TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

This comparison is ridiculous. The license fee is a little outdated in certain aspects but it covers more than just broadcast news as the orgs you mentioned do.

The BBC has a broad remit to inform, educate, and entertain. Not in itself radically different to a lot of other broadcasters, and typical for a public service broadcaster, but the universal license fee is a key differentiator.

In requiring everyone with a television to contribute, the BBC has a duty to serve the entire population of a country, regardless of their income or demographic. This enables the BBC to produce content that may not be commercially viable for privately funded broadcasters that in term can serve communities that would otherwise be overlooked. BBC's Three and Four channels tend to best exemplify this aspect with content that can often be slightly niche and, in the case of Three, regularly have casts and production crews that are far more diverse than the industry averages.

The license fee is also independent of the state budget. The Government does have the power and oversight to adjust funding every 5-11 years, but the royal charter ensures that funding is separate from typical taxation and avoids the Treasury. This also ensures (in theory) that there is more autonomy for accurate, fair, and unbiased news reporting.

The BBC has also for most of its existence operated and maintained a lot of shared broadcasting infrastructure (which admittedly is less key as viewing moves away from terrestrial broadcast and towards IP services, and to a lesser extent cable and satellite). In the previous charter they also had a responsibility to improve broadband infrastructure in rural areas.

There's also a final aspect to this in that the BBC performs a lot of public service open research into emerging technologies as well as the social impact of them and different forms of media. Most media organisations don't care about anything other than how much of a person's attention they can capture at the expense of everything else. More eyes on a media org = more advertising sold. The BBC's model means they can actually give consideration to what healthy consumption is and how to promote digital wellbeing etc., as well as ensuring younger audiences are better catered for (there's a great article on how YouTube Kids has severely let down its young audiences in the past here: https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-in... )

Also worth noting that there is a campaign in the UK to get non-payment of license fees decriminalised and made into a civil offence.

"In 2017 (latest data available), 72 per cent of all prosecutions for TV licence-fee evasion were against women.

This figure is so high that licence-fee evasion accounted for 30 per cent of all prosecutions against women, the single most common charge."

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/women/tv-license-sc...

Everyone else often had cable or SAT, which gave you all the German and also Swiss networks, particularly the private ones, where the program is aimed at different demographics (also possible because of vastly larger pockets: German ad market >> Austrian ad market)

At least ORF tried to modernize its image, but do you want to lose your main demographic as well? Can you compete (financially) with German private TV and pay TV? Not to mention Netflix, Disney+, etc? There is not really a way out.

So were stuck with Skiing, Austrian Soccer, Tatort and Gaming show clones. At least there is a lot of cooperation/joint shopping with German and Swiss (public) stations.

The self-created German content could be worse though. Tatort can be quite nice, it is not aiming to be CSI - and that can be a good thing.