The history of some form of licence in order to consume live entertainment has a bit of a long history in the UK, it started with radio with you being able to listen to radio with a radio licence and then a TV licence came out with the radio licence being discontinued in the 1970s
The radio licence was discontinued in 1971 as it became impactical to enforce and collect the licence fee itself and technology has moved on. The question that is asked currently is are we in the same position now and a question that I have is around if it is actually relevant nowadays?
There are multiple things a TV licence covers like:
- Using BBC iPlayer
- Watching Live Television AKA linear television
- Watching Pay Television like Sky or Virgin Media
- Watching live TV on streaming services TV on streaming services - "like YouTube, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video"
That last one is the one where I feel that we are in that period we were in with the radio, other than the collection amount what with radio costing just over a quid at the time.
What exactly is live TV and even stranger than that what exactly is watching? The TV licence page on this is rather ambiguous around what counts as watching TV. The example they have is:
A streaming service is a website or app for watching videos online. Many have on-demand content, so you can choose what to watch. Some also show live TV or events as they happen - you need a TV Licence for these.
There has to be some form of hierarchy with this where it might not count as requiring a TV licence or it might require it so I have selected a few possible scenarios:
- An individual broadcasting themselves talking to the camera
- An individual streaming a video game
- Commentary on a live televised event (e.g., football) without broadcasting the event itself
- A group live stream interacting with an audience
- A live broadcast of an event, such as The Streaming Awards
- News events broadcast by established news channels on these platforms
I have asked the BBC Press Office where the particular line on this is drawn and honestly I am unsure myself, I think it might be at the last one but what about the one before it with something like The Streaming Awards or Blizzcon or some eSports finals? The one before that which might include live podcasts would that count? Maybe ones where they talk about the football like United Stand etc or "Live Podcast Shows"
Hopefully I get a reply and I will add something here.
Where do we go from here?
Honestly? I think we are in that position in the 70s, though it only costs 5% of the budget to manage the system of TV Licensing according to its most recent report scapping that part of it would mean a 5% uplift in funding.
Current fuding as of the last report is £3.88bn, so lets try and get that to a nice round figure of £4bn, the one I have heard talked about is a broadband levy.
There are currently:
- 90m 5G connections
- 5m Dedicated Mobile Broadband 5G connections
- 100,000 fixed line business connections
- 30m Fixed Broadband connections (of which 500k are on social tarrifs)
Lets create a funding mix on this based on broader shoulders (business fixed lines so that will include things like large hotels for example) significantly less for social tarrifs, something similar to the old "car radio licence" before that was discontinued for mobile connections and all just automatically taken / charged to the providers so they also get another 5% of funding as no Capita
Here is the table for that:
| Connection type | Connections | Annual levy | Monthly levy | Total revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5G mobile phone | 90m | £8 | £0.67 | £720m |
| Dedicated mobile broadband | 5m | £60 | £5 | £300m |
| Fixed business broadband | 100k | £1,420 | £118.33 | £142m |
| Standard fixed broadband | 29.5m | £96 | £8 | £2,832m |
| Social tariff broadband | 500k | £12 | £1 | £6m |
| Total | £4bn |
That works out generally cheaper, and I feel that this would be a fairer distribution of the funding, increase the funding and therefore make it more sustainable for the future.