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TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

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Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#261

Post by mhh__ »

saberdancer wrote: post #255
boffinism wrote: post #128

The BBC is currently dedicating hours of airtime a day to educational content to match our primary and secondary curricula because the schools are shut and lots of kids can't access online provisions. And still people complain about the licence fee in terms of whether or not they enjoy BBC gameshows...

What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC. My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "t…

I think the idea is to make it harder to fiddle with the BBC budget

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#262

Post by vidarh »

andybak wrote: post #251
mrsuprawsm wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately BBC news really isn't that good any more. It's been on a long slow decline since about 2005 or so, and now the majority of their news programming (with a few small but notable exceptions) are primarily cheering on the Tory government + ministers of the day.

It sometimes seems like each side of the UK political spectrum is convinced that the BBC is irrevocably biased in favour of their opponents. The Tory right want to hamstring the BBC ("Bunch of Bloody Communists" used to be the witty cry) and jump on it at any opportunity.

That used to be more of a thing, but the recent governments have politicised the control of the BBC in a way that was not nearly as overt in the past.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#263

Post by eythian »

smcl wrote: post #114
4ggr0 wrote: post #93

A 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…

I think you're more the target demographic than you think. Taskmaster didn't exist when I was still in the UK but the first two were popular enough with my age group at the time (20-30 year old students). You might also like "Have I Got News For You" - it's supposed to have gone a bit downhill recently, but at its peak it was stupendous.

"Mock the Week" if you want a more comedic take on the news.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#264

Post by mprev »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #112
4ggr0 wrote: post #93

A 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.

If the current government want to kill it completely why have the ruled out decriminalising non-payment of the licence fee? There are pretty strong ethical reasons for why you shouldn't get a criminal record and, possibly, face prison time for not paying for a TV licence, so it would be politically quite easy to pass.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#265

Post by mhh__ »

gehsty wrote: post #178
malinens wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teletubbies were made on drugs. There is no other explanation

All kids tv is made on drugs. In the night garden is even more trippy than teletubbies.

To quote Charlie Brooker talking about Oliver Postgate (it's a brilliant piece of TV - watch it, it's on YouTube)

"Saying what were they on is an insult to the intelligence of the creators"

Although I agree some kids TV is gloriously mental

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#266

Post by hef19898 »

stkdump wrote: post #177
CodesInChaos wrote: post #170

Earlier 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'.

Thanks for the edit. In Germany, the means are to put people leaning to certain parties in top positions. Or people with the right connections. As a result, the bavarian contribution, the BR, is not necessarly known for its liberal agenda. Others are more left leaning.

One other way is to have former press and spokes persons from a government taking up positions at the braodcasters. When the current (?) spokesman of Angela Merkal left as a news presenter from the ARD (or ZDF, to lazy to loo it up...),that was regarded as a braek from customs and more or less a no-no affecting the independance of these broadcasters.

TL;DR: Political parties, and not so much the "government", use soft power to influence these briadcasters. Quite often by having certain people selected for certain jobs.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#267

Post by saberdancer »

mhh__ wrote: post #261
saberdancer wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC. My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "t…

I think the idea is to make it harder to fiddle with the BBC budget

I'm sure that is part of it, but I would love to see the breakdown of the costs.

When it was first introduced it made sense to have a fee, not many people had a TV so by collecting the fee, you didn't tax the people without it. But today everyone has it, so this no longer applies.

Independence argument has some merit, but I would expect that there can be different methods that would provide the same level of independence.

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#268

Post by mhh__ »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #219
simonh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were a real thing. When an old style TV amplifies the TV signal and feeds it to the CRT tube, it leaks a lot of the boosted signal. I think the rumour that the vans were a fake was probably because they only ever had a few and it was mostly a propaganda show, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist. Intelligence agencies used receivers to snoop in on CRT computer monitor signals and could re-generate the display…

They were fake. It would be extremely difficult on most streets and impossible in virtually all tower blocks to triangulate an exact location to a single house/flat. And the design was ridiculous. A working detector doesn't need to look anything like an aerial stuck on top of a minivan. And the only record of them being used in a prosecution is for optical detection of combined RGB. Plus some handwaving. Not RF. So t…

Doing it with RF was perfected in the 1950s but the actual use was definitely limited if at all.

See Operation RAFTER

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#269

Post by matthiasv »

kwanbix wrote: post #238
sleavey wrote: post #80

Earlier 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…

IIRC in Germany Netflix €14, Disney+ €7, Amazon Prime Video €6. And all 3 I can watch whenever I travel. The TV/Radio Tax is about €18!!! and I can only "enjoy" it in Germany!!! Not only that, the quality of programming quite bad, and to make it even worse, I am forced to pay for it when I don't even watch it. When I moved to Germany it just blown my mind.

Are you also complaining about other parts of societal funding that does not benefit everyone? You could argue about so many things that might not affect you directly (schools, police, roads, …) but at the end of the day you may also profit indirectly from those as well (more educated people, fewer crimes, proper goods distribution, …).

Re: TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England

#270

Post by jsiepkes »

I remember from when I was a kid the government used to broadcast commercials (in the Netherlands) about you having to pay up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPr61na7icE

You don't have to understand Dutch to understand what the doorbell and the "uhooo" at the end of the commercial means... The whole text of the commercial is a hilarious attempt at intimidation. Basically it's about how it's all fun and games until somebody gets busted.

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