Half a million households cancelled BBC licence fee last year
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jul/23/half-million-households-cancelled-bbc-licence-fee-last-year?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
by ClassicFlavour
Half a million households cancelled BBC licence fee last year
https://www.theguardian.com/media/article/2024/jul/23/half-million-households-cancelled-bbc-licence-fee-last-year?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
by ClassicFlavour
47 comments
[deleted]
Yeah. I’ve got an investigation visit booked for 24th July. I’m very excited. Sadly… “Nobody” will be home.
While I think having a public broadcaster is a good thing we should keep around. I am really frustrated by the necessity of having to pay a regressive tv license for specifically this instead of it being funded through general taxation in a way that can be scaled based on ability to pay. It makes no sense that people in poverty pay the same as the richest people.
Pay your license fee. Pay for Huw Edward’s £480k salary folks. Be responsible citizens.
My first experience with BBC after living alone is accusing me of watching live TV when I didn’t even have a television on my new place.
It’s only going in one direction.
I expect we’ll see a halved licence fee at some point in the future and a massive reduction in services.
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-does-your-licence-fee-pay-for-top13
World service shouldn’t be paid by licence fee, that should definitely be by the foreign office.
Online is a sizeable chunk. The BBC have their fingers in a lot of pies. I get the need for a news website and perhaps some public service stuff like revision material which is linked to educational programmes… but this can surely be reduced in footprint even further.
You could thin down radio even further and drop some TV. The BBC shouldn’t be competing with ITV let alone sky. It’s a fine line to tread though as if you take away the populist stuff then even fewer people will pay. Before you know it, BBC will be a subscription-only service.
It’s always the sabre rattlers that who come out swinging for the BBC. If you genuinely give a shit about the UK and British culture we need a BBC. It’s because of the way it’s funded that it can commission programs for niche demographics or take chances on things that on paper should not work or be profitable. Stuff like that often goes on to inform the culture as a whole.
I’m in favour of strong reform, I’m in favour of paying based on income instead of a flat fee. But I do not want to see the baby thrown out with that bath water. In this age of oligarch owned media we need properly independent voices.
I know someone who cancelled their BBC license because of Channel 5’s black Anne Boleyn.
I went online in 2013. I don’t use the BBC at all. So I don’t pay for it.
Sack Kuensburg and all the other high pay-low-worth mouthpieces, scrap the shallow soft entertainment shows, and give the money to commissioners to produce high quality original British drama and comedy series.
The Outlaws, This is Going to Hurt, Boiling Point and others brought in 5x-10x the viewership of your average BBC show that’s nothing but schedule filler. The appetite for the BBC is there but they spaff money up the wall paying talking heads or making yet another show about buying houses, low level crime stories, or a new tan for David Dickinson.
Those living in Britain should count themselves fortunate that they can opt out.
That is not the case in other countries where the license fee is mandatory.
Dont you still need a TV licence if you watch ITV, Channel 4 etc?
Do we want what we have now or do we want American style for profit news where right-wing people watch right-wing news and left-wing people watch left-wing news and both sides suspect the other of planning the apocalypse?
Their political journalism is so toxic and awful, it’s masochism to pay for it at this point. They have completely neglected their duty to hold the Tories to account on austerity, Brexit, corruption, privatisation and foreign policy then it’s *surprised Pikachu face* when a crisis unfolds in the manner that experts and leftists ( labelled as extremists, no-nothing youths, or liberal elites ) predicted when these voices were ignored or attacked by the *checks notes* hosts of the programme.
If I didn’t live at home still there’s no way I’d dream of paying it.
If Gary Lineker gets £1.3 million and Huw Edwards can get almost £500k without going to work, and license fee payers don’t get a democratic vote in the service…..nor can they watch the full archive at their demand…….then who on Earth would be stupid enough to pay?
It bothers me enough that my Mum pays because we’re not exactly rich and it’s £170 odd a year. It’s extortion, especially given how very quickly down-hill their broadcasting has gone in the past 20 years. The range of quality output has collapsed.
The last thing and the most important thing. The thing I’ll never understand. Is that if you switch on your television and never once switch the channel to the BBC, you’re still liable to pay the license fee.
It’s criminal. The government should be taken to court over it.
It’ll go the way of landline phones, dial up internet and paid newspapers. People can access information in so many different ways for free and you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
What pisses me off is they want to be paid with this tax, then they sell the rights to the tv shows that we all paid for and put them behind paywalls on other streaming platforms. If paying for a tv licence granted me access to everything in the BBC catalogue then yeah, i’d pay it.
They can fuck off.
Is there a reason why they don’t make it operate like any other streaming service like Netflix where you pay a monthly fee to use the service
No other subscription service threatens me with letters every month unless I give them my data. Why does the TV licensing authority?
Nothing for me on the BBC since Top Gear lost the trio. I haven’t bought a TV licence in many years as I just watch movies or non live streaming content so don’t need one.
Not had a licence for ~10 years, Youtube and other services have the content I want. I’m in my 50s. I’m kinda surprised there are still 24m households paying it. but if the trend continues the BBC will have to adjust quicker.
One thing that is true, I think, is that if they cut and cut, more people will leave, a vicious circle. For me that started when they dropped F1 coverage (many years ago now), as that alone was enough reason for me to have a licence.
Those salaries are eye-watering though, so on principle I’m glad not to pay for it.
Good, maybe if it wasn’t a shite propaganda wing for the Tories that puts fuck all on people would care.
Never had a license fee cos I don’t watch telly or BBC, but still had one of their goons come to my door when I was younger. I told them I didn’t even own a TV at the time let alone an arial etc to watch the BBC. They then said they ”needed” to come in to confirm this. When I told them there was no need, I just literally said I don’t have a TV, they then continued to insist that I should have no problem with them coming in then. This from a literal stranger apparently sent by the license fee board or whatever. I again told them I was uncomfortable with them coming in and I had already confirmed no TV was being watched, they told me they could ”force” me to come in. When I said how, they said they would go get a warrant to come in and search the place. I suggested they go do that and they got in my face, telling me just how much trouble I would be in when they came back.
It’s a genuine and baseless racket. Even if I had a TV and had it set to BBC 24/7 you’re not fucking coming into my flat to look around, what year do these people live in lol
Fuck the BBC.
The first week I moved to the UK they sent me the a threat, I paid for 2 months thinking it was mandatory then I had a thought.
I don’t even have a TV
They need to adapt to the times. I haven’t watched anything the BBC produces for as long as I can remember. It’s absolute dross aimed at unemployed / retired people. What is there for the under 30s?
I’m not one of those half a million…I did it 3 years ago!
My only care is for doctor who, and (at a stretch, radio 1). But aside from that, I don’t even watch TV anymore. It’s just streaming services.
Filled out the form to say that we don;t require a TV licence anymore. Kept getting letters warning me, called up the agency, nicest guy in the world answered and explained. He updated my account and said ignore anymore warnings
“this is harassment, never visit my property again” is a great phrase to indicate you are revoking the implicit right of access.
What took then so long? I cancelled mine years ago, and never looked back. All that extra time to do interesting stuff, instead of sitting watching inane programmes on the TV. On the occasions I do want to watch something, there’s more than enough on YouTube.
And as for all the scaremongering about visits from inspectors, all I ever get is a letter every couple of years asking if I’m sure I don’t need one. Just go online and fill in the form, then nothing more to bother about.
I think I’m on the third round of the same.bunch of threatening letters. I started completing the opt out, but the amount of data they wanted was ridiculous.
I’ve actually never paid it, never had a letter or anything. Not because I’m just avoiding it, I haven’t had a TV since left home.
Does anyone know what process they use to target folk?
Its high time that the License was suspended permanently and the BBC moved to a subscription-only access-only business model. Trying to force people to pay for what they do not want to watch is deeply deeply immoral.
I cancelled mine since my new house is under going renovation and there is no one living there while work is going on and even after we move in, not going to pay as I stopped watching live tv years ago. Mainly watch youtube, netflix and us dramas which I download. We even have a freeview antenna and sky, which I want to get rid off, I am never going to pay for sky, not worth it.
Time for a special ring fenced tax on subscription services for audio/video entertainment to fund the BBC.
I think it’s Farage’s main agenda to kill the BBC, public enemy number 1 as he calls it. He’s got more of a platform now. BBC charter ends in 2027, I was watching England in the Euro 2024 final and thinking how much will this cost me in future on pay per view.
They made it fucking obvious that they were censoring their staff with the Gary linicer thing (I’m not looking up how to spell his name).
That’s when I stopped – I even told then I refuse to pay for obviously inaccurate reporting and to support their bias.
I haven’t had one for over a decade and don’t plan on ever going back. Much like Sky, I stopped supporting those who peddle what is predominantly a load of absolute tosh.
Were it that the BBC and the like all had shows I was interested in, services which were beneficial and I didn’t get a mixture of ads and tripe it’d be fine. The amount of wasted resource that goes into sending finger-waggling letters etc must be better spent elsewhere.
If they weren’t such a shit organisation people wouldn’t be so done with it all. I intentionally stay away from BBC programming and live broadcasts to not pay. The letters we received at halls in Uni were verging on scam scare tactics, big red letters/markings “YOU OWE £5000, URGENT” blah blah *if you watch live TV without a license in small writing. I knew a few people who paid for TV licenses despite not watching TV because of the vague wording.
They do it now with the whole “you need it for netflix / amazon video” without detailing it’s for channels broadcast not on-demand content from these services. I regularly see people confused who have got a license because they watch shit on Netflix.. They intentionally craft the communications to mislead and push people into purchasing licenses they do not require.
Paid huw 480000.00 not to be at work.
How in fuck would you expect people to fund that . And million plus for Gary liniker. Wtf people.
BBC is, objectively mostly shit.
They tell you they are important because they would , wouldn’t they.
Stop watching sh*t TV people.
1.3 mil paid to a man who built a career on football and selling crisps to fat children and 380k to a man who played football and now talks shite on the TV for a living.
And you want me to supplement this so-called groundbreaking *cultural* institution?
About as much culture as baked beans.
The reason the BBC pays these obscene salaries to these sub par presenters is so that half of it goes to the HMRC. Gary Linekar 1.5 million?? For what? He does fuck all. There is no way presenting news justifies someone being paid half a million pounds. That’s obscene. It’s not even news. It’s dog shit wrapped in horse shit. And I can read. I don’t need someone physically there to explain the agenda to me in form of a TV presenter. The BBC funnels most of its cash to the HMRC that way as a form of indirect taxation. The BBC is the government. Even though they like to pretend they are independent. Are you fuck?? Unplug your TV and don’t pay these cunts any more money.
First time I ever met a tv license inspector was a year ago. We had just moved into our new house and 2 weeks later I got a knock on the door (the previous owners had notified them about moving). He was dressed like an estate agent and tried to make some fake small talk before introducing who he was (I had to ask). I said I was busy and at work, and asked for him to come back later, he had the cheek to say no! Which then annoyed me further, I told him I don’t watch live tv/iplayer and I don’t need one, then he looked at the satellite dish on the wall and gave me a look, I told him that it was from the previous owners and we don’t use it, and then he decided he would come back.
I went on the website and declared I didn’t need one (didn’t provide my name), and that was the last I heard from him.
If someone DOES turn up at my door, can I say the sky dish is redundant?
Think how much extra money the BBC would have if they didn’t spend so much time and money on paper and postage.
They send letters to new businesses that open on Companies House. I have yet to work in a company that had a TV for staff.
Does anyone know how much they pay Crapita?
I am tempted to cancel it next year. The renewal was around when England went to the semis of Euro 2024. So I renewed. But as England didn’t win, and I don’t really watch much TV these days, I ll be cancelling after this one.
I have a lifetime supply of DVD and Blu ray movies anyway.
It’s going to die if it doesn’t change its business model in the future.the majority of people my age or younger don’t read or watch their stuff. the BBC is out of touch with young people and always has been. The last time I watched something on BBC was over five years ago at my dad’s lol. I haven’t read a BBC news article in maybe ten years either. So annoying they keep telling me I need a to pay the fee when I don’t even have a TV!
You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
The BBC is an amazing service. Please don’t get rid of it.