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You always pay somewhere. The ads on commerical channels are not free, you pay for them indirectly in the prices of almost everything you buy.
I'm not claiming that the UK TV licence fee (which goes to fund the BBC) is the best way of doing things but IMO there are plenty of worse ways of funding TV. What we get for our money is a public service broadcaster, without ads, that's also a mainstream broadcaster. Unlike PBS in the US.
If you set out to invent a broadcasting system now you certainly wouldn't arrive at the BBC. It's one of those slightly eccentric British arrangements that, despite a lot of criticism and occasional crises, works pretty well.
The licence fee works out at abut $20/month which is a pretty small amount for most people. On top of that many people pay a lot more than that to get premium channels on cable or satellite
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