Do you support SRG SSR? and in extension Serafe AG? Why yes/no? Please explain if you can and please read before posting.

16 comments

1. What’s the point of worrying about this when it was already voted on a few years ago? No politician will bother touching this issue for at least a decade now, as the people have spoken resoundingly in favour of the licensing fee: https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/votes/20180304/popular_initiative_abolition_billag_fees.html

2. This disussion was held at length for the 2018 popular vote. There’s actually a Serafe post just a few threads down from yesterday with lots of arguments.

   > SRG SSR charges people as long as they have a device that is capable of radio transmitting

   That’s not how it works anymore. It’s been changed to a device-independent household fee.

   By the way, SRF also has a news portal and a news app. That’s the one service I use from them.

3. The fee is not just for SRG SSR. It also goes to a lot of local chanels either TV or radio who do play a massive role into getting local information and news. Seriously do a bit of local activism and having the local TV or radio channel turn up will make a massive difference. There’s sports, clubs, societies that entirely depends on these small radio station for 30-50k people.

   But just for the SRG SSR: A public service should not be seen as a capitalism venture like Netflix. That is the number 1 big issue with all of these debates. The SBB CFF FFS are the same. The hospitals are the same. The Postal service are the same.
   You pay to have them available not to use them all the time. Public broadcasting should not be left to the hands of the Berlusconi, Blocher, Murdoch and the like. Especially with the multi linguistic profile of the country. Seriously browsing the internet as a minority language in Switzerland means 90% of the time you’ll get stuff served in German because “meh most Swiss speak German use the German version.” And it freaking sucks. I’ll survive because I can often flee to English, but damn the Coop ads in Swiss German on Youtube are a PITA. And while yes they have entertainment which “compete” with Netflix, they also have documentaries, investigative reporting, customer protection services, political debate playgrounds,…

   [For example the French speaking section just published in association with the french speaking Customer Protection Association a massive health inssurance comparative tool, and thanks to the fee, you get it without suspecting it being a sneaky play by some people to get comissions](https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/12540847-assurance-maladie-notre-outil-pour-comparer-les-primes-et-les-prestations.html)

   Because you have no use for them doesn’t mean others don’t.

4. 1. Not really comparable as Netflix doesn’t make any Swiss specific content, doesn’t need to employ anyone in Switzerland, and has a lot of economies of scale from being a huge global company that a Swiss broadcaster can’t have. It also doesn’t produce any news or live content that is more expensive.

   2. SBB receives a hell of a lot of federal subsidy, 6.5 billion CHF in 2020! (4.4bn in 2019 for a non pandemic year). So Swiss people are paying a lot in order to get train services they may never use, or even be able to use. So I don’t buy this argument either

   Conclusion

   This was voted on a couple of years ago, the voters decided to keep the charge. I don’t think you will find much appetite for voting on the same topic again any time soon. Try again in 5-10 years to collect the signatures.

5. I think having something like SRF is necessary and valuable especially when it comes to news, journalism, research of background information, formats about politics, consumer protection etc.

   The “free market” won’t provide such content in a suffiecient quality and therefore journalism would be more and more subject to manipulation by those who can afford it. We already see such tendencies in print media where rich entrepreneurs and politicians (and their staw men) bought a lot of newspapers.

   Also we can’t leave the field to all the disinformation that is spread on social media etc. Researching facts and presenting them costs time and money. Spreading lies is quick and cheap. If there is no investment in the research and presntations and facts, there will only be lies left.

   But indeed one can discuss if SRF allocates their funds properly. To me personally, a lot of what they spend money on isn’t interesting. In my opinion the majroity of their funding should go into journalism. More investigative approaches would be highly appreciated by me. On the other hand I assume that if they’d do more investigative journalism the political pressure would become stronger and stronger because those criminals who have to fear investigative journalism are mostly the same that want to get rid of SRF anyway.

6. Yes it’s necessary, if not we end up with news like in the US

7. Serafe is charged per houshold. The average houshold size in Switzerland is [2.21](https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/effectif-change/households.html) people.

   So Serafe charges more like 1:2.21. You could also half the yearly price, bringing it much closer to your Netflix numbers. And yes, Netflix also allows families or households to access a single account. The most basic version only gives access to 480p video, which I consider extremely low and barely enjoyable. These two services aren’t easily comparable. As has been mentioned already, Netflix can scale more easily and doesn’t produce news and live content.

   I’d argue news is more valuable to a population and society as compared to entertainment. Now of course news isn’t the only purpose of Serafe, but it is where it’s focus lies.

   I’d argue a fairer comparison would be with any tv network that’s actually producing live content.

   More than 3.72 million use these services as not everyone who uses them accesses them every 24h.

   As much as I love Google Maps, I don’t want it to be the only source of traffic information. Traffic information is arguably a bad example for local news, as it can be “easily” aggregated by for example Google. Can Google just as easily aggregate data on a local sporting event, interview people and produce a news segment on it?

   Personally I don’t watch TV. I still think Serafe payments are justified. I like to listen to podcast versions of radio brodcasts. I quite like the SRF news app. And for these extra ordinary news events I sometimes like to stream a news broadcast from SRF in their app.

   Personally I don’t care much for your comparison with SBB CFF FFS. I eant both to get funded. They have different models of funding. Both receive public money. It’s more difficult to control who accesses information as compared to who accesses public transport. Therefore it is more difficult to charge people per use when it comes to tv and radio broadcasting. An effective system would create a large technological and bureaucratic overhead.

   I firmly believe that access to information for everyone in a society is essential for a free and open society.

8. I think you’re making comparisons here that shouldn’t be made. But you can of course argue about whether you want to have an SRG and what size it should be.

   In my opinion, it is needed, because otherwise we would have significally less quality tv and radio journalism. Especially with regard to public service.

   Btw, if you compare the costs of the SRG with the costs of state television in our neighboring countries, it is actually relatively small.

   The only negative point for me is that Serafe now collects the fees, don’t understand why they chose them.

9. I’m gonna try to explain why I think it’s necessary, by answering some of the points you made in your post, as well as in the comments.

   -It’s not state sponsored media. This is exactly why we pay a yearly fee, instead of just financing it through taxes. It’s to avoid the political parties currently in power trying to influence a media outlet, that is supposed to be as neutral and objective as possible, by arguing, that they’re financing it.

   -you should not compare it to Netflix, because Netflix and the SRG don’t offer the same services, to the most extent. Firstly (and I know you mentioned it, but still) they offer Radio broadcast, online news articles, live TV, and so on and so on. Furthermore it servers a immensely smaller audience (about 70 times smaller according to your numbers if I’m not mistaken). Taking this into account, I believe that it’s actually quite impressive that it only costs us 5.5 times what Netflix costs.

   -SBB CFF FFS is not entirely and only financed by it’s ticketing. If I’m not mistaken, about 50% of it’s finances come from taxes. So even if you don’t ever use it, you pay for other people using it. There’s no use in trying to view this from a purely capitalistic point of view, because it doesn’t work, and it’s not how public services work. It’s the same as with public health services. You pay for it, for the case that you need it. Or more precisely, for the people that need it.

   -Which would, for example, be the entire romansh speaking community. Without SRG, they’d probably have little to no media available in their language. Yes, sure, they could watch it in english, or german. But still.

   In conclusion, I believe it is very important for the functioning of a democracy, to have a neutral, objective, and financially stable and independent media outlet. And that just wouldn’t be possible without it being financed by a fee or through taxes.

10. I was pro SRG before covid, because to me having a state-financed reputable news etc. was important.

    Now that I see how shitty they actually do it with all the false balancing and just plain ignoring of important stuff, no real journalism going on etc., I think I was wrong.

    Also as a long-term single person I am quite angry that I have to pay the same amount as a family of 7 or so, it should be per (adult) person or something.

11. Do not support it at all, just like I also don’t support the military.

12. If you’re genuinely interested in opinions, insights and arguments pro and contra SRG / fees, I can warmly recommend you familiarise yourself with [either side’s committee argumentaria, parliamentary debates from all parties, Vernehmlassungsantworten, voting materials, vote results etc.](https://swissvotes.ch/vote/617.00) published in view of the popular vote we had on this particular issue three years ago.

13. I don‘t really like your comparison and I think what direction you want to go…you seem to want to shutdown public service media. But then we end up like the US with right-wing and left-wing extremist medias.

    We can discuss Serafe for sure, but not the whole idea of public service media!

14. I have no TV subscription at home, but Iisten (background noise) to the public radio stations while cooking on the evening and on the week-ends. Also when I want to read a quick news article, I always go lookup the SSR website (swissinfo.ch).

    In a world where corporations control more and more the news broadcasting. I find that having a public funded, but independent, news service is really necessary.

15. I can see both sides. Since OP is against SRG, let me argue the other side: why is SRG a good thing?

    As long as the Swiss government does not force SRG to be a propaganda instrument, the state-organized funding allow SRG to provide a more-or-less neutral voice on topics of the day. This is the Raison D’être for SRG. Importantly, the same offerings and same information is then made available in the main three Swiss languages.

    Look at the broadcasters in the US. Because broadcasters must fight for an audience, they try to secure audiences by being provocative. Tabloid broadcasting. You have the ones on the left that promote liberal causes and demonize the right. You have the ones on the right that promote conservative causes and demonize the left. There are no neutral voices. This is part of the reason that the political divide in the US is so extreme.

    This divide would be worse in Switzerland, because of the different language regions. Likely, there would be relatively little Swiss content – we would have to settle for German, French and Italian broadcasters.

    ​

    A secondary purpose of SRG is to support Swiss culture. On the world scale, Switzerland is tiny. Basically no one is going to produce documentaries or films that promote Swiss culture, and certainly not in all Swiss languages.

    Comparing SRG to Netflix isn’t really fair, precisely because SRG is not there to make money. They are there to provide a common source of information, cultural offerings and entertainment, across all language regions of the country. Without SRG, there would be little Swiss content. Instead, the individual regions would be dominated by content from our larger neighbors.

16. This thread is hilarious. Op lures people in with “*help me […] understand the different perspectives of the aforementioned topic. I would like to encourage any criticism towards my argument*”.

    At the first sign of dissent starts calling people braindead and going on about authoritarianism.