TV licensing
TV Licensing is the umbrella brand for the public appearances of the companies responsible for collecting license fees in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland .
history
Until 1991, collecting license fees in the UK was the responsibility of the Home Office . In practice, the police authorities were responsible for the registration system, but in particular also for the control of the obligation to pay fees, which has had a lasting impact on the public discussion of the fee system to this day.
In 1991 the fee system was completely transferred to the state broadcaster BBC in order to simplify administrative processes. An internal organizational unit was then founded within the BBC under the name TV Licensing Authority, which was structurally very similar to the German GEZ . As part of the general outsourcing of public services in Great Britain, the TV Licensing Authority was also privatized .
Today's structure
Today, TV Licensing essentially consists of four companies.
Capita Business Services Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Capita Group based in London , is responsible for most of the administrative tasks and plays the main role within the group. Usually, the term TV Licensing is primarily related to this company.
Revenues Management Services Ltd is responsible for the processing of cash payments, while the on-site customer service is in the hands of PayPoint Collections Ltd. Public relations and marketing were finally transferred to the AMV Consortium.
The official legal and technical supervision of the entire group of companies is still the responsibility of the BBC.
Fee system
In the UK, there is a charge to either watch or record live television broadcasts (regardless of channel), or to watch or download programs on iPlayer (the BBC's media library). No payment of the license fee is required to consume content from the media libraries of other private or public broadcasters. In addition, there is no charge for keeping radio sets available, although the charge is also used to fund radio programs for the BBC and the broadcasting infrastructure in Great Britain.
The annual license fee is £ 145.50 for a color TV and £ 49.00 for a black and white TV (as of 03/2011).
In contrast to Germany, violations of the obligation to pay fees constitute criminal offenses that can have very serious legal consequences (imprisonment in individual cases). In 1994, for example, 57% of all criminal convictions of women were based on charges of fraudulent charges. However, since privatization, these numbers have fallen sharply, as there are no longer any sovereign measures available to uncover fee-based offenses.
criticism
The BBC's license fee funding is widely accepted by the UK population, so fundamental criticism of the system is rare.
However, the practices used by TV Licensing to better exploit the potential of participants are the subject of public discussions again and again. Similar to the German ARD ZDF Deutschlandradio contribution service , TV Licensing is now largely dependent on self-developed strategies. Usually, address material acquired on the market is compared with the participant database, and house visits are then made later, during which various intimidation tactics or trickery questions are allegedly used. This criticism, however, can at least in part also be justified historically, as police measures such as house searches were used especially before 1991 to uncover toll evasion, which left a permanently negative image in the population.
Web links
- TV Licensing - Official Website