contribute to but maybe it should be reduced and subsidised by ads.

Must be getting close to the point that it would be cheaper for the taxpayer to give a free license then pay for all those letters.

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I do, there are some non BBC shows I like to watch live to Tweet along with or avoid spoilers etc (The Apprentice, Bake Off, The Circle are examples). Also I find that BBC actually put out a lot of great content. Les Miz, Fleabag and Gentleman Jack were all this year for example, His Dark Materials started tonight and looks great (missed it so no spoilers please! :P) and things like Fosse/Verdon that are distributed by them in the UK.

I also use other BBC services and I am more than happy to pay the license for it. I do think they do some good things that advertising reliant channels might not. But I completely agree that the TV Licensing company is awful. I can’t believe they’re allowed to threaten and mislead people in the way that they do. I’ve always been OK because I’ve known when I did and didn’t need one, and always had one when I did, so the letters never swayed me. But there must be vulnerable people who get one when they don’t need to because of their scare tactics.

They should scrape the licence full stop and start advertising, they are now even requiring you to sign in to watch clips on the BBC sport app and also promoting you to sign in and will share details with theTV licensing company :joy: as soon as it is a requirement no longer using BBC app, they also get a shed load of money from selling content to other countries so scrap it.

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I think you need to look at the statistics to see what the BBC spends the money on, producing content is not cheap. The BBC makes great use of that money for the most part.

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Personally I’ve never really understood how this is a big issue, given the content globally available on BBC.

To those saying “I’ll watch BBC content on Netflix” … you realise that they are created BY the licence fee initially? :roll_eyes:

TV isn’t cheap. Add in radio, the news service, World Service and an array of other services I think it’s well worth the… what, £11 a month?

I don’t think it should be compulsory (practically) to just own a TV, nor do I like the tactics used to recoup the money or check. But I do think it’s well worth the money for a decent, public service with no advertisements.

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Netflix pay the BBC a license to run the show on Netflix. Same with a dvd you buy the dvd. The BBC doesn’t get all their money from the license fees. They sell a large proportion of their shows to the U.K. and abroad.

The bbc needs to get with the times frankly and either offer better content so the license is worth the money or reduce the cost so it’s afordable.

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I don’t care what they spend money on the same as I do not care what other companies spend to create content, as soon as BBC looses the 6 nations there is nothing to watch for me :joy:

I don’t have a TV license, but in general I’d rather pay than see adverts. I pay £3.99 a month to remove adverts on All4.

For me, the problem I have with the TV license is how outdated it feels. In a city like London where it’s not uncommon to change address every year or two, it just seems like more hassle than it’s worth. :roll_eyes:

If the subscription was a rolling monthly contract that wasn’t tied to an address, and could be easily cancelled if I decide I’m no longer watching enough content to justify the payment, then I’d be more likely to sign up at some point when a series catches my interest. For example, I briefly paid for NowTV when Game of Thrones was on.

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And their news content is dreadful with self evident bias. And radio isn’t what it used to be. For current affairs LBC leaves the BBC for dead.

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We buy a TV Licence purely because there was a time that I had the TV Licence people knocking on my door weekly. Very threatening.

They also used to knock on my door and then park across my drive so I couldn’t move my car without confronting them. We also had them hiding in cars and waiting, driving off and then coming back 20 mins later.

The last straw was when I was cutting the grass in my front garden, and a guy came up to me asking me if I was the home owner, making the usual threats.

I didn’t need a licence because I didn’t watch live TV, but I knew that because I had an external aerial they would push to fine me. I flatly refused to let them in despite knowing I was in the right.

Then the BBC made it compulsory to have a licence even for IPlayer and that is on in my house most days (kids).

Oh dear. Come live in Scotland for a while and watch the BBC bias, you may want to revisit that statement.

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The thing about bias is it’s normally your own reflected back at you :wink:

The BBC as a resource you get out of it what you put into it, so if you are only going to watch the six Nations and none of the factual or educational content then that is such a waste.

92% of UK adults are accessing BBC services and the amount of licenses has increased.

Saying that I’m not a fan of the scrapping of the free over 75 tv license

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I would agree but to take another example, look at how a certain Daily paper publishes different headlines in Scotland vs England. The bias is real.

Anyway we are getting off-topic.

I pay a license fee for the few BBC programmes we watch. They are of no higher or lower quality on the whole, and at this point the TV license should just be rebranded to ‘BBC’, and get bundled in with the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV et al as yet another ‘service’ we can choose to pay for.

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Of course.

But do you think Netflix fund the initial making of shows? No… so it has to be funded.

Oh and this “BBC bias” stuff - literally a small search on Twitter finds the right saying it’s a leftist propaganda tool, and the left saying it’s a tool of the Tory party, so I figure they are doing their job just fine.

Yes, it’s cheaper to pay £3.99 to remove adverts on 4 or ITV but that’s because adverts still get shown to most people. If everyone stopped viewing the adverts you can bet your bottom that price would rise to comparable figures to the TV licence now, to cover their losses.

I suspect things will change in the future, but I have no doubt that we will miss the things we have now when we get what we want now.

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Wasn’t a left/right comment. North of the border versus Southern England is where I see bias (I’ve lived in England for a couple of years, was always interesting going home and seeing how the same things were reported there).

Anyway, we are digressing again!

I pay the licence fee but I don’t agree with it or feel its money well spent. I feel that if the BBC can’t manage to function as a normal business and generate their own revenue then they don’t deserve to operate in that space.

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Then the bbc need to increase their licensing fees to third parties. The idea that somehow the bbc needs to take the public’s money to make shows while everyone else manages to make shows fine without a license is silly.

The bbc could get rid of the license if they wanted to, they don’t because the above example someone provided is very common, the bbc threaten and intimidate people into paying and integrate it so much it’s difficult not to have to pay. It’s easy money.

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I have one literally just to watch MotD or HIGNFY on iPlayer - and more then half the time I miss them anyway.

I have an ariel outside but it’s never been hooked up in any room in my apartment. I prefer gaming to shows, but when I do watch something it’s usually on Youtube. My wife watches Netflix and Amazon primarily.

I rarely watch live TV or iPlayer, so I could quite happily do without it and get rid of my license.

The fact that they send threatening letters and goons round to your house in a guilty until proven innocent style is pretty wrong.
I think a lot of people probably just pay the license despite not using the services because of this.

It’s a completely outdated thing, and the sooner it gets scrapped and replaced with either ads or a subscription style service the better.

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