What many of our transatlantic cousins don’t realise is that in the UK we have to pay a licence fee to watch TV programmes (or programs if you like!).

Every year we pay a little more to watch TV programmes.

Their own press office issued the following information:

“The BBC’s domestic broadcasting services are financed by the TV Licence.

The Government sets the level of the licence fee.

The current fee – from 1 April 2009 – is £142.50 for a colour licence and £48.00 for a black-and-white licence.

The licence fee pays for:
• the television channels BBC One, BBC Two, BBC Three, BBC Four, BBC News, BBC Parliament, CBBC and CBeebies;

• five network radio services, plus BBC Asian Network, and digital radio services BBC 1Xtra, BBC Radio 7, BBC 6 Music and BBC 5 Live Sports Extra;

• regional television programmes and Local Radio services in England;

• national radio and television in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland;

• BBC Red Button, BBC Mobile and the BBC website (bbc.co.uk).

Anyone aged 75 or over is entitled to a free TV Licence for their principal address.

Blind people only pay 50% of the full licence fee.

The Accommodation for Residential Care (ARC) Concessionary Licence is available to those who live in certain types of accommodation and are either retired and aged over 60, or are disabled or mentally disordered.

An ARC Concessionary Licence costs £7.50 for each person’s home in the accommodation.

The BBC became the Licensing Authority with responsibility for the administration of the television licensing system in 1991.

In turn the BBC subcontracts the collection to third-party suppliers.

The first licence fee – for radio – was issued in November 1922. The amount was 10 shillings (50p).

The first combined Radio/TV licence – for £2 – was issued in June 1946.

Radio only licences were abolished in February 1971.

The first supplementary licence fee for colour TV was introduced in January 1968.

Broadcast Receiving Licences: 1922 – 2009

Date                          Radio                  TV B&W (with radio)      TV Colour (with radio)

• November 1922   10s — —
• June 1946                £1         £2 —
• June 1954                £1         £3 —
• August 1957           £1         £4* —
• October 1963          £1         £4+ —
• August 1965            £1 5s    £5 —
• January 1968          £1 5s     £5                                                                £10
• January 1969          £1 5s     £6                                                              £11
• July 1971 —                           £7                                                                £12
• April 1975 —                          £8                                                                £18
• July 1977 —                            £9                                                                 £21
• November 1978 —               £10                                                                £25
• November 1979 —                £12                                                                £34
• December 1981 —                  £15                                                                  £46
• March 1985 —                         £18                                                                 £58
• April 1988 —                        £21                                                                £62.50
• April 1989 —                        £22                                                                £66
• April 1990 —                        £24                                                                £71
• April 1991 —                        £25.50                                                         £77
• April 1992 —                        £26.50                                                         £80
• April 1993 —                        £27.50                                                        £83
• April 1994 —                       £28                                                               £84.50
• April 1995 —                      £28.50                                                         £86.50
• April 1996 —                      £30                                                                £89.50
• April 1997 —                      £30.50                                                         £91.50
• April 1998 —                      £32.50                                                          £97.50
• April 1999 —                      £33.50                                                           £101
• April 2000 —                     £34.50                                                           £104
• April 2001 —                      £36.50                                                           £109
• April 2002 —                     £37.50                                                           £112
• April 2003 —                     £38.50                                                            £116
• April 2004 —                     £40.50                                                            £121
• April 2005 —                     £42                                                                   £126.50
• April 2006 —                     £44                                                                   £131.50
• April 2007 —                    £45.50                                                             £135.50
• April 2008 —                     £47                                                                   £139.50
• April 2009 —                     £48                                                                    £142.50

* Excise duty of £1 imposed, not receivable by the BBC.
+ Excise duty abolished, BBC given full amount.

Some remarkable facts emerge here; if you are registered blind you only pay half of the fee! You pay 50% for the audio only!!

It gets worse.

If you are a cable TV subscriber, you are obliged to have BBC as one of your channels – which means that you pay the full licence fee.

It used to be that if you owned a video recorder, a dvd recorder or other channel recording device – even if you didn’t own a TV, you had to pay the full licence fee. That still applies, but more devices have been added to the ‘if you own one of these you must pay’ list.

With the advent of TV replay on demand (which the BBC unsuccessfully tried to raise a charge for with their online iPlayer service), if you owned a laptop, a PC, a PDA and now a mobile phone that can access the BBC’s iPlayer service – you have to pay the full licence fee. If you have multiple devices in your home however, you only have to pay one licence fee.

BUT, today’s office mail brought another surprise. Because I have a business, and because that business may have computers, or a TV or I may have a mobile phone that can connect to the internet and access TV replays, yes, you guessed it, I have to pay the full licence fee to the BBC.

The licence for my home is only good for, er, home use only. My business needs a licence so that we can all settle down around the iPhone or the netbook and watch East-enders, or Heroes, or anything broadcast by the BBC.

This is in addition to the performing rights licence we need to buy to listen to the radio in the office: if we play the radio and music is played, we need another licence to listen to the music. If a member of the public is in our office when the music is playing and we don’t have a licence, we are doomed; we can be prosecuted.

Anyway, back to the mail – the letter lists all the devices where we might be illegally accessing BBC content from and we have to sign a declaration that we don’t use them to watch any form of TV programming in the office and send it back to the BBC.
The BBC use detector vans to patrol the streets and their equipment are so sophisticated it can detect in which room the TV equipment is being used. They can knock on your door and demand to see your licence, and if you don’t have one then you can end up in court. Fines of £1000 + are commonplace.

So if there is anyone outside the UK who has enjoyed a BBC programme, would you mind sending your donation by PayPal to me and I’ll see to it that the BBC gets a little bit more revenue.

Despite all the hype and the major take-up of Social Media, don’t you think that this ‘new wave’ is creating a new breed of cybermugger, whose sole intent is to follow you around pushing unwanted goods and services at you.

Twitter now reminds me of the Soukh at Hammamet in Tunisia, where everybody, but everybody is pushing things at you, entreating you to buy. It can be a fun experience, but as every non-native appears to have ‘gullible tourist’ stamped on the forehead it can be very tiring when it happens street after street, day after day.

Almost every new Twitter follower comes with his own special brand of baggage – make tons of money, get 8 billion followers in a day, learn the secrets of life -you know the pack drill. This is the era of the 140 character bit.ly sell; no relationship marketing – just a mass user development of the blipvert first lampooned by Max Headroom.

Blipverts are multiple marketing messages flashed in milliseconds at the target audience that subliminally cause them to react according to the message delivered.

This will be the death of Social Media Marketing; you can turn off your Twitter spam quite easily by unfollowing the offenders or by leaving the Twitterverse altogether.

When will they ever learn?

Social Media Kaizen

There has been a lot of hubbub recently around Social Media Marketing.

Following the success of our recent seminars, we are in the final stages of creating our brand new Social Media Kaizen product.

We won’t be following in the footsteps of some famous marketers who shall remain nameless and promise you unlimited riches from your Tweets and blogs, but we will be showing you how to use this amazing toolbox of free resources to help your business grow by atracting new customers and monitoring trends and, perhaps most importantly, keeping an eye on your brand reputation.

It’s been a long time.

Economic problems, connectivity problems, even problems problems.

But we are still here, and with the help of a few buddies, a great inspitational mentor (Jim Edwards – he of the Net Reporter fame and now providing moral and inspirational support through his True Life Success Lessons – you should really join) the train is getting back on the tracks with a carload of new and exciting projects.

I won’t give you any false promises – the outlook is definitely sunny and these ideas will be winging their way to you any day soon.

Thanks for keeping the faith.