Nope, the only site I ever really look at is manchester evening news…
To be honest, I don’t even bother with the news at all, too much doom and gloom
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While I’m not suggesting anyone should do this, you could happily have a TV and never pay the fee. Legally, if an enforcement officer comes to your house, you do not have to answer any of their questions, and you are within your rights not to allow them in your house. At that point there’s nothing they can do - most of their ‘enforcement’ is through scare tactics.
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Exactly this, they’ve no authority unless they come knocking with a warrant. I get the regular letters saying blah blah are you in on this date we’re in the area. I’ve next seen one of them in 15 years now.
If you can be bothered, you can even write to them requesting they withdraw their implied right of access. They won’t ever knock on your door again.
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I would but that means providing my name to them in the letter 
I’m just the legal occupier on anything they send, I’m sure they could find my name out by other means but I’m not providing that to them.
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I just take the “no contact” route…
Always getting letters addressed to “The occupier” that go straight in the bin
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The thread has, in part, become a discussion around how to evade paying the license. Pity.
I agree the whole licensing structure needs an overhaul. That’ll surely lead to a reduction in funding and probably in service quality.
The BBC can certainly improve.
And as for RT. Non-partisan? Not on your nelly 
. Mouthpiece for the Russian government it certainly is. Just point me at a critic of said government on any of their shows…
I’m not particularly political in outlook, but their editorial independence is laughable.
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It’s no secret that you just don’t open the door to them or engage in a conversation. They’ve no powers at all.
As to how they get funded in the future that topic keeps popping it’s head up and I’m sure at some point it’ll change, maybe once the new boss is in place and they start to look at it again for the millionth time.
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I don’t know what angle they can look at it where scrapping it makes any sense for them. If they are forced to that’s a different matter.
And it’s not like Netflix, where if you stop paying you don’t have access anymore. If you stop your TV license, nothing changes (until/unless you’re caught)
The total income from licence fees was £3.83 billion in 2017–18, of which £655.3 million or 17.1% was provided by the government through concessions for those over the age of 75. Thus, the licence fee made up the bulk (75.7%) of the BBC’s total income of £5.0627 billion in 2017–2018.
We’ll call it £3bn for the sake of round numbers. 27.8 million UK households. Netflix apparently has 13m UK subscribers, so lets say BBC payers would match Netflix. Puts you at £230 a year (£19 a month), watch the content vs value arguments then!
And as every person thinks “This isn’t worth £230 a year, I’ll just watch it and lie”
The business case to drop it just doesn’t stack up.
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Apple have literally trillions of dollars of revenue to subsidise their radio stations and indeed the whole of TV+ (which no one is still actually paying for!). Quality, independent and objective journalism is vanishingly rare and expensive to make.
I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you aren’t representative of most people here!
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Also, Netflix wasn’t a welcome alternative:
Killing Eve and Fleabag haven’t done too badly as world-beating content goes either.
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Or the god knows how many shows down the years that started on the BBC and then moved to commercial TV once their success had been proved.
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Didn’t mean to hint you had. 
I was more bolstering the notion that RT is truly a voice of that government and routinely paints a bleak picture of the West.
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I guess you can notionally split your sub however you like, but it’s pretty clear that Apple themselves don’t think the value proposition is there yet to actually charge people. And it’s not as if they’re in the business of handing out freebies!
Also. Some very quick Googling suggests that the TV+ budget is in the region of $6b compared to $4 for the BBC. You’d hope that for the price they would have a high hit rate, although the only breakout show I personally keep hearing about is Ted Lasso.
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Apple TV vs BBC is not even a closely run contest!
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curious question from this, from a legal perspective if one was to watch a briefing on YouTube would you require a tv licence technically? For instance if you went to the stream from the telegraph or other and not a dedicated bbc news stream 
*yes I have a licence, just genuinely curious about this question
In this case, I believe the answer would be ‘yes’ as it would meet the definition of ‘programme’ given that it is being broadcast on national TV at the same time.
Which is why my earlier advice on this still stands - if you want to keep up with the briefings without watching them (paying for a TV licence), just follow the text-only news live blogs instead. I have the example of the Guardian earlier, but I’m sure other live blogs are also available.
No, it’s a public service broadcaster, supposed to provide entertainment to everyone, not just someone that a focus group has identified as a key demographic.
Maybe we should allow people who advocate this kind of rubbish to do so, but block them from ever watching or listening to
i) anything ever made or financed by the BBC, past, present or future
ii) any radio station broadcasting anything other than the blandola or Capital or Heart FM
Let’s see how long they last then
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After those few letters i’ve now got an email to the address previously registered for tv license. BBC dirty tactics or genuine survey??
" We’re interested to understand your views on the BBC and some of the other services you use.
If you’d like to have a say, please take part in our survey about the BBC. It should take no longer than 5 minutes. We’ll use this feedback, alongside your online BBC activity to understand how we can improve the BBC’s products and services.
Simply visit (bbc link removed) which explains how we would use your personal information.
- If you wish to participate in this survey, we’ll keep your answers for up to 9 months from the date of the survey, and then delete them as part of our retention policy.
Thanks for your help making a better BBC.
All the best,
The BBC"