I have lived half of my life in Germany and still find it strange having GEZ, or whatever replaced it now, instead of everyone pays approach that most countries on the continent do.
What is that? Is there something in the EU that doesn't have a special tax or required paperwork?
This is somewhat of a 'compare and contrast' to the US Model, where either stations are funded by advertisements, or the public broadcasting stations that rely primarily on grants, as well as what they can get from the government; but in the case of the US, technically 'everyone' is paying into PBS whether they have a TV or not.
Entertainment is a multi billion dollar industry. Companies like Disney are making record profits. Instead of relying on taxes and fees to make government-approved entertainment why not simply... make content people want to watch?
Well, it's a question of which devil you want.
In the case of Disney, much of their profits are driven by an entire lifestyle that they are selling. There's the Media itself, but then all the toys, the amusement parks, etc. And all of the advertising that goes with those, and all of the social impacts it has as a result (see next point for more)
If you go for an advertising based model, You wind up with 2nd or 3rd order social impacts. Even in the 80s, the decade of 'greed is good', the FTC put limitations on advertising in children's programming due to the psychological impacts it had. (I'd be curious to see another good look taken today, but regulators are even more toothless now than they were then.)
In both cases, however, you are at the end of the day going to be beholden to either your advertisers, or your corporate overlords for your content. And if they don't like that content, it will not see the light of day in any meaningful form, regardless of the public interest.
I feel all approaches have their place, but perhaps the advertising model could use a bit more modernization in it's regulation, with what we now understand about behavioral psychology.
Because why bother when you get money from free by law through taxes?
Count your blessings, as at least the BBC produces world class content viewed worldwide(former Top Gear, Dr. Who, etc) so you get your money's worth but in Germany, ARF and ZDF receive nearly as much money as the BBC but produce almost nothing worth watching by the Germans, let alone abroad, because why would they give a fuck when than sweet taxpayer money keeps rolling in no strings attached regardless.
In any case, you're right, most of Europe has TV licenses of some kind or other [1]
Thought notably in the UK, you can certainly own a TV without paying TV license [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
It's definitely a thing here in Germany and Austria, and a relatively expensive one at that for just possessing a TV, and I'll bet my hat it's a thing in most EU countries.