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How much do you like TV?
Enough to buy a fancy set? One for the bedroom, maybe one for the kitchen too?
Enough to invest in cable or satellite programming?
Enough to pay just for having the set in your home?
Welcome to London, where Pay-TV takes on a whole new meaning.
A couple of weeks ago, we got a bit of a shock when an official-looking letter appeared in our mailbox asking us to pay a 139 pound (about $280) TV licensing fee. (That's for a colour TV; a black-and-white set is 47 pounds.)
Now, this is not a bill for cable or satellite - it is quite literally a fee that everyone in the UK must pay just for having a television set in the house, whether you turn it on or not.
In our house in Charlotte, we have three colour TVs - which means that we'd have to pay 417 pounds per year ($800+) just for having those televisions. Again, that doesn't cover any programming except basic four-channel BBC. It's just a licensing fee.
As it turns out, we didn't have to pay the fee as we are not the official leaseholder of this flat. While we were waiting to find this out, I really started thinking the whole TV thing.
I didn't come to London to watch TV - and thank goodness. There's not a whole lot on. We tend to watch the news here (BBC or Sky News - no CNN) and not a lot else. There are some game shows, many shopping channels (there's a British QVC - the actual channel QVC with British hosts), lots of music shows and American TV reruns - Friends, Scrubs, The Wonder Years, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewvies).
During the day, there is a wretched Jerry Springer-Maury Povich kind of show called The Jeremy Kyle Show. Jeremy is as smarmy as Jerry/Maury, just with a British accent.
Reality shows are big too - Strictly Come Dancing is the original Dancing with the Stars and that is a hot show. So is X Factor - which is the Idol show with Simon Cowell.
If I had to pay just to have a TV in my house - I would probably re-think my TV watching. But I would find a way to see "Mad Men" and "The Office." Wherever you are, you gotta do what you gotta do.
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3 comments:
I sure think that I would want to see something great if I had to pay those fees.
Mom said that she watched the British version of Dancing with the Stars - that would be interesting to campare!!
I think I would have to suck it up. I love TV too much.
Actually you only have to pay for one licence, no matter how many TVs you have in your house.
As for the quality of the TV on offer - that's a matter of personal taste of course and one on which Americans and Brits will never agree :-), but if you had to be stuck with only one channel I'd go for BBC4. The most fascinating programming on earth!
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