How much do you pay to watch TV?

[Alexander Turcic]

Originally Posted by RolandD

Wow! Is that per device or per household? If you have a computer with a TV tuner card, does that count?

It's a per-household fee.

But they are nasty. If you don't pay your fees, they visit you. They spy on you to see if you have a TV running in the evening, and if they catch you, they can fine you. It's a weird semi-government body and I never understood why I should pay for public broadcasting that I never watch.

Btw, even if your car has a radio you'll qualify to pay your household radio broadcasting fees.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

It's a per-household fee.

But they are nasty. If you don't pay your fees, they visit you. They spy on you to see if you have a TV running in the evening, and if they catch you, they can fine you. It's a weird semi-government body and I never understood why I should pay for public broadcasting that I never watch.

Btw, even if your car has a radio you'll qualify to pay your household radio broadcasting fees.

That still blows my mind, but it is a lot less than most people pay in the states pay for cable or sat.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That sounds remarkably like the BBC licence fee, but a bit more expensive. We used to have a radio licence, but it was done away with a long time ago. We do still have the option of a Black & White TV licence, if your receiving equipment is only monochrome at around £45 ($70). But I have no idea how many households have that.

The BBC licence fee is indeed a per-household fee, not a per-person fee.

Is there a different license for PAL and HDTV?

[carld]

Between Cable with HBO, Netflix and Hulu, it's more than I like to think about. It'll drop a bit soon, True Blood only has two more episodes then I can cancel HBO.

[david_e]

.....

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

In Switzerland there are two related fees.

One is the fee everyone who has to pay who owns a device that could _potentially_ receive radio or TV broadcasts. It's paid to the Swiss Federal Communication Office (German: BAKOM; (BAKOM). So even if you don't want their programs or listen to their radio, if you own a TV, you will have to pay. And it isn't cheap. Radio is ~ 170 USD / yr and TV is ~ 300 USD / yr.

For cable services to receive private TV stations, I pay a relative modest ~ 10 USD / month.

We had that too. It was dropped in 2000.

Originally Posted by RolandD

Wow! Is that per device or per household? If you have a computer with a TV tuner card, does that count?

That's one reason they dropped it. The internet was coming up at that time and people with a TV tuner card didn't have to pay the fee (it was only required if you owned a radio or TV). So, instead of trying to fit everything into the list, they did the wise thing and removed it all together. They incorporated it in the tax laws.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

That sounds remarkably like the BBC licence fee, but a bit more expensive. We used to have a radio licence, but it was done away with a long time ago. We do still have the option of a Black & White TV licence, if your receiving equipment is only monochrome at around £45 ($70). But I have no idea how many households have that.

The BBC licence fee is indeed a per-household fee, not a per-person fee.

Originally, there were two fees, one for radio and one for TV. In '69 they changed it a bit, so that if you had a TV you had to pay this fee (regardless if you also had a radio) and if you had only a radio, the fee was a bit less. Originally, you had to pay for every device in the household too, but in '69 they changed that to a per-household fee.

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

It's a per-household fee.

But they are nasty. If you don't pay your fees, they visit you. They spy on you to see if you have a TV running in the evening, and if they catch you, they can fine you. It's a weird semi-government body and I never understood why I should pay for public broadcasting that I never watch.

Btw, even if your car has a radio you'll qualify to pay your household radio broadcasting fees.

That's what they said happened here too... But I don't think a car radio ever counted...