In the UK you always needed a TV license to watch live TV, even fully commercial stuff like Sky. Now that consumption is more on the streaming than the broadcast model, there needs to be a rebalancing to properly fund the subsidised channels.
Personally I think it’d be a lot better coming out of general taxation. The BBC is a public service like schools. You pay for schools whether you have kids in them or not, and it should be the same. That keeps it available for everyone, and in everyone’s interests to keep high quality. Requiring an extra payment for services which don’t get money out of it doesn’t make much sense.
Yeah I don’t get tax being particular to the thing excepting negative things. So I kinda get a gas tax especially if you want to reuce ice vehicles and such and like taxes on drugs and alcohol and gambling and such. Still not sure if those should be the base for roads and addiction counseling or such but I guess that gives a good idea of what the amount should be but it gets hinky of its actually effective at reducing the things.
Getting closer and closer to the old cable costs everyone cut the cord for.
I hear what you’re saying and I agree, but this specifically is just a BBC/british thing.
Overall all the streaming companies are raising prices for profit regularly and introducing ad tiers everywhere to enshittify it to the max. Can’t wait for them to start delivering targeted advertisements in the UI “but not in shows!” in all tiers, because that’ll come before they put ads in all tiers and introduce a new supertier that costs much more and has less ads. It’s all just $.
It amazes me the Brits don’t just add “TV license” to the tax pile rather than keeping it an individual fee. It’s such a nonsense game to pretend there are people in the UK who never watch TV/BBC.
They’ve been pretty conservative in terms of Europe. It’s the same mindset for people in the US who don’t want to pay for public transit because they “don’t live in the city” but sure love the subsidies those city workers provide in taxes to the state.