It even does have its uses, if it were not for the abomination it is in Germany. If it were not for the fact, that the public broadcasters are controlled by political parties and clearly are everything but unbalanced (ok, compared to the US they are, but non the less).
I would gladly pay the money for them, if it were not for the fact, that most of this goes into financing soccer rights and formula 1 rights. And some "Volksmusik" shit and such.
I have to pay (being a German citizen with our own household).
I could clearly see a real usecase for public broadcasting, not tied to advertising revenue, doing real investigative journalism and doing great documentations. But I am being naive here. And a dreamer.
This meme has to die as quick as possible. The public broadcasters themselves are "rechtsfähig" and can be sued. Every letter you get clearly says which public broadcaster is responsible for it and that name is written in large font in its header.
They make use of a central office (the Beitragsservice) to collect the fees for effiency reasons so that they don't need to have employees for that in every of the nine local broadcasters. Everything they do is done in the name of one public broadcaster. They just happen to use a common brand name for that work.
Google found me this example letter: http://www.nickles.de/user/images/14/fa13e73ef7b155fc4455777... Note how it says "Bayerischer Rundfunk" all over and tells you how to file a lawsuit – just as every official letter of a public institution does.
This can be seen all over public administration. Your local tax office is also not "rechtsfähig" and you can't sue it (but you can sue the state in which name it operates). You still wouldn't come to the conclusion that you shouldn't pay
The broadcasters are a public body (and not a private firm) but not part of the government. This is similar to the position of the pension insurers, health funds, most Sparkasse banks, the IHK and many more institutions.