> In the UK, everybody who owns a TV has to pay money to the BBC. The BBC 
> therefore has no incentive at all to ever show anything. (Well, except I 
> suppose that if they stopped broadcasting, the government wouldn't be too 
> amused about it...) In general, the BBC used to produce some pretty 
> high-quality stuff. (They also have fewER adverts.) Today, even the BBC is 
> being diluted across too many channels.

But still, for the price, there are some exceptional programs and coverage 
of sports events.  Was there any other broadcaster in the world that covered 
pretty much every winter olympic event with no adverts?  Watching football 
on ITV (the commercial channel) is painful, the show is essentially adverts 
with breaks for the national anthems and the 45:00.0000000 halfs.  Most of 
the documentaries the BBC produce are world-class.  I'd happily pay my 
license fee for just the sport and documentaries.

> Let's face it, watching TV adverts is like a bad acid trip.

Most of them are painful to watch, yes.

> PS. In theory if you don't own a TV you don't have to pay for a TV 
> license. In reality, *everybody* has to pay.

I didn't have a TV for several years and never paid.  After I got the first 
letter from them, I just replied and said I didn't have a TV, never heard 
anything else from them after that.

> If you so much as own a toaster which contains a CPU with is 
> hypothetically powerful enough to run a TCP/IP stack, they will argue that 
> you could mod your toaster to watch TV, so you need a TV license.

I don't think that's quite true - they take your word for it unless they can 
prove otherwise (by detecting conventional TV receiving equipment in your 
home, or I guess nowadays detecting your IP address accessing live TV).

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