UK Considers Making Netflix Users Pay License Fee to Fund BBC
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-28/uk-considers-making-netflix-users-pay-license-fee-to-fund-bbc
Posted by marianorajoy
UK Considers Making Netflix Users Pay License Fee to Fund BBC
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-28/uk-considers-making-netflix-users-pay-license-fee-to-fund-bbc
Posted by marianorajoy
44 Comments
Yeah good luck with that, people will just cancel their existing licence or still not pay. I know I’d cancel mine out of principle. Can’t just keep taxing people. Make it pay to watch.
Couldn’t read the article but I’ll cancel streaming services and take to the high seas before I pay another penny to the BBC.
Without paywall:
https://archive.is/vESR2
The high seas will become mighty popular if this goes ahead.
Well they keep changing the licencing fee conditions to make almost entirely unavoidable. I fucking hate Britain.
What is this weird almost nationalistic obsession with the BBC? If it goes it goes.
next in line is license fee for Mobile phone ownership
> The government is the early stages of examining how to overhaul the funding of Britain’s public broadcaster when its current 11-year charter ends on Dec. 31, 2027. Ministers are looking to either retain and alter the current television license fee model or scrap it and instead fund the BBC through alternative models such as taxation or subscription. That’s because viewing habits have changed as users gravitate toward on-demand services.
So the headline is just one of a number of proposals being floated as part of this review. I guess the idea is that anyone “watching telly” should pay the license fee even if they’re only using streaming services. There may be some data that suggests that there’s quite a few people who claim to only watch Netflix, who in fact do occasionally watch BBC, ITV, C4 etc.
It increasingly feels like, if you want everyone in the UK to contribute to the ongoing existence of the BBC/ITV/C4 as PBS services, then general taxation is the fairest way of collecting that.
> we want growth
> comes out with dumb ideas like this
> wonders why we dont get any growth
Gotta have money to shelter peadophiles.
Seriously bbc fuck off
Basically admitting that the BBC wouldn’t survive as a streaming service
Well that’s one way to kill the streaming services in uk.
Can anyone tell me why the BBC needs more money than the £5.7 billion it already gets to run this middle class gravy train.
“The UK is considering making households who only use streaming services such as [Netflix](https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NFLX:US) and [Disney](https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/DIS:US) pay the BBC license fee, as part of plans to modernize the way it funds the public-service broadcaster.”
Fuck that, would rather cancel and never pay again for any of the 3 of them
I willingly pay a license but I think this is too far. Independent streaming services should not be subject to the TV license
I’m a big fan of the BBC but it’s not right that people who have decided to forego tv services and are paying for Netflix only have to pay.
This is due to a large number of young people making this choice and part of that is because the BBC doesn’t really offer them much anymore compared to Netflix etc.
The BBC needs to modernise and realise that the future is not a blank cheque. They can’t continue down the path of a traditional model and expect people to continue to bail them out.
Zero chance in hell you’ll make the british public pay the bbc license fee to watch Netflix.
So who is going to reimburse Netflix for their loss of UK customers due to their additional tariffs?
People forget it’s not just TV, but radio, .bbc.com and 24hr news.
They should better leverage their historical content and sell iPlayer as a subscription service everywhere.
Even if it’s a bolt on to Netflix overseas. “For an extra $4pm get all BBC content”.
How desperate are they for cash these days? It already irritates me how misleading the current ‘Do I need a licence’ checker they have is anyway. It **INCORRECTLY** states you must purchase a licence if you use YouTube, Netflix and Prime video which is simply not true.
Even more so that it includes YouTube incorrectly given it’s user uploaded content. You telling me I need to pay a licence fee to watch any live broadcasts from creators on the platform? Get lost BBC, and I wonder how many pay under false narrative.
I’ll simply pop my eyepatch on and sail the digital seven seas again, and spend the licence fee on a good VPN each year if they introduce this.
Yeah, I would love to see them try and do that.
The BBC is clearly getting desperate at this point, instead of just accepting the fact that a lot of people don’t need the BBC anymore to live their every day lives, They are now considering the possibility to force people to pay for the license fee for something that isn’t even live.
Funny, Romania had a TV license. It was approx… 1 Euro.
The people got pissed so they just add it to general taxation now.
They’re not though, really. Logically, it’s an option on the list, realistically, it’s going nowhere as an idea.
But I don’t pay it because I don’t want it and don’t want to fund it.
If it was worth the money I would.
How would this work from a legal standpoint? Surely Netflix wouldn’t want another organisation to profit from their subscribers. This would at best harm Netflix’s user base.
“Considers” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that click bait. There’s a wide range of ideas being floated, but just won’t happen.
This country stays taking the piss. I don’t watch Terrestial TV, Live TV or listen to the radio. Why tf would I fork out to pay for a service, I don’t use?
What about they first actually give an option for people living abroad to pay them to get access to BBC content?
Haven’t personally paid for a TV license in over a decade and won’t be starting if they do this.
Only live TV I watch is through services unavailable in the UK, and I don’t really watch stuff on iPlayer.
I stopped watching the BBC as a young person when they scrapped BBC Three and a huge amount of their youth-oriented programming back in 2016. Just another classic case of British companies not treating young people as serious customers/audiences, then wondering why they have no money ten years down the line. Had they done this in 2018/19 when Netflix didn’t suck, it would have worked and possibly re-converted lost viewers, but now we’re all cancelling Netflix/Spotify/Prime too.
If I need to I’ll pay for a vpn to use my Netflix. Fuck off bbc
Do you really want to ditch it in place of what would undoubtedly turn into a divisive reactionary style form of media? (think GB news/American media etc) I don’t think people realise just how good the BBC is compared to the alternatives…
More people would pay if they stop harassing/intimidating or outright bullying people into paying for a TV licence they don’t use
I will cancel Netflix if they insist on making me pay a license fee. The BBC should not depend on a tax for funding; they should operate as a commercial business like Netflix and compete for subscribers.
Can’t read the article but I doubt the way Bloomberg has click-baited the title is an accurate representation of what the UK gov would do.
I imagine they would add a “Broadcasting tax” to streaming services (such as Netflix), which would go to fund the Public Broadcaster. Netflix could choose to pass that tax on to subscribers, but it would be their prerogative to do so, not the Gov.
Maybe if they stopped treating the public like naughty year 9 students and sending letters through the post as if people were watching illegal porn or something, people would be more open to paying for it.
Fed up of the BBC covering US events like it’s important while ignoring Europe.
I’d much rather know about what’s happening 21 miles away than 2100 miles!
Absolutely disgraceful they would even consider this when people watching streaming services aren’t watching their shit. Imagine charging someone to watch a show not even shown on TV here when they already pay the subscription fee to watch it to the provider. Is there any country in the world that currently does this? I’m interested to know.
The “you don’t use any of our services but you’re going to pay tax on it anyway” position is pretty indefensible to be honest.
I’ll just pirate 🏴☠️and break the law then lol.
The BBC can change itself or go bust
Yo ho, hoist the colours high,
He ho thieves and beggars,
Never shall we die.
Stop paying partisan hacks like Kunsberg and cap max pays. I personally don’t understand why we have extravagant shows like Strictly and why we have to pay for actors going on vacations as part of their midlife crises packaged as travel shows.
How else will they find the money to protect the next Jimmy Saville? Besides, that propaganda isn’t going to find itself.
The BBC is not a public service and we should stop treating it like it is. It’s a media company and has no business trying to extract money from people outside of the free market.
Make the BBC a subscription based model and put advertising on their live channels. That’s how you modernise this archaic model.
Only as arrogant an organisation as the BBC thinks it should fund multi millionaire salaries through TV poll taxes.