Public Service Announcement
That is to say, an announcement about a public service: you don't need a TV licence if you don't watch or record live television.
I'd been paying for a licence under the misapprehension that one was needed for owning any equipment capable of receiving TV signals, regardless of whether it was switched on. But both the TV Licensing website and the friendly telephone helpline confirmed that neither prerecorded videos nor BBC iPlayer require a licence. It's only needed 'to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV'.
It's not that I attach any strong moral values to not watching television. When a colleague asks Did You See...?, I usually dissemble rather than explain. As it happens, we can't get good enough reception to watch anything, even with a metre-long internal booster (sir!) And I'm not quite middle class enough to pay the licence fee just to support Radio 4.
I understand that one or two people on the Internet have had bad experiences with TV Licensing. I phoned to cancel the licence three months ago yesterday: they were helpful and direct. They promised that an enforcement officer would visit, presumably to watch us not watching television, but none has. They even refunded the unused portion of my licence.
(This is the Internet, so no need to say that TVL do harass people, or explain the iniquity of the licence fee.)
I'd been paying for a licence under the misapprehension that one was needed for owning any equipment capable of receiving TV signals, regardless of whether it was switched on. But both the TV Licensing website and the friendly telephone helpline confirmed that neither prerecorded videos nor BBC iPlayer require a licence. It's only needed 'to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV'.
It's not that I attach any strong moral values to not watching television. When a colleague asks Did You See...?, I usually dissemble rather than explain. As it happens, we can't get good enough reception to watch anything, even with a metre-long internal booster (sir!) And I'm not quite middle class enough to pay the licence fee just to support Radio 4.
I understand that one or two people on the Internet have had bad experiences with TV Licensing. I phoned to cancel the licence three months ago yesterday: they were helpful and direct. They promised that an enforcement officer would visit, presumably to watch us not watching television, but none has. They even refunded the unused portion of my licence.
(This is the Internet, so no need to say that TVL do harass people, or explain the iniquity of the licence fee.)