It's only an offense if you watch live TV [1]. They could have just lumped it in with your taxes, like they do in many other countries with state TV, but this approach in theory lets you opt out, even if they like to check up on you all too regularly. I suppose one downside of the BBC approach is tax is usually proportional to your income, while the TV license fee is not, and in fact you need to pay it even if you have no income. We had great games of hiding our TV in the closet as students whenever the license people came down the street.

[1] https://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/t...