Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous. Targeted at 70+ pensioners, but why should I pay for their entertainment...

My girlfriend would gladly pay for being able to access BBC UK series, but that's apparently impossible. They've made some horrible contracts with BBC International that seem to prohibit that. It makes no sense that she has to resort to illegal streaming even though she'd love to be a paying customer.

Another problem is also that BBC International creates and distributes US productions that are far below their normal standards. So if you're looking for BBC nature documentaries, for instance, you have to manually sort out all those trashy international productions that are like National Geographic commercials. As I've said, it's a shame.

That's interesting what you have to say about international vs domestic documentaries. Could you give an example of either group?

I mean, I appreciate the BBC documentaries that I've seen for their high production quality and photography, innovative CGI and all, and I think they inspired and pushed the limits and budgets for TV documentaries worldwide. But personally, I prefer old-school quiet and scientific documentaries having extended interviews with leading scientist of a field and generally are about a scientific discourse rather than CGI-heavy interpretations of historic, cosmic, or paleo events; you know the kind where dinosaurs look up to an approaching meteorite in sorrow, or idk Alexander the Great is portrayed as a vulgar commander yelling at his men, with lots of made-up ethno kitsch and sensationalist commentary. But perhaps these latter ones are exactly the kind you're not so appreciative of.

I do as well. The BBC actually produces a lot of these types of documentaries but they are probably not sold to broadcasters outside of the UK. I presume it's because they lack the big-budget, glossy look that is attractive to bigger audiences (and to international broadcasters). Or sometimes documentaries are trimmed or edited for international audiences. (I don't know if this is the BBC editing the programme or the broadcaster who bought the programme.)

A lot of the "old-school quiet" documentaries can be found on BBC4 - a specialised channel that shows programmes on specialised or niche topics.

The production cost ratio is probably 1-100 or 1-1000, at least, between the old school, interview-an-expert type, and the dramatized CGI-heavy ones, so it is strange that so much money is put into production of documentaries with so little factual content value.

Honestly I think it has a general pro-government-of-the-day-bias - as you say, 'used to be the witty cry', indeed! Under New Labour it was still broadly speaking pro-government (generally, it's never totally uncritical, just tending towards friendliness relative to the opposition of the day), it was just a different government with different values.

But people don't notice when something stops being biased against them if they've already stopped paying attention to it because they were previously put off by their perception of its bias, so many of these older perceptions of its bias still exist. This creates the illusion that there's bias both ways, based on people's claims, and that it therefore must be 'balanced'.

>It seems impossible to imagine the BBC being truly unbiased

Thought example. If there was a truly objective, unbiased source of information about political and physical reality, wouldn't it be far too valuable to put in charge of a news desk. They should be running the government in place of the parliament and politicians!

Of course, if you find the idea somehow troubling, this is to demonstrate that unbiasedness is actually more difficult concept than is sometimes given credit for.

But in all seriousness I do accept that unbiased outlets basically don't really exist and it is an impossibly high bar. The reason I talk about this in the way that I do is not as some kind of campaign against the BBC: on the contrary, I think public service broadcasting is in general a good thing and frequently produces higher quality content than the vast majority of privately owned outlets, at least in the UK, despite its biases.

It's just that to me, everything has a bias, and it's important to understand what any particular outlet's biases are before you start accepting information from it. I'd say this is the one redeeming feature of our print media, despite how much crap they often produce, they are at least usually very open about their biases.

You can get a lot of good information out of the BBC news and politics programmes, but I'd say you do have to use a fairly critical lens to get the most out of it.

It's not possible to be an unbiased news reporter. The only thing we can wish for is reporting that wears its bias on its sleeve.

What is this "unbiased" reporting anyway? It can only mean that I happen to share the bias.

Any reporter who thinks their work is unbiased is a reporter who is unaware of their bias; which is much more dangerous than a reporter who is biased, and doesn't care who knows it.

Usually a solid amount accusing her of towing the party line, being friends with Boris, Tory mouthpiece etc then another bunch accusing her of being an example of how the BBC is full of leftie communists who want to reverse brexit. Both equally vitriolic.

The way she draws the hate from both sides is impressive.

Edit: it's definitely going to get worse. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bbc-richard-s...

There is no way that anyone with that level of donation to any political party can ever pretend that they or their organisation is "impartial". Being a Brexiteer just makes it even more ludicrous and guarantees that all the ongoing problems and losses of Brexit will be hidden by the state broadcaster.

I was about to say the opposite:

https://order-order.com/2021/01/08/bbc-uses-old-picture-to-h...

Regularly watching BBC World I've yet to see the both-sideism you describe. As if on the same level? Well in relation to another bete noir, you'll likely get to see an interview with Greta T. (zero academic qualifications) while waiting interminably to hear any (usually edited) counter-position from (for instance, there are many others) Richard Lindzen (with around 200 peer-reviewed papers in atmospheric climatology, MIT emeritus professor) or Judith Curry (https://curry.eas.gatech.edu/currycv.html).

That said, it depends on the demographic you want to represent.

https://www.britbox.com/

https://bylinetimes.com/2021/01/06/new-bbc-chairman-richard-...

The DG was also a former deputy chairman of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative party.

https://inews.co.uk/news/tim-davie-new-bbc-director-general-...

There's the Britbox streaming service, but I have no idea whether it is international. Otherwise, there's limited amounts of BBC content on Netflix. But again, that may just be the UK version.

small demography of 9MM, so the only way to differentiate themselves against bigger German channels is to produce content specifically for that niche. Shows in Austria/CH only value-add are a "local dialect" of actors, or setting the plot/story within Austria/CH. Other than that it's either a poor local copy of German shows (which are often copies of international shows).

Having been spoiled by British quality TV for a couple of decades I'd say the BBC is an incredible high yardstick, impossible to reach not just for Austria, but there is nothing like it in DACH.

One of my biggest annoyance by far is the dubbing of OC into German. They have only a handful of voice-over actors who they rotate for these jobs so the lead-act of every other movie has the same voice[0].

As a child I thought one of the reasons Eddie Murphy was so funny was because of his incredibly high-pitched voice[1]. Once people sit through the dubbed content most of the meaning and jokes are lost.

While other Europeans grow up watching things like Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses and such classics in their __original__ language, I have not 1 German-native friend who is able to follow English language on TV (even there are subs) and they will never get to appreciate other excellent shows like Norseman, Gomorrah, Suburra, because it's "too difficult to read the subs" and they didn't have to since they were kids.

[0] Dennis Schmidt-Foß has given voices to Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Eddie Murphy and others. In fact the situation with E Murphy was so bad/ridiculous that they decided to give him a _new_ voice!! That's right the same person now has a different voice and nobody thinks that's odd.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKGAOM0mAOo

Good series or programs produced by public television you can count on one hand. Literally.

Indeed, they also invest most of their money in entertaining old people. This may be due to the aging population, but I'd rather assume it's good old grifting.

Indeed very few programmes appear to be made by the BBC.

It seems like what happened/happens is that producers form their own private company, do the work for the BBC but the public don't get to keep the benefit of the work paid for the benefit gets locked away to provide private gains.

Long running programmes are now made by third parties when they could easily be made by the BBC proper, Gardeners' Question Time, say.

In part is to serve 'talent', but BBC's remit is to fill the gaps where commercial programmes don't go, to be distinctive, so they should never be paying £millions for a talk show host.

If you're going to use public money then you should be benefiting the public as much as possible, not carefully twisting it to get private profits.

This is by notorious awful tv station Channel 5, and is not paid for by the license fee. (In fairness, it's not amongst their most terrible content; about half of their programming amounts to "Look! Poor people! Haha!", and despite the name this isn't really an example of that.)

Everyone else often had cable or SAT, which gave you all the German and also Swiss networks, particularly the private ones, where the program is aimed at different demographics (also possible because of vastly larger pockets: German ad market >> Austrian ad market)

At least ORF tried to modernize its image, but do you want to lose your main demographic as well? Can you compete (financially) with German private TV and pay TV? Not to mention Netflix, Disney+, etc? There is not really a way out.

So were stuck with Skiing, Austrian Soccer, Tatort and Gaming show clones. At least there is a lot of cooperation/joint shopping with German and Swiss (public) stations.

The self-created German content could be worse though. Tatort can be quite nice, it is not aiming to be CSI - and that can be a good thing.

I do have to agree, so, that the home-grown entertainment sucks. In Germany as well. It is funny, so, that german public TV is not allowed to create their own streaming service and a lot of content has to removed from their online offerings after a certain period of time. Which kind of sucks. Especially since the rights catalogue of the public German networks, ARD and ZDF, used to be quite impressive. They just decidded to never show any of it before midnight, if at all.

This is the kind of TV program that I think has contributed to the UK's extreme stinginess and bureaucracy of benefits; in aggregate it's probably got people killed. Cherry-picking the most lurid stories to make people look bad.

It's also not a BBC show, it's by Channel 5!

I'm with a lot of people that the BBC can produce great stuff, but only when it remembers to be Reithian and the managers aren't looking. These days most of the BBC content I watch comes from BBC4, plus the output of David Attenborough.

(ORF produce exactly one show with an international reputation: the New Year's Day concert from Vienna, which is lovely)

The show that demonizes, humiliates and dehumanizes working class people by filming them being evicted?

> The show that demonizes, humiliates and dehumanizes working class people by filming them being evicted?

The show that highlights, amplifies and prioritises the voices of working class people by filming them being evicted?

Thank you for pointing this out. I don't know British TV well so I wrongly assumed it was another show, because it sounded like it. The show I originally thought OP was referring to is called 'Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away!'. It is bile. That is what my above comment is really responding to.

It's sad to see people actually laughing at others' misfortune such as this youtuber, who has made a compilation of 'Craziest Freakouts Ever!' with clips from 'Can't Pay? We'll Take it Away!': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0kO9TA96h4

Often the enforcement agents have empathy with the people they are enforcing against, particularly when it's clear that the person has a struggle that's no fault of their own. They're far less sympathetic to wealthier people who are just ignoring their responsibilities and trying to get away with it.

At least that's how I remember the show, I haven't actually watched broadcast TV for at least 2 years now.

There are many working class people who are not on benefits or being evicted. You may wish to look for evidence of bias closer to home.

This was literally the first piece of mail I got when I moved to Germany: a letter demanding I pay for the TV networks I don't watch. I didn't even own a TV by that point, nor would have understood much of what was being said! A German explained to me once that the forced payment by non-watchers is justified as it benefits society as a whole. I must say, I've now found some of the programming on the publicly funded TV stations is actually pretty good.

When Norway recently moved to tax funding state media, I think they solved this by making it a completely separate dedicated tax. At least that's what was discussed, not sure about the details of the final implementation. So it can only be changed by a vote in parliament, which is more visible to the public, can take more time, and requires a majority of parties to agree on that specific change.

But otherwise, the “government” can always alter the tv license fee, or the tax. It’s always under their control, and changing its label doesn’t do anything.

Their Montreux show about the winter olympics on Lillehammer is also hilarious: https://tv.nrk.no/serie/montreux/1994/FKUN46000293

Austrians public broadcasters, the ORF, are way better than that even. They mutineed against the attempt to install pulitical operatives at the head of the organisation. They even end interviews with gvernment secretaries if they don't get strsaight answers.

That is hardly a strong endorsement.

As far media and press is concerned, fact based and neutral is the strongest endorsement I can think of.

That being said, i fell like the state TV is the opposite. Only neutral news, facts without much of an opinion. For me it's not enough to follow the news since I can't be an expert in everything. I need voices from a certain my political spectrum that write what they feel about laws and processes. Environmental activists commenting environmental laws etc. Thats why I read the newspaper additionally. It's certainly not unbiased, but still independent.

Edit: When I say 'how' I don't mean 'why', I mean 'by what means'.

A notable case in 2009 was the contract as Editor in Chief of Nikolaus Beendet, which wasn't extended since Roland Koch didn't want to and went up to the Constitutional Court, which ruled that there was too much political influence at ZDF, leading to changed oversight, which still is close.

TlRecent case is the "coalition crisis" in Saxony-Anhalt, where the parliament blocked the new rates.

But it's complicated as bodies need some form of democratic legitimation and with the "Sozialwahl" we have one failing experiment of doing extra elections, aside from parliament elections ... where nobody knows who the candidates are and what they do ...

One other way is to have former press and spokes persons from a government taking up positions at the braodcasters. When the current (?) spokesman of Angela Merkal left as a news presenter from the ARD (or ZDF, to lazy to loo it up...),that was regarded as a braek from customs and more or less a no-no affecting the independance of these broadcasters.

TL;DR: Political parties, and not so much the "government", use soft power to influence these briadcasters. Quite often by having certain people selected for certain jobs.

Which other independent private business can just straight up charge you without you signing up for their service beforehand?

In Germany and I guess, in most countries, the public broadcasters are basically low-key propaganda arms of the government. The whole separate tax thing is a intermediate smokescreen to give the public the illusion of independence.

In Germany specifically it is not a revolving door between public broadcasting and politics, and there is clearly journalistic pride in taking down corrupt politicians, so while it is always good to be suspicious of media calling it a propaganda arm is overstating it. Media isn't always neutral but privately financed isn't more neutral than others.

Do you really think that money is no strings attached? Ideally it would be and I guess that's the idea on paper but in practice, the public broadcasters almost never criticize the ruling coalition on the "don't bite the hand that feeds you" rule.

IIRC during the 2015 migrant crisis, no public debate was allowed on public TV over the decisions made to open the borders and the only opinion allowed on TV was that "it's good for everyone" with any argument against mass immigration (not immigrants themselves) heavily verboten.

That's the guiding theory at resulted in most European countries having some variation of a public broadcaster funded by TV (formally radio) licences.

There are many implementation differences between countries and none of them are perfect but I would argue that those I'm familiar with serve their purpose.

We pay for many things we can not use, roads where we don't live, schools we can not attend and health care for the opposite sex. That does not mean public funding is good in itself, only that the grey area between what is public and what is private is large and politicized and settled over time. I disagree with many of them but that is no reason to get counterfactual.

There was a loud public debate about the migration crisis, both at the time and for a long time afterwards. It is important to recognize these things even if we don't personally agree with the outcome. That's part of living in a democracy.

In a well designed democracy nobody is strong enough for long enough to take over public media, the school system, the judiciary, the army etc.

Once the fee is agreed upon, it cannot be changed either way with out every parliamnt agreeing to do so. The money cannot be held back by te "government" (we have coalitions, and those change regularly every 10 years or so). Neither can it be held back for state broadcasters (third programms) by the local governments or parliaments. Sounds pretty tempering free to me.

And the debate did happen in 2015, or didn't you see the same panel discussions I saw? It also happened in print and the public broacasters reported aboutthat debate in their news segments. The nature of these news segments being to report facts and not to debate.

It just turned out that only one party really opposed the opening of boarders, along with the right wings of the cnservative parties CDU and CSU. Thos are not the majority but rather a very very loud minority.

> An changes to the fee have to be agreed upon by both chambers, Bundestag and Bundesrat.

The federal government, and thus Bundestag and Bundesrat, have no say in the funding or operation of Germany's public broadcasters. The exception being Deutsche Welle which is not available in Germany and has an "external" audience.

The funding on operation of public broadcasters is instead determined by a compact between the 16 states.

Germany, in fact, comes in with one of the highest press freedom scores from Reporters without Borders:

https://rsf.org/en/germany , https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/germany-media-profile/

National public Radio and the Public Broadcast Company in the US, in further illustration, hasn't been Donald Trump's megaphone.

Just generally, independent journalism is important and can be subverted whether the sources are public or private. Open pluralistic oversight is most important to maintaining balance and Germany seems to get it right, while also making sure the media can be accessible to any resident.

Seems a not-awful approach to trying to ensure a more-educated population, which is also good for a democracy.

Ah right, everyone that disagrees must be one of those people so their opinion doesn't matter.

> They may exhibit some editorial lean

More than "some".

> CNBC or Fox News

Those are corporations that noone is not forced to fund if you disagree with them.

> Just generally, independent journalism is important

Except you can't give certain organizations a unique monopoly to collect fees from everyone and then call it independent with a straight face.

Also, journalism is only a tiny part of german public TV channels. They also throw tons of money on sports broadcasting and game shows while promoting gambling. Add to that the insanity of having a local channel for every state. Even if you agree that public funded news is a good thing, the current setup is hardly an efficient way to accomplish that.

> Seems a not-awful approach to trying to ensure a more-educated population, which is also good for a democracy.

You can call it "education" if you want.

Finally, unlike taxes, the TV fee is not means tested in Germany meaning that if you have a low income and don't fall into the few groups that are excempt then it is a very real burden.

This sounds like disgruntled opinion over having to pay 18 EUR/month for something you don't watch.

Please feel free to put something more substantial behind your snappy retorts. The studies and research I've read indicates that the people mostly trust and appreciate the balance in German public broadcasting, and most disgruntled with public broadcasting in Germany are on the radical sides. The second bit is more universally supported by psychological research indicating that the average person wants to watch stuff that confirms their biases.

> Except you can't give certain organizations a unique monopoly to collect fees from everyone and then call it independent with a straight face.

You're perverting the meaning of monopoly here, I think. There's a publicly funded infrastructure for broadcast programming, as well as privately funded sources of programming. ZDF and ARD don't have exclusive right to broadcast in any market in Germany as far as I know?

The publicly funded infrastructure includes representative oversight mechanisms from political and community sources, which provide a far more robust mechanism for neutrality checking vs the programming decisions of a profit-motivated private organization.

> Finally, unlike taxes

Means testing is a fantastic point, I whole-heartedly agree that statutory funding structures like this shouldn't overburden any slice of the population.

This claim elides the difference between e.g. the BBC or Deutsche Welle and RT. It would be naive to think that the BBC is wholly independent of politicians. But it would be equally naive to think that they're no better than a state propaganda outlet.

It is protection money: You haven't ordered any service and if you don't pay they'll make you pay and ruin your credit score in the process.

In the collection process they pretend to be a government institution to avoid going through local courts, which sometimes are against them.

EDIT: Also, I'm beginning to wonder why any criticism of the German government or especially state TV is being downvoted here. Civil servants have a lot of time ...

Broadcasting, as opposed to the 100% Nazi party controll of media before, was thus setup to be independetly funded and run. The ZDF, if memory serves well, is allowed to be more of a government policy outlet than the ARD and the third programms. The goal is to prevent media to become government controlled, with the added benefit of being independent from add revenue. And that principal is still pretty solid.

This was the original intent: Adenauer wanted a federal public broadcaster to compete with ARD which he considered too critical of his government. The constitutional court shut that down as only the states have the right to set up public broadcasters with domestic transmissions (Deutsche Welle is focused externally). Today ZDF and ARD have the same legal framework, they are just organized differently.

The latter has been the status quo in Germany for the better part of time since WW2, and arguably people were less radicalized on both sides of the political spectrum than now.

It is when institutions get overtly greedy that people start to complain.

IIRC it's Capita who collect the money and keep a remarkably high proportion of it. They're also employing people to lie and intimidate to try and get access to homes.

Then you'll see a plethora of really well-made documentations about regions in Germany, regions in the world, culture, archeology etc.

The third programmes are also where new comedians, hosts and artists are given a chance to refine their show concepts and prove themselves.

To be fair, The Big One is actually just all "third programmes" with some additional programming such as news.

Take a look at the first column of https://www.tvinfo.de/tv-programm/ard

Pretty much nothing in there is also shown at any third programme. The programmes are almost completely distinct.

Evening news are actually the one part where the third programmes show the same as the ARD.

I know that. But it's utterly offtopic in this subthread. We're not talking about organisational structures, we're talking about "what can I watch".

Deutsche Welle (which operates dw.com) is 100% funded by federal taxes as it is aimed at foreign markets.

https://www.dw.com/de/wer-finanziert-die-dw/a-279073

But even then, why so expensive? It is a lot of money. Germany has 80 million people, assuming 4 persons per house, that is 20 million homes times 18 times 12 is 4 billion euros per year to pay for shitty tv shows.

A million miles from what is mostly a luxury good with lots of competition.

* [1] https://nrkbeta.no/2019/12/19/na-kan-du-ta-med-nrk-tv-pa-fer...

* [2] https://www.bankid.no/en/company/

Taxes are not free to manage and collect so this also provides cost savings.

We have this debate periodically in the UK. The argument against abolishing the TV licence is usually that a dedicated tax ensures a larger independence of the BBC, which is not "at the mercy" of the government for funding, but I think this is a rather weak argument because the government already ultimately decides the amount of the TV licence fee, which is a tax.

Edit following the "reactions": By the way, in the UK it is not allowed to criticise anything related to the BBC (and the NHS) as you can see. Is it the same in Germany? :(

It still makes a huge difference if money is distributed through the hands of the government, or dedicated 1:1.

Not really. You can make it mandatory government expense by law, so it is not controlled by the government and its change would require changing the law, which is similar to changing the TV fee (which is also limited by law).

IMHO, TV licences are anachronisms at this point (in the UK we still even have TV licence discounts for black and white TVs...) and it's right to at least debate if they are best suited well into the 21st century.

- Parties says x in elections, that doesn't mean they will do x.

- Some parties/politicians will use every possible way to force public stations to suit their needs - regardless of what people think. Most people will never know - they just consume TV, radio or tabloids and believe everything they hear/read.

- If you don't institutionalize independence, it is gone.

- People in Germany and even more so in Austria have no idea how valuable public stations are. In Austria in particular it is a growing trend to criticize and even ridicule public stations - and this sentiment was gladly picked up and fueled by populists. They regularly demand that ORF is defunded - simply because they cannot control their unfavorable reporting on them - and they would like to. They were in the last government and they put "their guys" in every possible position to ensure control. They are still there and undermining the principles from within, trying to slowly destroy the ORF as a whole - either from incompetence or malice, who knows?

Turns out keeping the license fee out of the general fund didn't do much to institutionalize independence after all.

Those payments are also less regressive, as usually you pay the same regardless your income opposed to the income tax, so the system is less fair for the low class.

LMFTFY. A flat-rate tax is regressive, because poor people pay the same as rich people. A sales tax (such as VAT) is regressive, because poor people buy more stuff as a proportion of their income.

An income tax is progressive, because you pay more if you earn more.

Several people have claimed that the Beeb is some kind of "public good". I don't happen to agree; but if it's true, then clearly it should be paid for out of general taxation.

Nobody owes "society" past that point, but it's extremely profitable in the West, specifically, to double tax people with guilt trips into having artificial indebtedness to "society".

Do they really believe these things? This is the Kool-Aid you have to drink as a society, in order not to go crazy when you pay for things you never use and benefit from.

If you ever move out, make sure to let them know, otherwise they will keep hunting you for ever.

Having spent plenty of time in the USA, I can't fathom how a system with so many ads and skewed "news" could be better. Why would you trust an unelected private corporation with no motivation or mandate for transparency more than a non profit org that is at least in theory answerable to the people? If nothing else it provides a common reference to reality that allows a real conversation to happen. The lack of this has proven in the last few months to be a real problem.

Most people don't question paying for socialised defence, education, roads etc... many services they may not use personally on a daily basis, because they understand the value of having a cohesive society as a whole.

Problem is, BBC (and to a lesser extent RTE) are not these unbiased services simply presenting facts. Their staff have certain views on political issues and they present stories in a way that is biased to those views. They effectively tell their viewers the range of acceptable opinions they are supposed to have.

A lot of their entertainment shows are junk too and I do not see why they should be funded through a license fee - if there is a demand for them, they could be funded privately. The BBC website is full of tabloid-like news - that is unacceptable.

If we are to have publicly funded media, it should be boring, i.e. serious. Host 2-hour long in depth debates on highly controversial issues between the most prominent people that oppose each other, carefully moderated (arguably it would actually be better to do this in print rather than tv format). Do cultural shows that promote "high culture" that people otherwise might not have engaged with. Counter the natural tendencies to look up to sports and entertainment personalities with a focus on scientists and engineers.

* Increased bureaucracy (why not add a 0.1% to an existing tax?)

* Regressive taxation (you pay the same amount regardless of your income; if you used the income tax, you would distribute it more fairly)

* No market shaping (you could instead fund it with a tax on, say, TV ads for high-calories sodas, or whatever as a society you decide should not be forbidden but discouraged)

What stops legislators from adjusting the fee at will? There’s legislation enacting the fee, defining the fee, enforcing the fee. Surely, there can be legislation to modify the fee and remove the fee. Same as any other tax.

The BBC is dependent on a fee collected by the government, as regulated by laws the government has passed and the government enforces. Insisting it's not government funded is trying to invent a distinction where none exists.

Howerver I guess it depends on the country you're from.

So in order to change the fee, it is not just one govnment that can do something, but a grand total of 17 (federal plus 16 states). Usually they all agreed, but with different ruling coalitions in each state, this mix of left and right having to agree in itself prevents the public bradcasters from becoming a tool for government propaganda. They do represent the establishment, so. Populists hate this.

EDIT: To be really accurate, the legislative branch sets the fees, not the executive on. The legislative consists of two houses, Bundestag and Bundesrat. The Bundesrat is controlled by the state governments, which are composed of local arms of the parties present in the Bundestag (kind of like congress) and regional parties, mostly those state and federal governments are coalitions of multiple parties. It is the party line thing where it gets blurred between executive and legislative bodies.

EDIT: I fell for a common misconception, as an other user pointed out. It s not the Bundestag and Bundesrat deciding these fees, but rather a compact of the 16 states. The same states make up the Bundesrat, the compact is not the same body, so. Which further decreases the influence the federal executive, and even legaslative, branches have o public broadcasting.

It's the same argument for taxes, isn't it?

Are these fees generally speaking a good thing? I'd say yes, because you get a non-add dependant news source. Is the implementation, especially in germany, perfect? Of course not. It still has a place, so.

EDIT: If you move, you declare you address change to the authorities anyway. Everything depending on your address, government-wise and some other stuff, is then done automatically. Not relevant here, but that includes ballots.

If I have an issue with publc braodcasting in germany, it's te sometimes blatant nespotism at higher positions, the abusively high salaries, especially when compared to private media outlets and the degree of party influence. Overall so, these public media outlets definetly have their place. They could be cheaper, so. But that ai't gonna happen anytime soon I guess.

/s

Not that they have time to anymore since almost every single public service got their budgets slashed.

We actually do have detector vans - they belonged to the RegTP, now Bundesnetzagentur, and are used to pinpoint pirate radios, malfunctioning equipment, and check if private point-to-point radios requiring licenses actually have licenses: https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/DE/Sachgebiete/Telekommunik...

In 2019, the BNetzA was out in 4.700 cases of radio interference - mostly it was WiFi routers using bands that are not allowed in Germany, but there were also 1.200 cases where interference hit sensitive communications like police radio or airplane communications: https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/gadgets/bundesnetzagentur-be...

But public broadcasters also have expansive web/IP presence, and even use Facebook for public communication (ZDF), when in their news/opinion pieces they rant against social media LOL.

Public broadcasters today seem just to create a self-serving and self-referential media presence for politicians, in these times of Coronavirus more than ever. Tonight, they're going to push for even stronger measures including curfews (!) even though infections are going down; needless to say, without parliamentary participation. The whole thing is getting out of hands with irrationality fast right now.

Basically 2.5% starting from income after 14000€ and maxes out at 163€ collected.

https://www.vero.fi/en/About-us/newsroom/visual_aids_for_pre...

Some people in Finland regard this as a feature not a bug, although it's taken me a while to get used to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J03eeYQ72Y0

Now that the fee is discontinued, and it comes out of tax money instead, I sure don't miss getting those invoices.

https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/7113883 (swedish)

The law is such that the inspector can look into your home from public areas but you don't have to open your door to them or talk to them. They are unable to determine if you own any device which can be used to watch state TV. This is quite silly. People actually fear this and gladly pay up.

In some countries, the mere existence of a TV or radio in your household means you have to pay. These are publicly broadcast channels.

(Emphasis mine)

This "playing fast and loose with language" that they do (and that you inadvertently did too, just now) makes me so irrationally angry.

Why would the burden of proof be that low? They need (should need?) to prove that you received broadcast television, not that you simply owned a TV.

We hear these stories about TV detector vans as if finding a TV set was ever sufficient evidence.

So it's not some "clever hack" - the law specifically allows for not paying the licence fee if you own a TV set but don't watch live TV.

From what I can tell, your account of things is accurate. On the website [0][1][2] the requirements aren't concerned at all with what equipment you own or with how it's set up, only with the act of watching or recording live television broadcasts over any technology, including over the Internet. I imagine it still wouldn't hurt to disconnect your TV from the means to show live broadcasts, for the tiny off-chance things end up in court.

I think spuz's account may have been accurate in pre-Internet days, but this seems harder to verify.

[0] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/L...

[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ99

[2] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/legislation-and-policy-A...

I find the wording here fascinating. Is watching a live stream over the YouTube app on my TV 'live TV'? Is watching a UFC event on the UFC app? What about the website?

What is TV? Is a monitor? A monitor with an aerial? Video content transmitted over certain bands?

If it's broadcast simultaneously by other means (e.g. satellite, cable, terrestrial transmitter etc.) it counts as "live TV".

Does that mean I owe a license fee for YouTube? Am I obliged to check before every video?

(Obviously these are ridiculous hypothetical questions, and I don't expect answers, but the policy itself is ridiculous)

I don't think the policy is that ridiculous, it's just that it's one of these where certain edge cases like this one can be safely ignored. You will be tracked and found if you use the BBC iPlayer without having paid the licence, you will not be found out for watching some random live youtube channel. It's an imperfect rule for a complex world.

Sky offer a streaming service in the UK called NowTV which includes live TV streaming of their channels, as well as Netflix-style on-demand streaming from their library. They're very upfront that a TV licence is needed if you wish you watch their live channels over NowTV, [0] but one is not required for on-demand streaming.

[0] https://help.nowtv.com/article/do-i-need-a-tv-licence-to-wat...

That might make me look pretty guilty, but my TV isn't connected to an antenna, and I don't watch broadcast TV.

The bar for evidence of a violation needs to be higher. It's possible to own all of the equipment without ever having violated the BBC's licensing rule.

I'd guess with more and more watching via the internet they probably have far more success catching people watch live broadcasts via IP addresses and ISP logs these days though.

The vans would be detecting radio activity; there's nothing to detect if the TV is off.