TV Licence

[Ex- Member]

I was wondering how the BBC fund their radio stations. We don't have to pay for a BBC radio licence so I presume it's paid for by those who pay for a TV licence. Interesting that the BBC still charge over £70 for a TV licence if you're blind....

 

All BBC broadcasting is funded from the licence fee. The radio licence was discontinued in favour of the TV licence.

 

1. Radio only and combined radio & television licences were abolished on1 February 1971. From this date television only licences have been issued.

Edited August 10, 2014 by Julynian

[Guest]

I was wondering how the BBC fund their radio stations. We don't have to pay for a BBC radio licence so I presume it's paid for by those who pay for a TV licence. Interesting that the BBC still charge over £70 for a TV licence if you're blind....

Being pedantic for a second you can get a half price licence if you are blind or severely sight impaired. Severe sight impaired is not the same thing as having no vision at all.

 

Blind people (Even completely blind) can still enjoy the TV particularly quiz shows, music programs and local/national news and they can of course fully enjoy the radio. Certainly people I met in the course of my work as a District Nurse did, so I think a 50% reduction sounds (no pun intended) pretty fair to me.

Edited August 10, 2014 by The Dog House

[bassplayer]

I'll have to try an experiment to see how I'd get on with no TV. I think radio would be harder to give up. Maybe go the whole hog and give up going on-line.

 

Anyone tried this? How did you get on? I suppose it's unlikely anyone will reply if it was successful...

[Bordergirl]

We gave up our rental TV in 2003, as we were redecorating our house to sell to fund our boat. We found we just weren't really watching it so why pay rental and licence. Watched in 2004 living at my Mother in Law's waiting for the boat to be finished. However we've never had a telly on board since we moved on in 2005, just the occasional i-player download.

 

No radio?? NO WAY couldn't imagine life without it

 

Being on line is essential for us for organising leisure, business and work activities so I don't thinks its really comparable to TV and radio which are just entertainment. Would be a peaceful but boring life off line - but I don't think I could actually earn any money without email or internet.

[Jerra]

 

Quite right, and therein lies the problem - explaining you aren't using your TV or that you've got rid of it is almost impossible. First there's the letters, then the inspectors, then the threats, it's like not paying the mafia your weekly protection money. While I, as a fairly young person won't be bullied by these cretins and have the time and energy to fight them off, I have a couple of elderly relatives that just gave in to the intimidation and paid up.

I hear a lot of folk complaining that this happens, our experience is the exact opposite. We had a shop which once had a flat above it but not for many years. Soon after we opened a reasonable letter arrived saying they thought we should have a license. We replied that the flat hadn't been used for years and had now been absorbed into the shop as storage and office.

 

After that about every 2 years a letter arrive quite polite saying you need a license we replied no we don't and all went quiet again for a couple of years or so. We must have been lucky.

[nicknorman]

I hear a lot of folk complaining that this happens, our experience is the exact opposite. We had a shop which once had a flat above it but not for many years. Soon after we opened a reasonable letter arrived saying they thought we should have a license. We replied that the flat hadn't been used for years and had now been absorbed into the shop as storage and office.

 

After that about every 2 years a letter arrive quite polite saying you need a license we replied no we don't and all went quiet again for a couple of years or so. We must have been lucky.

I think that is usually the case. However many people take offence at the licensing authorities opening gambit and decline to answer "on principle". Faced with the stonewalling, this leads to increasingly aggressive communications from the licensing authority which they then resent even more, but it is to some extent a self-inflicted injury.

[Guest]

I think that is usually the case. However many people take offence at the licensing authorities opening gambit and decline to answer "on principle". Faced with the stonewalling, this leads to increasingly aggressive communications from the licensing authority which they then resent even more, but it is to some extent a self-inflicted injury.

Never been in that position, but I do understand people's resentment to being treated thus. I would be pretty peed off if I got challenged about a shotgun licence for a gun I didn't have (for example.) I don't believe that the authority should have the right to "assume" that everyone has a telly, unless they prove different.

[magpie patrick]

I think that is usually the case. However many people take offence at the licensing authorities opening gambit and decline to answer "on principle". Faced with the stonewalling, this leads to increasingly aggressive communications from the licensing authority which they then resent even more, but it is to some extent a self-inflicted injury.

 

 

My only serious problem with the TVLA they just wouldn't accept I had no TV until I more or less threatened to take them to court for harrassment: my opening gambit, on moving into a new flat in Bath, had been to respond I had no TV when asked, and to repeatedly restate this at every turn.

 

This was the occasion I referred to earlier.

 

At other times when I've lived "alone" I've actually been a lodger in someone else's house or in a shared house and whilst I have no TV, the landlady has a TV licence and no challenge over my status has ever been made.

[nicknorman]

My only serious problem with the TVLA they just wouldn't accept I had no TV until I more or less threatened to take them to court for harrassment: my opening gambit, on moving into a new flat in Bath, had been to respond I had no TV when asked, and to repeatedly restate this at every turn.

This was the occasion I referred to earlier.

 

At other times when I've lived "alone" I've actually been a lodger in someone else's house or in a shared house and whilst I have no TV, the landlady has a TV licence and no challenge over my status has ever been made.

Well again, my recent experience with my new rental flat (unfurnished and unoccupied for a couple of months whilst I sorted it out) was that after an initial licence demand, and me responding that the flat was unoccupied for the time being, expected to be occupied mid-April, was that I heard nothing more. I presume that the new tenant received a demand some time shortly after mid April.