One of the advantages of a licence fee is that the beeb's programming is free from the disruption of adverts (though they are starting to adopt those annoying pop-ups that tell you whats on next grrr). Whilst the Government does initially get their grubby hands on the money before passing a portion of it on to the beeb, the beeb is free to criticise the government - any interference would cause an outcry.
I went back to a B&W licence a few years back now, when my modern colour set went seriously kaput. I relied upon a mid 60's dual standard B&W set, but because it wasn't a throw-away piece of junk I only switched it on when there was something I particularly wanted to watch. Most weeks I was down to <2 hours a week !
My mistake was buying a DVD player for elderly parent - the licence people saw the purchase (big brother!) and sent me a letter saying "You seem to have recently purchased a colour television ... " (followed by some carefully worded text that thinly disguised that they'd be sending the lads round to break my legs). Anyhow I contacted them but let slip that I had a VHS recorder. Since I could record from a colour terrestrial signal I had to have a colour licence, and as I needed a VHS recorded to modulate the set top box to UHF for ye olde telly, well, I went back to a modern colour (not monster flatscreen - shame on anyone who has one of those monstrosities)(Hi Jeffrey
).
Anyhow, the UK TV licence was introduced when the service resumed in 1946 (there was already a radio licence), but people who still had a current radio licence at that time could use their telly until that radio licence expired, so it was not until 1947 that licence figures truly reflected the number of sets in use (well, in theory!).
As for the "60 year old" 1980's Binatone, thats just owner's memory fade, however it is indicative of the lack of proper reserach that goes into reporting in general these days - certainly most of the newspapers are not to be considered reliable sources of information any more, but the beeb is considered reasonably good in this respect (though getting worse I'm afraid).
TTFN,
Jon
PS : @jhalphen, colour licence is currently £145.50