Indeed, it is actually whether you are able to watch TV in your residence. You need a license if you a have a TV or TV Tuner Card, since either is able to receive TV signals. Even if you don't watch any TV, you still have to pay the £144 per year. And yes, they do have people who can legally enter your residence and check (I think they ask permission first and if denied can get a warrant).

I get the feeling that most people in the UK think the TV license is a good idea as it gives some seriously good quality TV which you won't get on commercially-driven TV, they just think it's a bit expensive.

(NB - In the UK it's one license per residential contract - so you'd need a TV license for your room in student halls, and if you're renting a room in a house, but not if it's a flatshare where you all signed the contract together)

No no no no no no no no no!
If you have no aerial or satellite receiver and can't actually use the TV to watch broadcast shows you DO NOT NEED A LICENSE! Seriously does nobody read the law? You don't have a TV that can watch broadcast material? Send them a letter informing them they send a guy round to check your telling the truth and YOU NEVER GET ANOTHER LETTER...
Don't repeat something as gospel when you haven't actually checked.

Eh its not that big a deal these days if you're not a big TV fan or don't have the space to actually fit a TV into the house (ok flat...). Since you can watch BBC Iplayer catchup shows without any licence (provided you watch them only as part of the catchup service, which is after broadcast).

I've not had a TV in the flat for years, yet I keep up with most current shows on the BBC since they mostly appear on the catchup service (barring a selection of the mostly daytime shows).


As for if its worth it or not just watch some of the BBC natural history shows, they are certainly worth the cost most of the time; the only time people get annoyed is when there are people on the BBC payroll who get millions per year as their fee (eh that J. Ross chap), then they tend to argue more that its not the cost, but the fact that its not going toward what they feel is the best use of the resources.

If we didn't pay a tv licence we'd have to watch fox news like the rest of the world, so £130 well spent.

There are no lawyers monitoring this.

However I can assure you - no-one cares.

Yes, this is sloppy wording on my part, although the first part I said is correct - you need one if you have a TV or tuner and you are capable of picking up the signals (a TV on it's own can't, it needs a signal input of some description). So if you don't have an aerial etc but you DO have a TV, then you don't need a license :)

Well, i don't know. When I want to watch some historical program, I watch discovery. When I want some animal life - > National Geographic. Sports? Only premium stations run the whole leagues.

Plus, license fee is half what you need to pay in Poland for HBO. HBO doesn't have ads at all.

It proves that commercial stations do it better, for less money.

Public tv doesn't do anything what commercial tv wouldn't. And again, I don't want to pay with my taxes for "Farting with the stars". or another soap opera.

This is unnecessary , and it creates unfair competition with commercial stations.

You have to pay around 20 PLN in Poland monthly as a license fee. For that amount of money you'd have cable tv with around 30 stations.

And with this "we can do it better" bs you just give an excuse to your polititians to take even MORE money from you.
Do they even sell tvs without internal antenna these days?

I'm not planning on getting into a long debate about this, but I disagree with your point here, and your reasoning.

Private businesses are motivated by profit, that means they basically have to show you what they think you want to see, and what their advertisers want you to see. That's all well and good, and it works, but I also think it's important for there to be an alternative that's motivated by public interest/importance rather than commercial viability. That's where public/nationalized channels come in.

I don't know about the quality of such channels in Poland, but BBC is not terrible. Cambodian state owned media on the other hand, is an entirely different story....

Is not terrible, but see it like this:

I have to pay 20 PLN for 4 channels as a license fee

I pay 34 PLN for cable tv with 50+ channels , among with Discovery, Nat Geo, Animal Planet, Eurosport, Mezzo, and more.

I barely watch national TV, because there's nothing there what's not on commercial stations.

This is why I stated my point. Also, public tv does the same thing for profit. Is your national TV losing money? Polish national tv except from profit from commercials, feeds on license fee. Hardly non-profit organistaion.

The only good TVP programms are TVP Culture and TVP History. But guess what? They're not avaible unless you have cable tv :D Isn't that great?

Plus, TVP runs VOD service last days. Another guess what? You have to pay for every single episode of sopa opera etc. You pay license fee but you still have to pay separately for VOD. I have VOD in my satellite TV with no additional fees with channels I paid for.

This is why commercial is better than national. Maybe you don't have enough TV channels to see it for yourself.

Yes, BBC is non profit. They don't do the same thing by a long shot, and they don't have commercials (so as to maintain their separation from commercially dependent channels). It also has a legal mandate to remain politically independent, unlike the Murdoch Press and other "news" organizations that exist for the purpose of pushing a particular agenda.

In Cambodia we pay 100,000 riel (about $25) per year as a flat rate, which comes with about 80 channels. Of those, about 5 are officially state run and 2 more belong to the prime minister's daughter.. There are about 15 channels in English language, including nat geo, Star, HBO, CNN, etc. Incidentally, CNN mysteriously never works during the local election period. The vast majority of the channels we get are obscure Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Indian channels.

I've never seen one WITH an internal one seriously they have decoders but no actual internal aerial you might get very lucky and pick up a very poor signal from the length of metal connecting it but thats about it.

Well, pick a look at this then.

I have some serious job issues now (in fact, i don't have a job). Im planning to stop watching TV to minimize my expenses.

And you know what? I should throw TV out of a window to not pay license fee. Because I have cable TV now , and even if I stop using it, authorities will still say "you have the ability to watch tv, because you have a receiver and cable antenna". And this is not good.

Oh, and I believe that in UK you have already digital TV as a standard. In Poland it just begins, basic channels are still in analog format, so any TV can pick the signal.

yeah we've just finished/are right on the edge of finishing, but in the uk the law is if they're not connected and you let them confirm it you don't have to pay.

Here in New Zealand license fees were discontinued a while back; content is now paid for through a combination of advertising revenue and the taxpayer-funded broadcasting commission.

Licenses made sense back when TVs were very rare and it wasn't fair for the general populace to subsidise the entertainment of a select few, but those roles have been reversed for a very long time now, and advertising revenue and overseas distribution profits presumably cover all the costs for their shows anyway (the BBC sells their content to a huge number of countries).