This TV Licencing nonsense is nothing more than a con, and its about time the people woke up and realised just what is going on here. At first it was a reasonable request to pay a Licence Fee to cover the cost of BBC services, which at the time was an expensive operation requiring a great amount of power for transmissions. Then as technology advanced these costs were reduced by the use of computerised equipment, which actually increased the bandwidth using less power with more sophisticated receiving equipment.
However, as a result of this new technology it became easier for Independent companies like the ITV to broadcast on different frequencies, which as we all know are not funded by the Licence Fees but depend on the sale of advertising time. This then led to the development of Sky TV using a completely different Satellite signal, allowing them to broadcast world wide TV stations that have become more popular than standard UK TV. Now we have Internet and Mobile Phone TV, which again uses completely different signals to broadcast different TV stations world wide to equipment that have No TV Receiving Tuner in the general sense of original BBC terms.
So for all intended purposes the TV Licensing Fee is a Monopoly of the TV market, similar to the way Bill Gates Monopolised the market with Internet Explorer supplied with MS operating systems.
The TV Licencing continuously extend their definition of receiving equipment to maintain control of the market, and go as far to Assume that Every Household in the UK MUST have a TV set spending thousands of pounds sending out threatening letters and employing incompetent investigators.
The following is from the Wikipedia source link below:
The principal means of funding the BBC is through the television licence, costing £145.50 per year per household (as of April 2010).
Such a licence is required to receive broadcast television within the UK, however no licence is required to own a television used for other means, or for sound only radio sets (though a separate licence for these was also required for non-TV households until 1971).
The cost of a television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law.
A discount is available for households with only black-and-white television sets.
A small discount is also offered to registered blind.
The revenue is collected privately and is paid into the central government Consolidated Fund, a process defined in the Communications Act 2003. This TV Licensing collection is currently carried out by Capita, an outside agency. Funds are then allocated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Treasury and approved by Parliament via legislation. Additional revenues are paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to compensate for subsidised licences for eligible over-75 year olds.
Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years,[29] with BBC Worldwide contributing some £145 million to the BBC's core public service business.
According to the BBC's 2008–2009 Annual Report,[30] its income can be broken down as follows:
£3,493.8 million in licence fees collected from householders;
£775.9 million from BBC Commercial Businesses;
£294.6 million from government grants;
£41.1 million from other income, such as providing content to overseas broadcasters and concert ticket sales;
The licence fee has, however, attracted criticism. It has been argued that in an age of multi stream, multi-channel availability, an obligation to pay a licence fee is no longer appropriate. The BBC's use of private sector company Capita Group to send letters to premises not paying the licence fee has been criticised, especially as there have been cases where such letters have been sent to premises which are up to date with their payments, or do not require a TV licence.[31] The BBC uses an advertising campaign to inform customers of the requirement to pay the licence fee. These letters and adverts have been criticised by Conservative MPs Boris Johnson and Ann Widdecombe, for having a threatening nature and language used to scare evaders into paying.[32][33] Audio clips and television broadcasts are used to inform listeners of the BBC's comprehensive database.[34] There are a number of pressure groups campaigning on the issue of the licence fee.[35]
I personally do not have a TV at home because I refuse to pay into this Monopoly, although I do watch some free TV episodes on the Internet that does not require any software to be installed and therefore cannot get Live TV. This I think is the key factor invovled with Internet TV, which requires some software installed (which you have to pay for) in order to watch Live Shows.
Well, I think I got a bit carried away with my answer...........................