I don’t watch TV it doesn’t interest me at all I’m far to busy doing other things but I do understand that even with the dawn of the digital age of the internet and other forms of electronic entertainment on offer the TV still plays a major role in most households. Personally for me BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Sky one, the strength of the programs on offer on any of these channels or any other channel is not an issue for me since I don’t watch TV. My TV very occasionally get used for playing my Xbox 360 in my bedroom and not for watching TV.

I live in shared accodomation and there is a TV in the lounge which obviously is a shared area of the house. Annoyingly for me I have to pay towards the cost of a TV license for the use of the TV in the loung.

I don’t use that TV since as I’ve stated I don’t watch TV. The concept of paying for something you don’t use is ludicrous to me and I imagine it is to most people. To put it in to perspective imagine if suddenly there was a legal requirement to have a Xbox 360 license to have one installed in you home regardless if you use or not it you must have a license. This would cause an uproar of complaints and most people would most likely not buy an Xbox 360. Also if this was actually a legal requirment you could argue that my housemates should pay towards the cost of the Xbox 360 license since the license is for the house and not for an individual. Alas this concept does apply to owning and using a TV and there is no opt option.

I’m loath to not contribtue towards the cost of the TV license since it would cause tension in my households so I’m left with no other option other than to pay for my housemates to in effect watch TV. That’s my problem Paying for something I don’t use since its not optional.

Now, we have hit a new era, a time of hundreds, near thousands of channels… we’re about to hit the digital switchover, making digital TV a requirement. This is an era of FreeView boxes, Sky, Virgin TV, so many different providers charging us for viewing channels on their services.

Every single channel that I am aware of, minus the BBC of course, is included in these packages – They decided to allow advertisements in order to make their services free, included in the overall fee charged by your provider, be it Sky, Virgin, or one of the other multitude.

So why on earth is the BBC still charging an extortion racket fee which isn’t avoidable, even if you DON’T watch their services?

Is there any other channel out there, any other TV company who feels so insecure, as to have to charge an unavoidable fee and threaten with jail sentences and fines if it is not paid? For what, owning a TV? Welcome back to the dark ages, apparently – That is the BBC.

Now picture, what if those who actually WANT to watch the BBC pay a fee, and like packages such as sports, movies, etc, which you need to pay a fee to get, otherwise you get a screen in the channel’s place telling you how to subscribe…the same happens with the BBC for those not paying the fee…Wouldn’t that be so a much wiser idea?

Instead of an extortion, it would actually be ‘pay for what you use’. Then, those of you on this blog who are saying the BBC is awesome, could continue to pay the fee and get these innovations, and advert free TV, whereas those of us who decide we are quite happy with the other several hundred channels could enjoy skipping the fee in order to miss out on the BBC innovations.

This would not only help pensioners who rarely watch the TV, but also those who just don’t want to pay extra money out for a service they just don’t use.

One has to wonder which single person on this ENTIRE planet is worth £18 million per year to appear on TV, but this is the fee the BBC has deemed to misappropriate from public funds for such an individual!.

For that kind of money he should be able to walk on water.

Martin,
I should interested to hear your justification for the expenditure of this not so insignificant sum, bearing in mind that this is NOT an isolated incident.

While the fee is quite high, I think it is well worth it. I’m so glad I can watch TV without adverts! It pains me to watch other channels and adverts come on every 10 to 15 minutes. It’s nice to have decent radio stations too that explore all kinds of music.

The iPlayer, too, is excellent. Ok, so 4OD came out first, but it has only just become available for Linux/Mac users! The quality on the iPlayer is far better.

Another advantage of the license fee is that shows cannot be manipulated by their sponsors. Imagine if Top Gear was sponsored by a particular manufacture – they couldn’t exactly slag the car off and then clip to the sponsors message before/after the advert!

I’m sure I read somewhere that the license fee was coming down. The increase in the fee has been used for the digital change over (any one else find that the sound pauses for a few seconds with digital?), in which when the change over is complete, the fee will come down.

The BBC is well known world-wide for quality programming. Going commercial would certainly ruin that.

- Tom

(or are the bbc afraid of losing alot more money if people knew what they do and dont need a tv licence for)

Personally I find the endless painfull stream of adverts for price comparison websites and personal injury lawyers almost unbearable. Simply by providing channels without adverts justifies the licence fee as far as I am concerned. Add to this the fact that the BBC continues to provide originial and intelligent programming (compared that is to ITV and channels 4 and 5) shows that it is an institution worthy of our support. And yes – Rick – perhaps the iPlayer was copied from 4 OD, but that doesn’t change the fact that the iPlayer is a well run, useful and widely available resourse; the continued running of which is only made possible by the TVlicence fee. (perfectly resonable at about £11-00 per month) – That said – I think some of the adverts telling people to pay were very poorly put together.