The "TV licence" is sort of a running joke for Americans who engage in online argument with their
cousins in the British Isles and is often used as an example of the differences in social attitudes
and personal freedoms between the two regions. An American citizen has the privelege, nay, the right
to posess a firearm but the British citizen needs a licence to own a TV. The jokes write themselves
and the Americans laugh in semi-automatic gunfire - but all jokes aside, genuinely,
why do British people need a licence to own a TV? Can they get in trouble for owning a TV without a
licence? How does the government know if they do? Why do Brits tolerate any of this? These questions
all have very interesting - and if you're American hilarious­ ­- answers, so let's dive in.
Scottish inventor John Logie Baird is often credited with creating the world's first
mechanical television. He demonstrated it to scientists of the Royal Institution in 1926,
which is widely regarded as the world's first public television demonstration. It was a piece
of shit. The electronic television was invented shortly after but, well, just look at it. It
wasn't until after WWII that the technology became mainstream. This is why you may be
surprised to hear that the idea of the TV licence pre-dates even Baird's primitive invention.
The Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1904 regulated the transmission of messages using radio waves,
which was instrumental in maritime communication and becoming increasingly important in military
operations. At this time the General Post Office was seen as the administrative and regulatory
office for this stuff, because just like the post, it required delivery from a sender to
a receiver. Under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, the General Post Office implemented
a receiving licence for radio transmissions. If you wanted to receive radio transmissions,
you had to pay for an annual licence. Seeing as this technology was still somewhat experimental,
it didn't see a lot of use by the public, and in 1906, two years after the licence was introduced,
only 68 receiving licenses were issued. By 1914, this had risen to several thousand.
This was unfortunate for those people because that year the General Post Office announced the
licences were being suspended due to the First World War. The General Post Office informed the
licence holders that they were required to dismantle their receiving equipment.
By the 1920's radio technology was seeing rapid growth. This was the point when the General Post
Office realised they probably weren't going to be the masters of long-range communication forever,
and so they pushed for the establishment of the British Broadcasting Company in 1922,
now known as the British Broadcasting Corporation, or the BBC. Initially the
BBC consisted of radio manufacturers, who would produce radio programmes for users of
their products - the broadcasts being funded by the sale of their radio receiving sets. However,
in 1923 a licence was re-introduced to fund the broadcasts, which cost 10 shillings a
year. Thusly, the licence had shifted from being a regulatory measure to a vehicle for funding.
In 1927 the BBC went from a private company to a public service corporation, which it remains to
this day. The government doesn't directly control it, but it is subject to government regulation
as a public service. So, the BBC was creating broadcast programming for the general public,
and the General Post Office was funding it with the licence fees. When television
started taking off they did broadcasts on that too, starting in 1936, although this
was stopped during WWII to focus on radio. After WWII, TV saw huge growth worldwide,
and even though the BBC only had one black-and-white channel, they decided
people should pay a licence fee for that too. The first TV licence was introduced in 1946 and
cost £2 British pounds a year, thankfully this covered radio too so you only had to pay the
TV licence to legally receive both. With this the BBC was able to expand their programming.
Eventually colour TV came around and in 1968 a colour TV licence was introduced, meaning you
had to pay more for the colours. Believe it or not the licence still works like this, you can
get a monochrome TV licence for about £50 pounds and a colour one for about £150 pounds. Apparently
there are over 4,000 people in the UK still paying exclusively for the monochrome licence!
In 1971 radio was finally licence free, meaning only your TV required a licence. In 1991 the
responsibility of administering the TV licence was passed from the General Post Office to the BBC,
meaning the BBC is totally responsible for issuing licences and enforcing licence fee payment.
And this is where we are today. Through the licence fees and government funding the BBC
has expanded greatly with multiple radio stations and TV channels across the world. If you're in
the United Kingdom these channels are free, but you have to pay for a TV licence if you watch
or record television transmissions at the same time they are being broadcast, even if you're
not watching anything from the BBC. It's the law. Even if you don't have a TV and you watch
via internet streaming, you need a TV licence. So what if you don't have a TV licence? Well,
it's not required to buy a TV so it's fairly easy to just break the law and watch without a licence,
but the BBC takes this fairly seriously. They have a database of every household in posession of a
TV licence, meaning they know if you don't have one. If you're suspected of watching TV without
a licence, they may first initiate contact via unsolicited telephone calls or letters, which you
have no means of opting out of since they are not considered "advertising or marketing material".
A TV licensing agent, sometimes known as a TV licence inspector might make an unannounced
visit to your house. This has happened to me because Ireland similarly requires a TV
licence to fund our public broadcaster, RTÉ. After a brief confrontation he was
forced to apologise because his system was out of date and he went on his merry way to annoy
someone else. A TV licensing agent may ask for permission to enter your home and inspect any TV
receiving equipment. Athough you are under no obligation to grant this permission, they may
apply to a magistrate for a search warrant. They do try to avoid going down this route
by making use of detection equipment. Yes, they do use devices to detect TV's. They even have TV
detector vans that they drive around in making note of households they detected a TV in but
do not appear on their licence database. These vans are shrouded in secrecy as the BBC never
revealed to the public how many of these vans they own or how they operate, in an effort to
prevent evasion. This has lead to widespread speculation over if they really even exist,
with some believing they're merely a myth or a hoax to scare people away from evading
the licence fee. And while they are real, their effectiveness is debated - and the BBC
has probably exaggerated their capabilities. TV licence evasion is a prosecutable offence,
with a maximum fine of £1,000 pounds. It's not technically punishable by imprisonment,
but convicted offenders could be imprisoned on non-payment of the fine, although this is rare.
So why do the Brits allow the existence of the TV licence? Well, a majority aren't actually happy
with the system, for numerous reasons. The BBC no longer gets all their funds from the public,
they sell advertisements and licence their content. They've even copyright claimed one
of my videos for using a few seconds of footage from one of their shows, the bastards. So why are
they still making the public pay for them? Well, in 2017 the BBC had a total income of
just over £5 billion pounds - £3.83 billion of this, or 75% came from TV licence fees,
so they're not overly eager to get rid of it, considering it's their primary source of funding.
People are also turned off by how Orwellian enforcement of the TV licence fee seems. The
TV licence inspectors, the detector vans, the adverts. Yes, the BBC produces adverts designed
to scare you into paying your licence fee, the production of these adverts obviously being
funded by the licence fees. The tone of these ads often leaves a bad taste in people's mouths.
Another bone of contention, or rather the many bones, the entire skeleton of contention one
might say, is the many scandals the BBC has been involved in. The biggest example probably
being the Jimmy Savile controversy. Savile was a prominent host in BBC programming. After his
death in 2011, it was revealed that Savile was one of, if not THE most prolific sex offender
in Britain's history. These horrific crimes, many of which were alleged to have occurred during his
decades-long career at the BBC, led to accusations that the corporation was either complicit or
grossly negligent, which allowed their presenter to never have to face justice. After his death,
hundreds of allegations came to light - leading many to seriously distrust the BBC
and wonder who their licence fees were going to. There are many other reasons people aren't happy
with the licence fee, but I'll leave you with one more bizarrely interesting one. Enforcement of
the licence fee has come under fire for gender discrimination. In 2017, 72% of prosecutions
for TV licence evasion were against women. TV licence evasion is the most common offence for
which women are prosecuted in the UK. Women are ten times more likely to be convicted of this
than men. This extreme disparity has lead to many questioning if this is due to social factors or
discriminatory enforcement practices. There are many other countries that
issue TV licences, but there are even more that previously issued them and have since abolished
the practice. Will the UK ever join this list? This is an ongoing debate, many of its citizens
would hope so, but there are still many who view the BBC as an overall positive force,
and don't mind paying the licence fee to ensure it can continue to produce programming at the scale
and quality the broadcaster is renowned for, while remaining independent from commercial pressures.
And that's all the time I'm willing to dedicate to talking about TV licensing in the UK,
so I hope you enjoyed it. If you're American maybe this has provided you with more ammunition to make
fun of the TV licence, which is good because Americans can never have enough ammunition. If
you did enjoy the video, I have literally hundreds more, and if you'd like to see more in the future
then subscribe, because I release a new one every Friday. I hope to see you next Friday,
unless you're a TV licence inspector, in which case don't come back, and until then, stay safe.