Personally I think that it should be organized like a tax nonetheless, because if a public broadcaster is a benefit to society, it's a benefit to those who watch just as much as to those who don't watch, similar to how those who don't enter medical school will still enjoy the availability of doctors. A precedence exists, in Germany the Finanzamt is happily collecting a tax-like thing on behalf of the established churches from their members, without that ever having led anyone to suggest that the churches were controlled by the government. The investure controversy isn't exactly still lingering.
So the tax lives on in this archaic form instead and every now and then when the Tories are in power they try and defund or threaten the BBC somehow. Usually within a year of getting elected, and then there's a backlash and they have to back down.
The latest wheeze was to force the BBC to get pensioners to pay, and they managed to pull it off by getting the public to blame the BBC instead of the government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_4
Although they're mostly funded by ads and selling their programming now.
Channel 4 is a bit of an odd one, as it's publically owned but not publically funded.
You need a licence for any device that you watch live tv as it's broadcast. You need a licence to watch live tv, no matter where it's broadcast from.
The wording of the law says "installed or used to receive", so in theory you need a licence if you have eg a tv plugged into an aerial. They don't prosecute those cases any more.
You don't need a licence if you're not watching live tv. So you can watch all the ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 catchup as much as you like. Or netflix, amazon, HBO, etc services.
People pay for it because the BBC is generally pretty good. It's stuck in a weird political landscape where some MPs want the BBC to be independent and not be funded by a licence fee, but those same MPs refuse to allow the BBC to operate commercially.
A longer term plan for the BBC would be welcome, and that's probably going to be a subscription service at some point.
The whole law is antiquated, now you don't need them or their transmission equipment. I do believe that if they move to a subscription model they will lose many customers, especially those with Netflix etc (I don't even know if the aerial cable in my flat works or even own a tv, I use a 43" monitor if I do want to watch anything).
If you own a licence and you're away from home you're allowed to use a device powered only by internal batteries to watch TV -- this is covered by your home licence.
Yes, this leads to ridiculous situations. You watch live tv on your phone? Fine, until you plug in your phone to charge and you're now breaking the law. I don't think anyone has been prosecuted for this type of use.
We used to have B&W licences, and people with colour VCrs but B&W tvs were told that they were receiving in colour and so needed a colour licence.
This kind of thing makes TV licencing unpopular.
Plug in and tune only the radio stations - that doesn't require a licence (radio isn't TV even when carried on a TV network, the TV effectively becomes a DAB radio).
The inspector got me at my apartment once and was certain that I needed to pay the tax. I invited him into my apartment and he saw I had no TV, radio, or Internet, and left very disappointed.
It is legal to use a TV set without a licence, so long as you do not watch any TV programmes live. So it's fine to connect it to a laptop and use it as a monitor, or listen to radio programmes through it, for example.
Law was changed in the last few years to make this applicable to on-demand content too from BBC iPlayer
https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...
If your blind you get a 50% discount, but if you have a B&W TV you get a 66% discount?
Blind people are being robbed blind...
Anecdotally I've noticed a sea change in general-topic UK discussion fora over the past five years or so. It used to be the case that anyone criticizing the BBC was downvoted to oblivion, but the old reverence for it as an institution is very much a minority view now.
EDIT: it's not just us, by the way; the US is actually in a small minority of countries who've never had a TV tax.
The funding model behind the BBC is a bit suspect - I'd prefer a direct grant from the government.
Alternatives are not particularly palatable - it becomes a department of the government, or has to self fund and becomes just another commercial provider of dross.
Also I haven't heard about the BBC becoming less popular, do you have any evidence for this? As far as I recall, BBC 1 is still the nation's favourite channel.
It would be interesting to know how you voted in the EU referendum, as I tend to find this sort of anti-BBC-ness the greatest amongst Leave voters for no apparent logical reason.
I stopped owning a TV way back in 2004, specifically out of disgust at the BBC piling in to the property bubble insanity along with everyone else. If that's what "noncommercial" buys you, I don't really see the point.
And I think the drift is less about the popularity of BBC TV channels versus non-BBC TV channels, than about the move to streaming and other Internet versus TV in general.