By Naomi Caine It's only £139.50 a year, so why all the fuss about the BBC licence fee? If you look at it objectively, the fee is pretty good value for money. It costs each household in the UK about 40p a day and for that we get eight national TV channels, 10 radio networks, more than 50 local TV and radio services, the BBC's website and the on-demand TV service, BBC iPlayer.   for the rest of this article follow the link http://money.uk.msn.com/consumer/ar...884                                                                                                                                                                             

  8 National channels? 50 local T V and radio services? Would someone please tell me HOW and WHERE I can get them?   (I only get 4 TV channels, (2 BBC channels) I can't get a signal for channel 5 and I only live 2 miles from a TV mast!)   I don't see why we should also have to PAY for going digital when it's being forced upon us!                                                                                                                                                                               

You wanna try getting out of paying your licence when you leave the country!!!! You almost have to send them your death certificate.   I had to PROVE i'd sold my TV (Even though my neighbour bought it), aswell as prove i was moving country (Plane tickets, job agreements etc).   Stupid BBC.   The funny thing is (Get this)... I now get ALL the BBC services for FREE (Legally!)!  I can even get BBC3 + 4, digital radio etc.... i couldn't get that back in the UK!                                                                                                                                                                             

I think it's brilliant value personally. Plus both my DVD Recorder and my TV have digital built in, so I didn't need pay for going Digital.  You only have to pay if you have an analogue TV (you can now get a digital box for about a tenner) or if you want the pay to watch channels. Digital has to be the way to go, it offers a better signal, more interaction, more channels etc.  Also I can understand why in the 21st Century, the BBC don't want to pay to provide the two formats, especially when we have all had plenty of warning.                                                                                                                                                                               

  I used to think that U K telly was excellent value but that was when I'd just got back from living in Gibraltar for a couple of years.   The programmes didn't start til about 7pm in the evening and ended about 11pm and the quality was very poor.  In the day time all you got, visually, were adverts for local shops and the sound was local radio, in Spanish for part of the time.   In Britain it seems like all we are offered are programmes geared towards younger folk and programmes following an almost identical format such as so-called 'reality' programmes.   Repeats are becoming like burps, repeated straight after they are originally aired!                                                                                                                                                                                 

Matt.      You do not have to have a T.V. licence if you do not have a T.V. or any other equipment that is able to receive a T.V. signal (A computer connected to the internet is able to receive a T.V. signal so must be licenced). I have also been informed that you do not need a licence for a T.V. that has been de-tuned and used as a monitor for a dvd or video player provided that non of the eqipment is capable of receiving a T.V. signal.      One of my friends does not have a T.V. For the past eight or nine years, he has been receiving letters from the licence authority informing him that he does not have a licence (Some of which sounded rather threatening and intimated that court action may follow). In the begining he would phone them up and tell them that he knew that he had no licence but he also knew that he did not have a T.V. and that he found it hard to believe that it was compulsory to have a licence for a non existent T.V. set. He also informed them that he did have a driving licence, although at the time he did not have a vehicle (Maybe that was compulsory also) and that if they wished to buy him a T.V. set he would willingly buy a licence. The licencing authority said that they had vans in the area and would call at his house and check, to which he replied 'Be my guest, but dont expect me to be in'.       After three years of the same type of letters and phone calls he contacted them and told them that he was fed up with  repeating himself and asked which bit they did not understand 'He did not have a T.V.' He was informed that the computer sent out letters automatically to every address in the U.K. (This includes shops and factories etc) that did not have a valid T.V. licence (As they obviously assumed that every building in the U.K. had a telly). For the past five or so years, he has still been receiving  the letters but now he just throws them in the bin. No one From the licencing company (To his knowledge) has called at his house, he has not been summoned to court and he still aint got a telly. Man, these people just will not listen.