Readers outside the United Kingdom may not be aware of the concept of a television license. To briefly summarise: in order to be lawfully allowed to watch live television broadcasts on any channel, every British household must purchase a license. Money collected from the television licensing system funds the British Broadcasting Corporation – aka the BBC. The BBC runs several television channels and radio stations.
This funding method has existed in some form since the founding of the BBC in the 1920s, when a radio license was required to receive BBC radio transmissions. Prior to that, a separate license had existed for radio sets since 1906.
During the Second World War, the BBC suspended television broadcasts, and when these resumed in 1946, the first official license specifically for televisions was introduced. Television ownership increased dramatically in the early 1950s – especially in 1953 as people scrambled to watch the Queen’s coronation. And the BBC has kept this funding method ever since.
In those days, it made sense. The BBC was the only television broadcaster in the UK, and it had to get its money from somewhere. By introducing a separate tax – because the TV license is a tax, no matter what anyone may claim – that didn’t go into government coffers, the BBC could be operationally independent from the government, and thus be free to criticise it without accusations of bias.
The TV license is a tax on television owners. But unlike almost every other tax in the UK, it’s a regressive tax – that is, it disproportionately affects poor people. Most taxes are progressive – i.e. the more money you earn or have, the more you’re supposed to pay in tax as a percentage. Someone earning £14,000 a year pays less tax as a percentage of their income than someone earning £140,000 a year. But the television license costs the same regardless of income and regardless of wealth – meaning for someone on a low income, it’s a much larger cost proportionally. Therefore the television license hits working class and low-income households hardest.
This problem has existed since the TV license was first introduced. In its earliest days, however, it cost a lot less even allowing for inflation. It was only when colour television was introduced in 1968 that costs shot up close to the levels people are paying today. And in 1968, when colour television was a luxury that comparatively few people had, there’s a certain logic in pricing it accordingly. But unfortunately, even as colour television has become universal, the license’s high cost has remained.
A television license, which is valid for twelve months, is currently priced at £157.50 – that’s approximately $195. And in order to stay on the right side of the law, households must pay the license fee every single year without fail. Refusal to do so – even on legitimate grounds – results in harassment from the BBC’s “enforcement division”. They start by writing threatening letters, with BOLD BLOCK CAPITALS warning of an investigation into your lack of a license. They threaten you with in-home visits akin to having a bailiff show up, and often these people will be pushy, rude, and downright aggressive if they do pay you a visit. Even if you tell the TV licensing people that you don’t need to purchase a license as you don’t watch television, the letters still show up every so often.
My fundamental reason for opposing the license fee boils down to this: it’s out of date. In a world with cable and satellite television offering literally 500+ channels, and with the number of basic “freeview” channels approaching 100, forcing every household in the country to pay a tax that funds a tiny number of channels – which many people may not ever watch – is unfair. That’s not to mention the existence of streaming platforms and the internet. In short, the television license may have been well-suited to 1920 – or even 1970 – but there is no justification for it in 2020.
The BBC is a bloated organisation, too, and many of its financial decisions are questionable at best. Public service broadcasting in 2020 needs to fill a niche – it needs to offer something that commercial services aren’t due to those things being non-viable. Strictly Come Dancing, The Great British Bake-Off, Match of the Day, and many, many other shows simply do not fall into this category. Other television networks can – and do – make comparable shows, and the BBC doesn’t even do these shows better than the competition. Even a show like Doctor Who would be snapped up by another network if it were for sale. The cost of some of these programmes runs into the tens of millions of pounds – and that’s taxpayers’ money. Tax money, collected from people who can ill afford to pay the inflated rates, is being used to fund mediocre entertainment shows in 2020. I can’t be the only one who finds that utterly obscene.
In fact I’m not – and there’s a growing number of people who, like me, opt not to pay the television license. In my case the decision was a simple one: I don’t watch live television any more. I haven’t for a number of years, and I have no plans to start again. When Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, YouTube, and other services exist, there’s almost no point. The kinds of shows I like to watch are readily available to me via streaming platforms, and if I want to catch up on the news I can read the headlines any time I like online. Several newspapers offer paid subscriptions to their content, and honestly I’d rather pay that than pay the television license. The last BBC show that I was close to being a regular viewer of was Doctor Who, and as I’ve explained in the past, I gave up on that show as the quality declined.
BBC shows are often sold to other networks outside the UK. The money raised from selling the rights to some of the organisation’s most popular series, like Top Gear or Doctor Who, gives the BBC an additional source of funding – demonstrating clearly that some of its content is commercially viable, and providing another great argument for scrapping this unfair tax.
The issue of abolishing the television license seems to face three hurdles: the first is nostalgia for the “good old days” when the BBC was the only game in town, the second is fear of what will happen to its content, and the third is that currently the BBC doesn’t run any commercials, which is something people appreciate. While nostalgia and brand loyalty can be difficult to overcome, the second two points are easily solved. Firstly, the BBC’s content will still be made. As happened with The Great British Bake-Off, other channels and networks will buy up the best properties. They may even keep the same name, logo, format, and even presenters. Some minor shows may fall by the wayside, but the best ones will be snapped up. Secondly, one of the options for the BBC’s future will be a paid-subscription model, and in such a case it may not need to have ad breaks. Even if they choose not to go down that route, Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and other online streaming services don’t run ads, so there are great options for ad-free viewing. I think as more people try out one or more of these services and see how easy they are to use and how much content is available, that last hurdle in particular will melt away.
Some people have claimed that the BBC’s news output – and the BBC World Service in particular – is somehow vital and alone is worth the cost of the television license. The World Service is a separate entity, broadcasting on shortwave and often being received in parts of the world where international news is difficult to obtain. But again, as the internet and smartphones become readily available in the World Service’s main markets, like central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, this is getting harder to justify. Secondly, there’s no reason why the World Service couldn’t continue in some form, funded directly by the government through general taxation. As for the BBC’s main domestic news broadcasts, well let’s just say there’s a reason why television journalists are about as popular as stepping in dog shit. There are a number of other news broadcasters in the UK, as well as international broadcasters whose output can be received via cable or satellite. Nothing the BBC does, not even its news, is essential any more. And to burst the last bubble, the BBC’s news output is no less biased than Sky, ITV, or other major broadcasters. They haven’t been impartial for a long time.
The question of the BBC’s future crops up if we talk about abolishing the television license. I wouldn’t expect the organisation to simply be shut down, at least not immediately. It would likely try to continue in some form, either by using the aforementioned subscription model, or by implementing commercial breaks. It would be a change, but if the BBC could trim the fat and downsize, producing less content but becoming more specialised, there’s no reason it couldn’t stand on its own and be financially viable.
The BBC charter – which includes the television license – is renewed every ten years. The last renewal was in 2017 and will thus expire in 2027. There is ample time for the BBC to make extensive arrangements to find an alternate method of funding. There are seven full years for the necessary arrangements to be made, allowing the license fee to cease to exist in 2027 in a way that is fair to the organisation. It would be a minor upset to some people, sure, but the way entertainment has shifted online in the last two decades shows no signs of slowing down, so by 2027 I think it’s not unfair to assume that more and more content will be consumed that way. Thus the BBC will be even more outdated than it already is. It will require some bold action from the government to swing the axe, so to speak, but it will be worth it in the long run. Abolishing the license fee is actually a popular policy position – whenever the public have been polled on the issue in recent years, abolishing the television license altogether has been by far the most-preferred option.
This regressive tax, which hits the lowest-income households hardest, needs to go. It’s simply not fit for purpose any more, and in 2020 there’s no longer any reasonable justification for it. Our media landscape is so diverse now that there isn’t any need for the BBC in its current form. It’s high time to scrap the television license.
Watching live television in the UK without a license is illegal, and I do not condone failing to abide by the law. There can be legal consequences for non-payment if payment is determined to be required. This article is designed to be informative about the practice of television licensing, and to argue that the tax should be abolished altogether through lawful means; it is not advocating non-payment of the license fee where payment is necessary, nor should anything said above be interpreted in that manner. This article contains the the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 