Does your gov charge you to watch tv?

Years ago I was watching a tv show and it showed these men going around with some sort of antenna checking to see if people were watching their tv's illegally. I thinki t was England, apparently you have to pay a fee to to be able to view any tv at all and if you turn it on without paying the fee they can arrest you and throw you in jail. Does anyone else know about this, I know I did not imagine it. Also if you live where they charge for you to turn your tv on does that also apply to being able to use your tv for nintendo and playstation or games of that sort?

Yes we are charged for watching the TV, have to have a TV license, roughly 120.00 pounds a yr

Now that just suxs! What do you get for your 120 pounds a year, do you have a lot of channels do you have to pay for them also, and if you use a playstation do you have to pay the tv charge to use it since you have to hook it up to a tv to use it? Gosh the queen should let you have free tv. I hope she doesn't give George D for dumbazz Bush that ideal.

We have to pay for TV in austria too, what really sucks is you get only 3 austrian channels with normal TV antenna.

If you want cable you have to pay more.

Costs a fortune in the end to watch a few crapy TV shows...

Yes we have to pay afor a television licence. I think I pay about £29 pounds approx a quater. Its cheaper if you have a black and white telly.They license is to pay for the BBC and technically you have to pay if you have any sort of receiver that can pick it up. I even heard once that if you have a black and white telly but have a video that can pick up a colour signal that you would still have to pay for a colour licence. A lot of people don't really believe that the detector vans actually detect and are more of a deterant but whether this is true or not I don't know.When you buy a new telly, you have to give your name and address so that they know whether you should have a licence or not. It's not really fair cause we have to pay even if we don't want to watch the BBC.

It's bad enough I have to buy the TV, pay for electricity and then for cable. There is no way I'm going to pay for a license to watch TV.

I think in the beginning in Canada they may have had this or were considering this idea. I know at one time you did have to have a license to have a radio in the early days. Maybe it proved too unpopular?

Anyways we have the blood sucking CBC to pay for out of tax dollars and their prime agenda is to ensure their own survival.

Thank heavens we have the BBC and the license fee.

I can honestly say it is worth every penny, just for Eastenders! LOL!

But seriously, I don't expect all of you to understand but most brits are happy to pay for the TV license as long as the BBC keep delivering the goods.

If it wasn't for the BBC, we wouldn't have the excellent quality of Channel 4 News (created to compete with the quality service from the beeb). We wouldn't have a Sky News and CNN so different from the crap service you receive in the states (still poor news but nothing like the junk you yanks get spoon fed).

Some things are worth paying for, the BBC is most definately one of them, do you yankies have any idea what it is like to be able to watch TV all evening without seeing one single advertisement? I didn't think so.

Maybe you'd rather keep your £100 and buy a bigger TV to watch your junk programmes on, we'll keep paying for the BBC thankyou.

In some countries I have lived in the TV licence/Broadcasting fee has ultimately been cancelled for being non-collectable.

And there were running jokes about what a TV was for, eg "I only use it to watch videos" or "That's not a TV, it's a fish tank".

I have never paid for TV. Never will. It's not called the Idiot Box for nothing.

In the Netherlands you have to pay to see tv and listen to the radio.

Now how in carnation would they know if you have one of those mini jogging am/fm radio thingie's??

Your a foul if you pay the TV license.
If they come a knocking at your door tell em to f off and come back with a warrent so they can enter your house.
They never come back.

Not in the US but im shure sooner or later they will.
And I thought hacking satt TV was fun.
What do you do to get around paying ?

I'd never heard of that before. If it were to happen in Canada I wouldn't pay it, I don't have cable or anything now anyway. tv sucks!

This is a popular tactic, although it makes you appear guilty as hell. My mates recently moved into a flat, one minute they had a beautiful young lady at the door asking some questions and if she could come in, next thing she is sitting on their sofa, taking their license fee.

Britman, your idea is obvious, and probably wouldn't work nowadays, the gov are desperate for that license fee, they are adopting new (beautiful woman at the door inviting herself in) tactics. Most blokes who refuse to pay for their TV licenses are also the type of blokes that wouldn't say no if a beautiful woman turns up at the door and invites herself in.

I will always be happy to fund the beeb as long as it provides the good quality service it currently does. Say what you like about the BBC, I think it is great and we should fight to keep it, license fee and all.

Not since I been sattelite haX0ring the planet!

Just kidding of course...Everybody pays for TV...right..

The consumer pays for it whichever system is in place. The difference is with a license-based system narrow genres get aired. Also, they can focus on quality instead of having to be slaves under revenue from commercials. Moreover, if they were to air utter crap you can demand in the name of democracy that the management is replaced.

Unfortunately, we all pay for the commercial stations because the money spent on commercials by companies is taken from revenue they get from the goods they sell. So, in effect, the consumer pays for this form of marketing, without the opportunity to demand anything. Every company advertises and you have to be totally subsistent to not pay.

That won't come to Canada or the US. They do that because they don't have commercials. The only channels that don't have commercials you pay extra for with cable or are PBS. PBS sucks and if they started charging people for PBS people would say screw it. Let PBS have their stupid pledge drives. I stopped watching PBS when I turned 4 and grew out of Sesame Street.