If you have to have snooping vans prowling the streets to catch people listening to what's openly being broadcast over the airwaves to make them pay, maybe you've set up your system wrong...
TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
181–190 of 562 posts
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#182Why not just tax TV sales? That's much easier to enforce, and has ultimately almost the same effect.
You are allowed to have a TV set if you don't pay for TV license. It's just you are not allowed to watch live TV.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
So they can pretend their state TV is independent from the state.
How does the state exert power over the broadcasters if their income doesn't come from the government? Edit: When I say 'how' I don't mean 'why', I mean 'by what means'.
Because the government is the one who gave them the authority to levy the fees from you and the people running the public broadcasters are all directly or indirectly politically connected to the major parties.
Which other independent private business can just straight up charge you without you signing up for their service beforehand?
In Germany and I guess, in most countries, the public broadcasters are basically low-key propaganda arms of the government. The whole separate tax thing is a intermediate smokescreen to give the public the illusion of independence.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-w…
If every household has to pay then it makes sense to abolish the tax and to fund it through the general budget instead, not least if the argument is that this is something that benefits society as a whole. Taxes are not free to manage and collect so this also provides cost savings. We have this debate periodically in the UK. The argument against abolishing the TV licence is usually that a dedicated tax ensures a larg…
Hm, at least in Austria and Germany the government cannot simply change the TV license fee "just because". Of course they ultimately can, but it is not that easy.
It still makes a huge difference if money is distributed through the hands of the government, or dedicated 1:1.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#185A bit off-topic maybe, sorry. I am not from the UK, but quite a large chunk of things I watch on YouTube are british panel shows. I'm just in love with them. Which seems funny to me, because as a non-uk twenty year old, I don't think that I'm the target demographic for these shows. "8 out of 9 cats does countdown", "Would I lie to you?" and of course my favourite, "Taskmaster". Thanks for all of these great shows. "B…
There is a lot of those shows because they are cheap to make. In reality the BBC's funding has been squeezed for years, largely for political reasons. The current government would love to kill it completely but they can't do that directly.
A lot of those shows aren't BBC though. Take that list in question:
- Taskmaster: Channel 4 (originally Dave. In fact before that it was a Edinburgh Fringe Festival show written by "little" Alex Horne)
- Would I Lie To You: BBC
- 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown: Channel 4 (interestingly it's a spin off of "8 out of 10 Cats" which was C4's sort of version of "Have I Got News For You" but C4 did an anniversary series of one off comedies one year, including bringing back "15 to 1" and a few other quiz shows from the channels early years. The "8 out of 10 cats does countdown" show was "Countdown" with the cast of "8 Out of 10 Cats" (hence the name) and proved so popular it became it's own show).
As for the classics in that list. While most were BBC, it's also fair to say most wouldn't have been the same low budget as Taskmaster et al.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#186BBC also does fantastic children's content including mobile games app's. Cbeebies is miles better then anything else. Also, you can trust young kids with the BBC. You know there is no targeted advertising, or in game purchases. Most shows are also educational (often secretly). Licence fee worth that alone for me.
It is genuinely excellent and it just goes to show the power of marketing to children that parents feel obliged to put on any of the other children's channels.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In Germany, the situation changed a few years ago, every household has to pay now, even if they don't own a television or radio. This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-w…
> A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-watchers is justified as it benefits society as a whole. Do they really believe these things? This is the Kool-Aid you have to drink as a society, in order not to go crazy when you pay for things you never use and benefit from. If you ever move out, make sure to let them know, otherwise they will keep hunting you for ever.
As an Irish person, I firmly believe this. While our our public broadcaster, RTE, is far from perfect (and sometimes mediocre), they are financed / run at arms length from government.
They often run exposés on government mess ups and criticise their actions. On a more practical level, who else is going to make quality non sensationalist content specific to Ireland? One of the downsides of being a small native English speaking country is the onslaught of American (and to a lesser degree British) content that drowns anything local. It also drowns out most European content as people are not used to subtitled or dubbed content.
Having spent plenty of time in the USA, I can't fathom how a system with so many ads and skewed "news" could be better. Why would you trust an unelected private corporation with no motivation or mandate for transparency more than a non profit org that is at least in theory answerable to the people? If nothing else it provides a common reference to reality that allows a real conversation to happen. The lack of this has proven in the last few months to be a real problem.
Most people don't question paying for socialised defence, education, roads etc... many services they may not use personally on a daily basis, because they understand the value of having a cohesive society as a whole.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be much easier to spot a TV flickering through a window. My guess is that's what they did, and then claim that they had detected it with their super duper high-tech antennas.
Neither of those would stand up in court. You have to actually see the actual program that was live (not a tape recording), or get an admission
I think the idea is that they never went to court.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no way for them to prove I was actually owning a television (Emphasis mine) This "playing fast and loose with language" that they do (and that you inadvertently did too, just now) makes me so irrationally angry. Why would the burden of proof be that low? They need ( should need?) to prove that you received broadcast television , not that you simply owned a TV. We hear these stories about TV detector vans as if find…
In the UK, you must pay if you are capable of receiving live TV, not only if you do receive live TV. Even if it was never switch on, a TV that is plugged into an aerial qualifies as meeting that requirement.
You can have and use TV and not pay, so long as you can reasonably show you are not receiving live broadcasts (if it ever came to a warrant being issued). Not having it plugged into an aerial and the channel presets not tuned is considered proof enough.
I'd guess with more and more watching via the internet they probably have far more success catching people watch live broadcasts via IP addresses and ISP logs these days though.
Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
At that point, why don’t they just have the government fund the television networks from tax revenue rather than effectively levying a poll tax earmarked for broadcasters?
So they can pretend their state TV is independent from the state.
Lines are blurry in Germany sometimes, sure. But outlets like the ARD, and a lesser extent ZDF (there are some legal differences between the two, including independance) are way more neutral regarding the ruling, or major, parties like, say, Fox News and the GOP. And they have been, regardless of government coalition. They still are as far as their pure news formats are concerned, much mre "just the facts" then anything else I ever saw in the US. Their more "opinion" heavy pieces are different, but still are far cry from opinion pieces in the US, e.g. Hannity or O'Donnel. And that by itself is a good thing.
Austrians public broadcasters, the ORF, are way better than that even. They mutineed against the attempt to install pulitical operatives at the head of the organisation. They even end interviews with gvernment secretaries if they don't get strsaight answers.