Why I Have Cancelled My TV License

It’s not purely because we don’t watch live TV.

(Audio version here)

It has not made economic sense for us to have a TV license for years. I worked out that I have watched Live TV twice in the last year. Once a friend was speaking on the news and once Panorama did a good documentary. A TV license costs £169.50 a year which means each of those cost me £84.75. The last time my husband watched it was when England were playing, and when I inquired of the child whether she ever watched live TV, she replied scornfully that no, she does not because she is not old and shut her bedroom door in my face.

Nevertheless, we have kept our TV license, mostly because the BBC is a British institution and I get oddly patriotic about things like that. I’ve also believed it to be a valuable resource that I wanted to support even if I do not use it myself. This is the same motivation that drives me to continue to support organisations for care workers even though I haven’t been one for many years. I would like other care workers to have access to support in their work even if I do not need it. I would also like other people to have access to well-funded, high-quality, non-partisan TV programming, even if I don’t watch it myself.

However, I have begun to feel differently about this, largely because of things like this:

I’m afraid I agree. This letter assumes the recipient to be watching live TV and has an unambiguously bullying tone. “Ignore me and it will cost you.” Right at the bottom, it says that if you do not need a license, you can just let them know and they’ll stop writing to you, although they may confirm this with a visit. The arrogant, authoritarian entitlement of that is astounding. Somebody on X said that it was like Aldi turning up on your doorstep and demanding to inspect your kitchen cupboards to make sure you had not been shoplifting from them, and that’s exactly what it is like.

Also, it simply isn’t true that if you tell them you no longer need a TV license, they will stop writing to you. I told them I did not need one on the 6th February and went through a lengthy palaver confirming that I know what live TV is by saying “Yes, I understand” to at least a dozen examples of it. I received this on the 21st February, informing me that I need to act before the 5th March to ‘avoid a visit’ from an ‘enforcement officer.”

This is not acceptable, is it?

I’ve also been dealing with this with two other properties owned by my mother since her death in December 2022. She did watch a lot of live TV, but I informed the TV licensing people of her death shortly after it. It took 19 months to sell her house and, in that time, I had to confirm that, yes, she was still dead and thus still not watching live TV on more than one occasion. When we went in for the final clean up, there were three red letters threatening imminent visits and prosecution that had arrived within a couple of weeks. If even being dead is not accepted as a valid reason for not having a TV license, it seems unlikely that anything else will be.

This was very distressing because my mother died of a catastrophic head injury following a fall after I had not been able to visit for several days due to having flu. The thought of my mother lying alone on her bedroom floor injured and unable to get to the phone for hours and whether we could have saved her if I had asked my husband to go round and let himself in when she had not answered the phone in the morning, rather than assuming she was out shopping and waiting until she had still not answered by late afternoon impacted my mental health severely. One thing you really don’t want to have to do while in a mental health facility being treated for a major depressive episode and complex grief is call the TV licensing people to confirm that your mother is still dead and still does not need a TV license.

The same problem arose at my mother’s tiny cottage where I had also cancelled the TV license. I kept the cottage as a writing and walking retreat. It will never need a TV license for as long as I am the only person who goes there. For that reason, I attempted to answer the question about when it is likely to need a TV license by estimating my life expectancy and entering something like “2060” but this date was not accepted. It seems I will need to keep confirming I have not suddenly started watching TV forever, and even when I do, I will receive threatening letters.

It is the threatening nature of the letters that really annoys me, as well as the assumption that everyone watches TV really and, if you claim not to be, they can be confident enough that you are lying to send letters that tell you it will be costly to ignore them and to act within two weeks to avoid receiving a visit from an enforcement officer. For me, this is merely annoying. If I ‘act’ every time they require me to - it seems this might be as often as every two weeks from my last letter - and call them to confirm that I still don’t need a TV license (the online service can never find my details), this will consume so many potential working hours over a year that it would be cheaper to get a license. This is, quite possibly, why they harass so intensely.

However, I am not easily intimidated, have access to the internet and my reading comprehension in English is good. Also, I have sufficient funds that the worst case scenario - a false accusation that I am watching live TV being accepted and the issuing of a fine - really isn’t that scary. It would still likely cost me less than wasting writing hours on hold to the TV licensing office. This is not the case for everyone. These letters give only the option to move or buy a TV license in their bold print and have demands to “Act now” and threats of prosecution and large fines in the boldest print and often circled in red. The intent is clearly to make the threats leap out at people and be intimidating. The fact that you only need a TV license if you are watching live TV is referred to vaguely at the end. The fact that there are many ways to access films and TV series without watching live TV if one cannot afford a TV license is not mentioned at all.

Who is most likely to be intimidated into buying a TV license that they do not need by these tactics? First and foremost, it is likely to be those who are not online and cannot easily check the criteria for needing a license and other options that are available to them. That will be mostly the elderly. Secondly, people who do not have strong reading comprehension in English (or in any language) are most likely to only take in the bold print and threats circled in red and believe that everybody needs a TV license. That will hit people who have English as a work-in-progress second language and people who have limited literacy due to learning disability or very poor schooling. Thirdly, people with a tendency to anxiety or other mental health problems are the most likely to buy a TV license, even if they comprehend perfectly well that they don’t need one, just to make the letters and threats of a visit from an enforcement officer stop. Fourthly, people living from paypacket to paypacket and already struggling to make ends meet and whom a £1000 fine would render unable to pay their rent or buy food are likely to find a way to pay £15 a month that they cannot spare for a service that they do not need out of fear that they could be wrongly accused of watching live TV without a license, and that the fine could have devastating consequences.

This is simply not acceptable. The BBC needs to accept that it is a public service and not a protection racket, stop harassing the public, and start sending out clear letters that explain who needs a TV license and what people can do instead if they’d like to watch TV but cannot afford a TV license or do not watch it often enough for it to be worth £15 a month. Some will consider this a naive hope because doing that would make many more people opt out of watching live TV and needing a TV license and this could make the BBC cease to be financially viable. This, I would suggest, is the BBC’s problem to solve and they will not be incentivised to do so if people who can easily access information and advice online, do have good reading comprehension in English, aren’t highly anxious and conflict averse and aren’t on the breadline keep paying them to go away and stop harassing them.

Other people have suggested to me that I can just ignore the letters and not answer the door or simply say “No, thank you” and close it. They tell me that this does make them go away and also that letters announcing a date for an investigation are seldom followed up by a visit. I appreciate their well-intended and well-informed advice and especially those who, out of a sense of moral responsibility to their fellow citizens and for absolutely no personal gain, spend their time and energy providing this information to the public. I do not doubt that they understand how the system works better than I do and that their advice is sound, but I still don’t want to do that. I received their advice because I am online and can read English well. I could act on it because I am not intimidated by the letters and threats and the worst case scenario for me is a false charge and a fine that I can afford to pay without any threat to my home or ability to feed my family. I have been informed that I could easily get a false charge or that I could even be prosecuted for something like ‘obstruction’ for not opening the door quickly enough if I try to “be clever” or “fight the system”. I have not verified this, but if this kind of thing is happening and the system really is that corrupt, I think that makes it only more important that I give myself every opportunity to experience it for myself, because I am a writer with a not-insignificant readership and in a better position to bring this to public attention than most people.

So, I have cancelled my TV license and if my husband wishes to watch football, he will go to the pub, while I will go to my neighbour and best friend if something comes up that I really want to catch. I don’t think I have any ‘receiving equipment’ for live TV now, but am arranging for an engineer to come round & check that an old satellite dish really is disconnected and that the TV is not connected to anything other than Netflix and my husband’s gaming console and leave an invoice confirming that this is what he has done. Then, we shall see what happens. I shall not respond to letters demanding that I act now and confirm over a 45 minute phone call that I have not suddenly developed a liking for television in the last fortnight. I shall only respond to a letter giving me a date for an investigation, in which case I shall confirm my availability and let them know I have taken an unpaid day off work for the purpose. Then, hopefully, somebody will actually come, and I will make them a cup of tea and let them examine my disconnected TV and request a recorded interview about their methods of investigation and enforcement.

Edit: 23/02/2024 - A reader has pointed out that the TV license also covers BBC iPlayer which is a video-on-demand service much like Netflix and Amazon Fire as well as for watching any live TV.