Nearly two million Britons have waived a TV license fee that funds the national public broadcaster, the BBC, after more than a quarter of a million people were killed last year.
The Television License Fee Foundation’s annual report showed that a total of 1.96 million people said they no longer needed BBC services, with 270,000 people refusing to pay the £159 annual license fee last year.
Payment of the fee is a mandatory tax for anyone using the UK color TV, live broadcast or BBC Player service, with a fine followed by possible jail time for non-payment.
Viewers using black and white TVs, which still have a few thousand, pay £53.30 less, but those who don’t watch live or on-demand BBC programs can waive the license altogether.
“The BBC expects revenue from license fees to decline, at least in the short to medium term, due to the rising cost of living since early 2022 and the continued decline in license-based sales of changes in the way viewers watch television content,” the BBC said.
“Most households are licensed, sales have increased this year and 90% of people use the BBC every week,” said a BBC spokesperson.
The government of outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged to abolish license fees by 2027, which will force the publisher to seek new funding by 2028, but it is not yet clear whether such measures will take effect.
BBC tax to be lifted in 2028 as UK promises to end ‘prison threat to the elderly’ https://t.co/exidXgKi1k
– Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 16, 2022
The broadcaster blamed the sharp decline in TV license subscribers for the lack of enforcement during the lockout in China, where home visits were suspended to check if people were watching unlicensed TV.
Now that such restrictions have been lifted, home visits will continue, but the BBC said it will try to “find the right balance between enforcement and reward” by sending letters to unpaid homes stating how much they allegedly received from the BBC. BBC
Along with prevention, the BBC is seeing large numbers of people switch to online platforms such as Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Netflix that do not require a UK TV license.
However, others pointed out that the supposedly neutral public broadcaster was corrupt.
Source: Breitbart
