David Wright wrote: > When I was a boy, the TV licence fee was taxed (called "duty") by the > government at 33%.
This has been a very interesting discussion as I am one who believes that information and media should be unrestricted and priced reasonably or subsidized by advertising. Being from the United States, the idea of paying a media license fee is abhorrent so I wanted to find out what a country such as Canada does. In the United States, it is forbidden by law for the federal government to broadcast directly to Americans so all broadcasting is either commercial or community/public broadcasting such as from universities and other schools and some religious organizations. Canada has a model which is close to what could be done in Britain and I wouldn't be surprised if, at some future time, Britain changes their model. In Canada, there is both a vibrant commercial radio and television industry and the CBC which is the Canadian government's broadcasting arm. The money to run the CBC comes out of the federal budget and is not tied to individual taxpayers. Look up the topic of a Canadian TV license fee and it has come up and been roundly dismissed. Australia also has a duel system which apparently has worked over time. Several years ago, one of the United States television networks did a story on the British TV license and showed agents in a van driving around looking for the tell-tale weak radio signals from the local oscillators of television tuners and then counting and matching the number of such signals with the number of residents in houses to see if anybody had an un-licensed television. Sometimes, they found them and people got in to trouble. They then showed a message airing on British television urging people to pay the license fees and in the announcement, several men are in a jail cell asking each other what they are in for. Answers are such things as murder, robbery and having an un-licensed television. Now think, for a second how much money it costs to outfit a van with high-quality broad-spectrum radio receivers, a person to drive and another to tune and evaluate what he/she is receiving and whether or not it is from a TV tuner or Heaven knows what else. These days, there is a faint and not-so-faint electronic smog everywhere from computerized gear that emits signals from below the AM broadcast band well in to UHF. These signals are what is called incidental radiation so I am not speaking about things such as WiFi and other one and two-way radio communication. This is just radio frequency noise that is the result of microprocessors and other switching circuits doing their thing and emitting signals more or less by accident. All that aside, think of the money that the BBC spends administering and enforcing the system that they have created. The United States is not immune to this sort of self-harm, either. It goes on at all levels from local government up to federal agencies. We have a problem so we must do this and that to make sure everybody pays. Oh my, they're getting around paying by doing X, Y, or Z, so we must make it illegal to--- and it goes on and on. It reminds me of a quote reportedly from Albert Einstein that says, "Clever people solve problems. Wise people avoid problems." As a newly-retired IT person, I am alarmed at the faction that just says "no" versus those who say, "Maybe we can work something out." That is much more positive and makes fewer people in to criminals. Martin