Over 75s now pay for TV license

[peterwalkley]

Amazing how many people are not picking up that it is means tested, so the genuinely poor won't have to pay. From the article:

The BBC will scrap blanket free licences for over-75s, but those households with one person who receives pension credit will still be eligible.​

My wife's parents are both 80. They do 3 or 4 Saga cruises a year - I think they can afford a TV license

 

[Pottsey]

nowtv is live broadcast.

you need a tv license to watch any live tv, record live tv to watch later too. you also need a tv license to use iplayer.

so he's watching live tv through streaming still counts as live tv. a 5 second delay doesn't matter either. it still counts as live.

Putting it in council tax is not fair, to many people would lose out with that and as long as its delayed its not live and does not count as live.

 

[Minusorange]

I'd rather instead of the BBC advertising their crappy programs, they sold the time to advertisers so they could make this glorified subscription to the BBC under the guise of a license to watch live television go away like it should have been years ago when streaming online became a thing

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

1998 - left home for uni, didn't bring a TV, got used to not having a TV.
2002 - graduated and left home for good. Lived in a bedsit, still no TV and still a-ok.
2006 - got my own house. TV-on-demand / catchup era. Never did that either.
2013 - Netflix era. Didn't do that either. Just watch YouTube
2019 - Still no TV, still no TV-on-demand and still no Netflix etc. Still watch YouTube.

The only good thing about the BBC is the computer in my signature. It was made by Acorn anyway

 

[Meridian]

Yup

The government has been paying it as it was part of their policy, then Osborne decided (without public consultation) it should be paid for out of the BBC's funding, at the same time he IIRC started putting other funding requirements onto the BBC, this was after several years of a freeze on the TVL (so effectively a 10%+ cut in funding).
Between the various changes the BBC would have lost about 30% of it's funding, with the biggest chunk coming from the free licences, all from memory done without the government doing a public consultation.

At the time it happened everyone understood the naked politics. The policy of free TV for pensioners was a Gordon Brown idea, so had to be reversed by Cameron. But pensioners vote, vote a lot, and vote Tory. So the government moved the burden to the BBC, knowing that it eats up a huge chunk of the budget that the government will not increase (by changing the licence fee). And hoping that people would blame the BBC. The BBC told them at the time that they would have no alternative but to make pensioners pay. But they waited too long to do so, so there seem to be people who are now blaming this on the BBC, not the Conservatives who actually caused it. Politics 101 - making a cutback look like someone else's fault.

 

[Nasher]

Next year = lots of over 75s done for watching TV without a licence.

The BBC's reputation is already mud, this isn't going to help. Hopefully less and less people will be paying it and they will be forced to go subscription or commercial.

 

[wolfie138]

maybe i was half-right
"A TV Licence is a legal permission to install or use television receiving equipment to watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service, and to download or watch BBC programmes on demand, including catch up TV, on BBC iPlayer. This could be on any device, including TVs, desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, games consoles, digital boxes, DVD, Blu-ray and VHS recorders. This applies regardless of which television channels a person receives or how those channels are received. The licence fee is not a payment for BBC services (or any other television service), although licence fee revenue is used to fund the BBC."
so i need one to watch Sky only, despite paying Sky :-/
think is i never watch live, i always tape and watch the next day.

 

[dl8860]

I love the BBC. Would pay double for the license fee. If you think about radio, bbc news/sport/weather, it's great value in my opinion.

See zero reason why pensioners shouldn't pay for it too.

 

[Werewolf]

Next year = lots of over 75s done for watching TV without a licence.

The BBC's reputation is already mud, this isn't going to help. Hopefully less and less people will be paying it and they will be forced to go subscription or commercial.

Be careful what you wish for.

An advert funded BBC would be lower quality, far less news/factual/niche output and kill many of the other advert funded channels.
A subscription BBC would be pretty similar but with a lesser effect on the current commercial sector.

It would also probably result in the BBC doing far less in terms of the training/R&D/Testing that it currently does and likely kill off a lot of the support companies that make the UK a good location for films/HBO etc as the relatively low paying but steady BBC contracts are often a big factor in keeping some of the specialist make up/costume/prop companies going in the UK (many of which were started by ex BBC staff when the BBC sold off things like it's in house wardrobe department due to government cuts/requirements for "competition").

It's somewhat telling that the government has repeated required the BBC to drop plans to provide content "in the name of competition" (after commercial companies complained, but then didn't do what they said the BBC's output was stopping them doing), or because the commercial companies complained that the BBC entering the market would hurt them.

 

[Semple]

Opinion from spectator before it was decided: https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/...-for-scrapping-free-tv-licences-for-over-75s/

I won't disagree with your quote entirely, but having focused a lot on pulling the elderly out of poverty, I would argue that the younger generation has been forgotten about and are now just as much in relative poverty. Should they be getting free licences too?

 

[BowdonUK]

I hope that I have been clearer.

Yes

I'm all supporting the BBC and make full use of their services. But I think there needs to be some balance between these high salaries they are paying out and then finding out they haven't enough money to produce the programmes they want to make.

I can more and more understand why people stop paying the license fee.

 

[Pottsey]

maybe i was half-right
"A TV Licence is a legal permission to install or use television receiving equipment to watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service, and to download or watch BBC programmes on demand, including catch up TV, on BBC iPlayer. This could be on any device, including TVs, desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones, tablets, games consoles, digital boxes, DVD, Blu-ray and VHS recorders. This applies regardless of which television channels a person receives or how those channels are received. The licence fee is not a payment for BBC services (or any other television service), although licence fee revenue is used to fund the BBC."
so i need one to watch Sky only, despite paying Sky :-/
think is i never watch live, i always tape and watch the next day.

Taping is recording a live source. You are still using a live source if you tape.

 

[Nasher]

Just do what everyone else does and download it from...another source.

 

[Beerbaron]

Cancelled mine on renewal as they increased the price. Got Netflix and don't miss it.

 

[mmj_uk]

They will have to plug the EU funding hole left by Brexit, still at least they might go back to being unbiased.

 

[dl8860]

They will have to plug the EU funding hole left by Brexit, still at least they might go back to being unbiased.

Both sides of every debate possible claim that the BBC is biased against them. Give it a rest.

 

[wolfie138]

Taping is recording a live source. You are still using a live source if you tape.

yeah, partial brainfart there, i was thinking live as in live sport events

 

[Tee Hee Johnson]

1998 - left home for uni, didn't bring a TV, got used to not having a TV.
2002 - graduated and left home for good. Lived in a bedsit, still no TV and still a-ok.
2006 - got my own house. TV-on-demand / catchup era. Never did that either.
2013 - Netflix era. Didn't do that either. Just watch YouTube
2019 - Still no TV, still no TV-on-demand and still no Netflix etc. Still watch YouTube.

The only good thing about the BBC is the computer in my signature. It was made by Acorn anyway

well done.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

This is the new information about TV Licences for over 75's it ends 1st June 2020 - https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/age?wt.mc_id=bbc_pr_o75_english

 

[thenewoc]

If they wanted to remove the freebie from the well off retired they're setting the bar rather low by using pension credit as the deciding factor. Just because you don't qualify for pension credit, is a long way from being well off.