(music)
There are rather a lot of TV detector vans in this area tonight.
New, more powerful vans.
If you don’t have a licence they’ll know just where to look for you,
and when you’re caught you can now be fined up to £400 ($550 USD, €460, $700 AUD).
The new TV detector vans, they’re in this area, now!
If you’re not from the UK, or even if you’re not of “a certain age”, you may not know
what a TV Detector van is, or even why they’re needed.
In the UK, the BBC or British Broadcasting Corporation is funded almost entirely by a
licence fee backed by law that states that anyone in the UK who watches live TV transmissions
needs to pay the licence.
The odd thing is you don’t even need to be watching BBC content – if you watch commercial
channels live, you still need to pay.
And the licence isn’t cheap – over £150 a year ($220 USD, €180, $280 AUD), so understandably
some people have wanted to evade paying, especially if they don’t watch BBC content.
The TV licence first appeared in 1946 when TV broadcasts resumed after the war.
The General Post Office or GPO was the regulator of public communications – in those days
if you had a telephone confusingly you got it from the Post Office.
But it was the GPO that took responsibility for collecting the TV licence.
Almost as soon as licence collection started, the BBC and the GPO started worrying about
licence evasion.
The first TV detector vans appeared on British roads in 1952 – converted Hillman Minx’s
and Morris Oxford’s with a large aerial stuck on the roof.
With few home appliances creating electrical interference, the vans detected the TV’s
magnetic field at a specific frequency.
By 1955 the second British TV network, ITV, had begun transmission.
With customers tuning to two different frequencies, plus the increasing number of cars at the
side of the road causing interference, a more refined detection method was needed.
Updated detector vans used a rotatable, highly directional antenna that had to detect a specific
TV signal from multiple locations to triangulate it.
The switch to higher quality 625-line UHF broadcasts meant more complex detection methods.
New Commer, Leyland and Dodge vans sported larger, rotating antennas.
A more expensive colour TV licence was introduced, and it was thought people might purchase black
and white licences while purchasing colour TVs.
Although exact detection technology isn’t known, it’s hard to think how a TV detector
van can detect the difference between a black and white and a colour TV set.
Heavy-handed adverts appeared, proliferating the idea that TV detector vans contained state-of-the-art
electronics and highly trained engineers, and they were scouring your area, ready to
prosecute you with large fines for non-payment.
Yes, there’s a TV set on number 5,
it’s in the front room,
and they're watching “Columbo”.
If you don’t have a TV licence, it won’t take us long to find you.
In 1991 the ownership of enforcement and prosecution was transferred to the BBC, and they rolled
out new Ford Transit detection vans.
But people started questioning the size of the TV detector fleet, and if TV detection
even worked, especially with increased electrical noise from other household gadgets.
Did the BBC even have any TV detector vans?
Detecting licence evaders where vans can’t go – for example a block of flats – is
a bit of a challenge, so the BBC started adverts in the 2000s showing hand-held TV detectors
“little bigger than a torch”.
Again, little is known of how these worked, how many were deployed, or even if they existed.
By 2003 the BBC said they’d removed the markings from their detector vans.
This was all to aid the BBC’s “covert operations”, and it meant that any van coming
down your street could be a TV detector van.
Or maybe none of them were?
TV detection became more of a challenge with the advent of flat screen TVs.
They emit a smaller signal, plus the proliferation of flat screen monitors meant traditional
TV detection techniques must surely have been rendered almost impossible.
In 2013 a freedom of information request revealed the BBC had started using optical TV detectors.
Few details are known, but the report stated the device uses a lens to collect faint flickering
light and turn it into electrical signals which can then be compared to live broadcasts.
Detractors claim TV detector vans are fake because a leaked 2013 report from the BBC
showed that of all the licence convictions from the previous year, none were from using
TV detector vans.
The BBC has claimed TV detectors and adverts are used as a “deterrent”, and “detection
equipment will only be used if other less intrusive and more cost-effective routes have
been exhausted”.
This might make you think that TV detector vans aren’t used, or only seldom used, and
that might be true, but it makes sense.
Why go to the expense of having people driving around all evening when it’s cheaper to
simply look up houses that recently stopped paying their licence, or simply look for houses
with an aerial or a satellite dish?
The BBC is very secretive about the number of detector vans that are in their fleet,
and this is likely because the fleet is so small.
If it were large, surely they would be shouting it from the rooftops as a way to deter licence evasion?
It’s clear that at one time or another TV detector vans did exist.
People have spotted them in their streets throughout the years.
However, how effective they were at spotting licence evaders, and how many of them were
used simply isn’t known, but it’s likely they aren’t particularly effective, especially today.
But that’s not to say you can get off without paying your licence.
In 2014, over 200,000 people were prosecuted or fined up to £1,000 ($1,400 USD, €1,150,
$1,800 AUD) for TV licence offenses.
Around 2012 the law was changed to make it a criminal offence.
Although licence evasion isn’t theoretically punishable by prison, if evaders continue
to refuse to pay, or are incapable of paying, a period of imprisonment may be imposed as
a “last resort”.
In 2013 more than 50 people ended up in gaol.
But be fair, apart from excellent drama, the natural history programmes, the sports coverage,
news, current affairs, documentaries, the consumer programmes, series, films,
Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3, Radio 4, children’s television, science, comedy, alternative comedy
and music.
What have the BBC ever given us?
Well, there’s chat shows.
Aw, shut up Wogan!
The BBC remains a great resource for all the reasons John Cleese just mentioned.
And you don’t need a licence to listen to BBC radio.
Before streaming services, needing a TV licence was clear cut.
If you had a TV, you needed a licence.
It’s not so clear now.
If you watch BBC content, or steam live commercial TV on your mobile phone, you need a licence,
but if you’re watching catch up TV from commercials channels, or if you’re watching
streaming services such as Netflix, you don’t, even if you’re watching it on a TV.
Although a TV licence may have made sense in 1946 when only a few owned a TV set, today
there needs to be a better way to fund national broadcasting that doesn’t waste money employing
an army of people tracking down and convicting people for evasion, or for enforcement officers
sitting in an unmarked TV detector van spying on the public.
Many European countries still have licence fees and some also used TV detector vans.
In Germany, everyone in the country has to pay irrespective of whether they have a TV or not.
Some countries such as the Netherlands have abolished a TV licence fee,
and now fund public broadcasting through tax revenues.