Quote:
Originally Posted by wa2ise
And it's the government that collects this fee, and then funds the broadcaster? Sounds like that broadcaster better not say nothin' bad about the government or else the government cuts off the funding.  We in the USA would never tolerate that situation. We have laws that specifically forbid the government from broadcasting domestically (Voice of America is for foreign listeners, but we still can hear it spilling inside the USA, but almost nobody in the USA ever listens to shortwave anyway). We take our first amendment seriously.  |
As a few others have pointed out, the BBC is recognized worldwide as one of the most impartial news organizations around.
When I lived in Switzerland, I paid the TV license fee to an outfit called Billag. Seemed to be a private agency contracted to handle the collection of licensing fees. You can read a little about how it works here at the bottom of this page:
http://switzerland.angloinfo.com/cou...zerland/tv.asp
These fees are nothing new, and go back to the earliest days of radio broadcasting in Europe. Although some folks here find this a peculiar system, Europeans strongly prefer it, often making fun of how our TV shows are continually interrupted by commercials. They will even go so far as to say the American football is a game entirely built around the concept of continual interruption of the TV coverage. All the natural breaks in it work well for U.S.-style commercial TV.
I've got a number of old radios from Europe that have the PTT (post office - telephone - telegraph) license stickers on the back of them. In those days, you'd pay your fee and get a little stamp or sticker to put on the back of the radio itself. These days, with a fee per household instead of per unit, that system is no longer used.