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Please do not write below the line

(www.bbctvlicence.com)
362 points dcminter | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 18:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.21s | source
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cooper_ganglia ◴[21 Oct 24 19:34 UTC] No.41907633[source]▶
A "TV License" is one of those things I alway assumed people were making up to satirize the claims of over-regulation & bureaucracy in the UK.

Finding out it was real was a mixture of hilarious and sobering.

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Zak ◴[21 Oct 24 19:38 UTC] No.41907684[source]▶
Many European countries are worse about it than the UK; even people who do not own a television are required by law to pay.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence

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ho_schi ◴[21 Oct 24 19:54 UTC] No.41907867[source]▶
This fee is hot topic in Germany. Our French friends also enjoy ARTE[1] but seem not to suffer anymore from this ridiculous fee. Actually I’m surprised that the Swiss fee is even higher, despite everything in the Swiss is expensive.

[1] Big parts of our public television suck. But ARTE is awesome!

    * Borgen
    * Occupied
    * Mit offenen Karten
    * Karambolage
    * …
PS: ARTE is watchable outside of France and Germany in a lot of countries in Europe. Poland, Spain, Austria, Netherlands, Czech and so on.
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9dev ◴[21 Oct 24 21:04 UTC] No.41908514[source]▶
While the public television may suck, it still pays for the only real Independent news coverage in Germany. No matter what you think of the ARD or ZDF and their management boards, the work of the Deutschlandfunk and regional broadcasters is outstanding and a pillar of a free democracy.

I hate having to pay for distribution licenses for soccer games, but if that ensures continued support for high-quality journalism, so be it.

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account42 ◴[22 Oct 24 11:19 UTC] No.41913174[source]▶
So independent that they parrot the ideology of the ruling parties. If you want to pay for them then be my guest but I'd rather not.
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1. 9dev ◴[22 Oct 24 13:11 UTC] No.41913875[source]▶
You say that, but I highly doubt you actually listen to the radio or podcast formats or view lots of the ZDF productions that are very much critical of the established parties, and regularly publish investigative research.

Journalists tend to have a high education background and thus tend to hold more progressive and liberal opinions, but that’s unavoidable. The public broadcast services are still miles ahead in terms of unbiased reporting than privately owned publications in Germany.

And having said all that; would you really want to have to choose between Fox News and ABC? Journalism should not depend on private interests. I’m not claiming it’s free of political influence either, but at least public broadcast includes provisions to prevent that. The alternative is worse.