I tried to forment a war against the BBC (Off-Topic)

by kapowaz, Wednesday, December 11, 2013, 09:10 (4006 days ago) @ Quirel

PS - for the non-brits - there is a British law that lets the BBC tax everybody who is capable of receiving or recording a broadcast television signal even if they don't actually watch the BBC. You just need to be theoretically capable of watching or recording their stuff. It's like the new York Times being able to tax all Americans who can read or have eyes that work.

That's just screwed up, even if I do like some of BBC's programming.

If it literally *was* a tax, it'd put the BBC under massive political pressure to ensure its continued funding with each successive government, which may be more or less inclined to protect it from the free market: this is precisely what the Tories are trying to do anyway, although the license fee's rate is a little harder for them to directly influence. This would transform how they broadcast and lobby for continued funding in much the same way the US political system is skewed towards continued campaign finance instead of actual political process. In short: it'd be a disaster.

In actual fact, the license fee is non-payable if you're over 75, or don't watch or record BBC content *as it is broadcast* (i.e. Streaming on-demand is fine). This means lots of people can get away with not paying if they for e.g. only watch on-demand streams on an iPad, an increasingly common occurrence. I don't think characterising it as a draconian 'tax' is remotely accurate or fair, and in actual fact the BBC is the envy of nations the world over, all thanks to how the license fee is set up.