In the day and age of beautiful BBC HDTV, it’s pretty surprising that the UK TV licensing authority announced today that over 13,000 people still watch British Telly with a black and white TV set.
The cause of the this? The BBC License fee.
For those that don’t know, in Britain, if you own a TV you have to pay a yearly license fee (it’s essentially a tax, you don’t have a choice) and this money is used to directly fund the BBC (to the tune of almost £4 billion last year alone).
If you own a color television, the cost for owning a TV every year is £145.50. If you own a B&W TV, the cost is only £49 – a substantial savings. In cash strapped Britain, people are simply saving money by keeping their old TV’s and sticking to B&W.
The numbers are declining and will continue to do so – but I thought this was interesting enough to share. I imagine it would be rather fun to watch shows like the new Doctor Who or Downton Abbey in black and white!
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Anglotopia was founded by Jonathan and Jackie Thomas in 2007 in a closet in Chicago. Anglotopia is for people who love Britain - whether it's British TV, Culture, History or Travel - we cover it all. Anglotopia is now our full time jobs and we spend our time working on the site and planning our yearly trips to Britain. Join us as we explore Britain and everything it has to offer!
Of course the other possibility is that people are simply lying in order to get away with paying less than half the cost of a colour TV licence. There are detector vehicles which roam UK streets and are able to pick up whether a TV is switched on in a house – houses that have a TV but don’t show up in the database receive a fine. I don’t know, and I doubt, whether a detector van can tell the difference between a 1960s black and white television and the latest and greatest LG or Samsung.