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Comment by bflesch | Hacker News Reader

Problem is that you are forced to pay three times the price of Spotify/Netflix per month for this stuff in Germany, as this website (and many others) is financed by a mandatory fee.

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Exaggerated,it is not "three times" , if you combine Spotify/Netflix you could say "you pay the same per month as for Spotify+Netflix combined (around 17€)", If you compare it to Netflix or Spotify the ratio would be 1:1.5/7. As it is payed per household the ratio is even lower if you have a family. I'm not a big fan of this mandatory fee either but we should stay a the facts.

So what? With 210€ a year it's not much more expensive than the 162€ in UK, for example. At least they're politically neutral and stick to facts and solid journalistic work, compared to private TV stations or the Axel Springer Verlag...

Except the BBC produces much more high quality content, consumed worldwide(former Top Gear) on a smaller budget than Germany which has little to show for in quality content of international or even national succes.

UK content is simply consumed worldwide because it's english. German is only spoken in three countries - Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Everything produced here must be synchronized or subbed making exports expensive, in addition to Germans not liking risky experiments very much which means there is less interest.

Although the BBC produces a lot of rubbish, it also produces high quality drama, comedies and documentaries. People watch these not simply because they are in English.

People will watch quality programming regardless of the language. Just witness the popularity of Scandinavian dramas that have won audiences across the world. Although Germany dubs foreign-language programmes (badly), lots of other countries are happy to watch with subtitles.

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