TV licence payment avoidance

cableskeptic

I heard an advert on RTE radio at the moment that says thanks to the 1.1 million households that have paid for their TV licences (did I hear that correctly?).

There are nearly 1.3 million households in the ROI and I believe about 2% of households don't own a TV (although I'd be surprised if it was that high). That must mean that there are well over 150,000 households that are depriving RTE of much needed funds.

Surely An Post should be able to get this figure down?

Dr. Loon

Originally posted by cableskeptic
depriving RTE of much needed funds.

????
That's really funny.

I would think that a routine trip down through the very many new housing estates would mop up loads.
Presumably whenever theres analog shutdown and 100% digital tv here,the job of collecting the TV license could be made simpler?
I would be thinking that all IDTV's and stb's would/could be carded for the license, which would be on direct debit with no paper license anymore?
mm

cableskeptic

Originally posted by Dr. Loon



????
That's really funny.

It might be funny to you but whether you agree with the licence fee or not it is the law and if everyone paid their fair share then maybe RTE wouldn't need such a large licence fee increase to break even.

Madman's idea about associating smart cards with payment for a licence is interesting in principle: if you don't pay your licence your card doesn't decode the channels. Might be difficult to get cooperation across all platforms (especially Sky who are not regulated of course) though?

Originally posted by cableskeptic

Madman's idea about associating smart cards with payment for a licence is interesting in principle: if you don't pay your licence your card doesn't decode the channels. Might be difficult to get cooperation across all platforms (especially Sky who are not regulated of course) though?

I wonder is there room for some input from the BCI here(perish the thought)?
If the Irish channels on sky need a license to be there, surely some method of policing television licenses could be devised.
Perhaps it could be made illegal through some section/new ammendment to the broadcasting act for Sky to provide Cards for Sky digital without the customer having a valid tv license.
It definitely should be made a condition of the free digibox and dish offer.
Consider the fact that there is a tv tuner in a digibox and a company is handing these out in ROI... for free if you subscribe and pay your instalation....
Surely theres a case there for making it a condition now that RTE is going on there that a valid license should be produced for to qualify for this???
mm
I can hear those that don't like RTE or those that don't pay their license fee going :eek: already!

Elmo

Why not give the TV licence colection to TV sellers/renters.

I.E. every time you buy a television you buy a licence with it and if you already have a TV licence then you bring it with you when you're buying a TV.

Khynareth

That's the way it works in France. Now if Granny (who pays less) has a TV licence, you can go and buy a new one with her (as you pay one licence for whatever number of TVs you own), and you don't have to pay yours...

cableskeptic

Interesting to hear how they do it in France. Unfortunately knowing Ireland I think we would find even more innovative ways to beat that system: I would predict there would be a large influx of "black market" TVs and RTE would get even less money.

Elmo

In france it would work as you have to carry ID around with you like in most other european countries.

Granny would be my new best friend. (but she would have to pay for her own tv licence)

Do not think it would lead to a greater black market in ireland if it did the government would take that more seriously, i hope that most irish people are up standing (except those watch tv they should realy sit down)

god worst message ever

Mossy Monk

how much is the license in France? i ask this because how many people would buy a new television every year. very few. what they could do here is take so much out of peoples wages/dole every week. but how would they work out who lives where as it is one license per house

medja

I read somewhere that france has the 2nd lowest collection rate for the licence fee in the E.U. Northern Ireland has the lowest.

But a question, IS it not so that you have to give your address when Buying a TV in this country and the addresses are then sent to An Post, can some one confirm this?

Mossy Monk

i've bought 4 televisions in my lifetime and i've never had to give an address. it was a case of hand over the cash and take the television with you

Our man in Havana

Its an post that admin the licence.

The way they work is if you get post at an address, it is reasonable to assume that you have a TV. They will therefore hassle you until you prove you dont have a Tv, but even then expect a follow up every six months or so, Just in case you got one in the mean time.

Elmo

the Television Retailers of Ireland should look to get the TV licence.

they could then get people to go to their shops once a year to pay for their TV licence and maybe pick up something else while they are their.

If you dont have a television and the persist on call to you every 6 months, could you sue?

Our man in Havana

Originally posted by Elmo

If you dont have a television and the persist on call to you every 6 months, could you sue?

Thats what happened when I was a student in Cork. They would send threatening letters and someone always called to check us out. They never gave up.

sceptre

Interesting article in the Sunday Murdoch a few months ago by Michael Ross on that subject - the lengths he had to go to to stop the calls, threatening letters and so on, not having a TV within a stone's throw of his house. I'll ferret it out and post it if I can find it.

mossie

I work for An Post and I have had experience of TV Licence work, both Administration and inspection. The way it works is An Post maintains an index of households which is supposed to be updated by the licence inspector consulting with the postmen who give info about new houses etc on their route. In reality this doesn't work as the postman is supposed to be paid overtime for this extra work and An Posts current financial situation doesn't allow this. The other big problem is that inspectors have a very large area to cover.

It's easy enough for an inspector to go into a new estate and get maybe 75% - 90% of the houses with unlicenced TV sets. This is much harder to do in rural areas where the inspector doesn't know the area and new houses are scattered everywhere. Any houses on the list without a licence will usually receive a letter once a year. Mostly inspectors will only call to new houses or houses which have been licenced in the past and have defaulted on renewing. It is always the same people who don't get a licence. Invariably some people prefer to go to court and pay a large fine plus expenses rather than pay €107 for a licence.

Cork

TV licence - well you pay it but RTE are commercial

talk106 is better than Joe Duffy
Today FM is better than 2fm
TV3 is better than Network 2

TG4 is public service broadcasting

Elmo

Funny that TV3 is better then N2, I have never seen anything of choice on TV3 except Corronation Street and Champions League which where once on N2 i wonder if N2 got these shows would it then be better then TV3. I suppose N2 was good when it had those shows. (I suppose that The Weakest Link is better then Batchlors walk.)

News106 or Talk106 cant realy be comparied to Joe Duffy now can it, it is a compleatly different station. (I did realise that Joe Duffy was a Radio Station)

Today FM is a more adult station to 2FM they cannot be compaired to each other.

TG4 is the best Irish TV channel and yet it is PBS.

Digifiend

N2 is the Irish version of BBC2, yet they used to show some ITV output - the Irish version of that being the very young TV3 (about the same age as Channel 5 in UK, am I right?)

Elmo

RTE 2 was RTE idea of putting british and american shows on one channel and thus giving people who did not have access to RTE relays, british and american programming. RTE relays now being NTL (Once Cablelink).

RTE 2 showed Coronation Street from 1978 to 1992 (when it became the olympic channel for that summer) Coronation Street then moving to RTE 1 and as RTE 1 has more viewers then RTE 2 or N2 ever had everone started to watch coronation street, the same thing has happened since EastEnders has move to RTE 1 From TV3 with Coronation Street and EastEnders getting about the same amount of viewers 500,000. EastEnders only got around 200,000 viewer or less on TV3 and Coronation Street used to get around 700,000 viewers on RTE1.

N2 tries to be Irelands version of C4 or BBC2.
TV3 is basically ITV Ireland since Granada took a 35% stake in it.
I dont think much of ITV except for its Drama output which is good for TV3. The BBC is much better.

TV3 began broadcasting in 1998 and TG4 began in 1996.