The TV Licence

When I write a posting here, I do try and remember that I am talking to an international audience. But a Tree (yes I am talking to a tree) has pointed out, in the US they don't have a TV licence and was confused. I dare say that most people are confused by me and my postings anyway, but that has more to being a fruitcake than anything else.

Here in the UK to provide the money for Public Service Television, everyone in the UK has to buy a licence to watch television. That pays for the BBC and all its domestic services including Radio. While other television channels exist they are paid for by advertising. The BBC carries no advertising. I can hear two hundred million Americans applying for visas as I write!

While the BBC does do “Commercial” programming like soaps and all the other tosh that is inflicted upon us, because the BBC does not have to be as commercial as some of the other channels, they can afford to invest in the high quality wildlife documentaries that none of the other channels produce. Without the Licence fee system we would never have had the “Life on Earth” “Blue Planet” and the up coming “Life in Cold Blood” (I still do not want to be disturbed from nine PM!), and we would have ended up with a lot of cheap poor quality television.

Additionally, the licence fee also pays for the high quality speech radio that the BBC produces, predominantly Radio Four, that if they had to please advertisers would never be able to carry out the in depth analysis of many aspects of life, business, politics, the police etc.

There is a down side as people who fail to get a licence, get fined up to one thousand pounds for not having it. Further, some people call it a tax on the poor, but while the licence is now one hundred and thirty five pounds, it pays for so much quality content (and some of the dross) that I don't really see it as a tax.

So while the system in the UK is not perfect, as long as the BBC keeps producing gems of quality amongst all the dross then I keep on supporting this quirky British system.

Anyway if the BBC stopped making natural history programming where would I get my screen savers from?