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Please do not write below the line

bbctvlicence.com

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Re: Please do not write below the line

#161

Post by miki123211 »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

It's not just the UK, many countries have a government-run TV network, and they want that network to be subsidized only by the people actually watching TV, not random taxpayers who don't benefit from it.

If you were to design such a system in the 2020's, you could just put a DRM scheme on your broadcast and demand payment only from the people who actually want to watch that network specifically, but that technology wasn't yet available when such systems were designed.

Another claimed benefit of this way of doing things is the government's ability to produce programs that aren't commercially viable, e.g. targetting specific populations, minorities who speak a niche language, distributing important public information in a non-sensational way etc.

Most of these points are moot with the advent of the internet, though, hence why many countries want to or have abolished these licensing systems.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#162

Post by miki123211 »

azornathogron wrote: post #113
busterarm wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.

Although, yes, this sounds absurd, it's worth noting that the TV licence pays for the BBC and the BBC has extensive radio (and web) offerings not only television. Of course, that still doesn't make sense because to the best of my knowledge you don't need a license of any kind to listen to the radio. Anyway, perhaps blind people want to listen to the TV. There are a lot of programs that could make sense even if you ca…

and audio description[1]!

I'm no fan of national broadcasters as a concept, but I have to say, the UK is excellent when it comes to audio description, much more so than any (English speaking) country I'm aware of. It's not just the BBC either, Sky and other private broadcasters also have relatively high standards.

For years, the only English AD you could get for extremely popular HBO shows, like Game of Thrones for example, were pirated British rips from Sky, as HBO famously refused to provide the service.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_description

Re: Please do not write below the line

#163

Post by bearbin »

busterarm wrote: post #62
kamaitachi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just a U.K. thing. Many European countries have something similar, although it might be called something else. It’s a form of tax that pays for public service broadcasting, including radio stations. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence#

Yes, but the UK is the only country with a license ridiculous enough to offer you a 50% discount _if you're blind_.

The TV license is certainly bit ridiculous, but being legally blind doesn't necessarily mean you can't see at all, just you fall below the legal threshold where it's judged that poor sight will interfere with your day-to-day life. Lots of people registered as blind can still watch the TV just fine even if they won't be able to see the detail.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#164

Post by jraph »

moffkalast wrote: post #57
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

Oi! Ave you got a loicense fer dat TV there mate?!

> loicense

Should obviously be spelt loicence.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#165

Post by satori99 »

stickfigure wrote: post #116
owisd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gets raised every charter renewal and they always find the administrative overhead of e.g. collecting Netflix subscriptions, etc. is pro rata higher than the overhead for the licence fee.

I interpreted the parent as suggesting "just pay for it out of general tax revenue", which makes a lot of sense to me. No additional administration and enforcement required.

This is how Australia's public broadcaster is funded. But it means politicians directly decide its budget, which makes it a political football.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#166

Post by crazygringo »

zerocrates wrote: post #98
crazygringo wrote: post #71

I was really hoping for an answer at the end! I'm actually totally stumped by the whole thing. OCR doesn't even make sense, because OCR is terrible at handwriting generally. With forms they usually require you to write block letters and numbers inside of a kind of separate grid for each field. And maybe fill in some bubbles too. Anything anywhere on the page outside of the form fields is ignored. I'd find it far more…

If you look up some of these letters you'll see they have the quasi-official-looking things you'd otherwise see on scam letters, like a stamp that says "Enforcement Visit Approved" with a signature on it. I think "do not write below this line" is just another one of those things, it makes the letter seem like its part of Official Serious Bureaucracy.

That would be really funny if true. You're totally right about the stamp part.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#167

Post by Kwpolska »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #87
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #13

A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK. Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

The BBC is prized in the UK, and rightly so. Most national broadcasters have strong public interest provisions but the Beeb has a history and culture of strong independent journalism, incredible childrens and family output and acts as a mainstay anchor to support a creative industry. There is plenty to criticise but the weird ring fenced tax that we pay is incredible value for money (films, tv, web, journalism for th…

How much taxpayer money is wasted on the accounting, the enforcement, and the scary-sounding letters? Wouldn’t it be better if the government just gave taxpayer money to the BBC directly?

Re: Please do not write below the line

#168

Post by textninja »

The purpose seems clear to me from the explanation provided. Here's what I read between the lines.

1. Send out thousands of letters expecting some to be returned. They may be returned due to deliverability issues, or they may be returned with a reply attached or (probably less commonly) scrawled on the pages of the letter itself. Replies to letters are of course common whether they're expressly requested or not.

2. Give each letter a unique number in your database so you can cross reference the letter to the recipient information (including but not limited to the address) you have stored in your system. The letter may be returned with something else (e.g. another letter) attached so it's important to keep that information correlated.

3. Scanning the original letter is a low cost way to maintain this correlation. When the letters are returned you scan them then send them through a program you have set up to update the system accordingly. The program uses some primitive OCR and probably a checksum to automatically recognize the codes in the original letters. I can imagine this being used to automatically mark bad addresses if a letter is returned without additional context, but its main purpose is probably to route the letter - and any attachments, like other letters - to the appropriate agent.

To support a workflow not unlike the one described above, it is requested that the unique number that identifies the letter be left unobscured. This way OCR can do its job, deliverability issues can be flagged with minimal human involvement, and replies to letters can be put in front of the right person without creating too much organizational overhead.

Re: Please do not write below the line

#169

Post by jimnotgym »

Retr0id wrote: post #126
jimnotgym wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just reminded me of how they used to get into University accommodation and try and catch people in every room

I used to live in a shared flat, and they sent individually addressed letters to each numbered room in the building - which, to my amusement, included the room number of the toilet.

That might be a comment on the quality of modern TV, perhaps?

Re: Please do not write below the line

#170

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #74
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #61

The most baffling thing here is how the hell did the author get the organisation to respond , on topic, multiple times? In my experience conversing with various entities that are supposed to provide customer support, absolutely anything outside of an extremely narrow set of vetted topics with prepared answers and especially anything technical gets ignored and receives an irrelevant response at best.

It's from 2006, before organizations realized that there were lots of trolls willing to dedicate themselves to wasting other people's time over bullshit.

[deleted]
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