Television Licence - Opinions of Television Licensing Systems

Opinions of Television Licensing Systems

Advocates argue that one of the main advantages of television fully funded by a licence fee is that programming can be enjoyed without interruptions for advertisements. Television funded by advertising is not truly free of cost to the viewer, since the advertising is used mostly to sell mass-market items, and the cost of mass-market goods includes the cost of TV advertising, such that viewers effectively pay for TV when they purchase those products. Viewers also pay in time lost watching advertising.

Europeans tend to watch one hour less TV per day than do North Americans, but in practice may be enjoying the same amount of television but gaining extra leisure time by not watching advertisements. Even the channels in Europe that do carry advertising carry about 25% less advertising per hour than their North American counterparts.

Critics of receiver licensing point out that a licence is a regressive form of taxation, because poor people pay more for the service in relation to income. In contrast, the advertisement model implies that costs are covered in proportion to consumption of mass-market goods, particularly luxury goods, so the poorer the viewer, the greater the subsidy. The experience with broadcast deregulation in Europe suggests that demand for commercial-free content is not as high as once thought.

The third option, voluntary funding of public television via subscriptions, requires a subscription level higher than the licence fee (because not all people that currently pay the licence would voluntarily pay a subscription) if quality and/or output volume are not to decline. These higher fees would deter even more people from subscribing, leading to further hikes in subscription levels. In time, if public subscription television were subject to encryption to deny access to non-subscribers, the poorest in society would be denied access to the well-funded programmes that public broadcasters produce today in exchange for the relatively lower cost of the licence.

The UK government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, as part of its BBC Charter review, asked the public what it thought of various funding alternatives. Fifty-nine percent of respondents agreed with the statement "Advertising would interfere with my enjoyment of programmes", while 31 percent disagreed; 71 percent agreed with the statement "subscription funding would be unfair to those that could not pay", while 16 percent disagreed. The Department concluded that the licence fee was "the least worse option".

The British government described the licence fee system as "the best (and most widely supported) funding model, even though it is not perfect". That is, they believe that the disadvantages of having a licence fee are less than the disadvantages of all other methods. In fact, the disadvantages of other methods have led to some countries, especially those in the former Eastern Bloc, to consider the introduction of a TV licence.

Both Bulgaria and Serbia have attempted to legislate to introduce a television licence. In Bulgaria, a fee is specified in the broadcasting law, but it has never been implemented in practice. Lithuania and Latvia have also long debated the introduction of a licence fee but so far made little progress on legislating for one. In the case of Latvia, some analysts believe this is partly because the government is unwilling to relinquish the control of Latvijas Televīzija that funding from general taxation gives it.

In the Czech Republic, have increased the proportion of funding that the public broadcaster gets from licence fee, justifying the move with the argument that the existing public service broadcasters cannot compete with commercial broadcasters for advertising revenues.