21 ms·

Ok a price increase but: "nine streaming subscriptions". No one sane will do nine streaming subscriptions. The market is insane in itself for assuming that.

bnastic 6d ago
Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+, BBC. That's four. I don't want any of them. Three I have to take due to kids' nagging, the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.
- jaffa2 6d ago
  Tell your kids ‘no’ Bring some sanity back to the world.
- mystifyingpoi 6d ago
  Easy, just make kids pay for these, if they need them this much.
- eptcyka 6d ago
  I never paid for the licence for I never used iPlayer and the investigators were welcomed into my house to take a look at the chromecast dongle.
- jbs789 6d ago
  The TV license is insane to me, as a non-brit moving to the uk. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for something I use. But the threats I get about a GBP 1,000 is very un-british. I don't know who runs the TV licensing scheme but they need to be sacked. Thankfully if you can look past this gamesmanship then it is possible to call them and decline to participate in this nonsense.
  - nottorp 6d ago
    The "licensing" has a point because it does make the BBC more impartial since the current government cannot adjust their funding down or up depending on their programming. However, the same aim could be achieved by just setting a formula in law. 1 pound per british citizen, or 0.0001% of the average income per citizen last year. Numbers pulled out of ass as i have no idea what an UK tv license costs. As long as they make the formula extremely hard to change, it will work.
    - zelos 6d ago
      £180/year (£60 for black and white only!). It is becoming increasingly hard to defend given the low quality of a lot of their output. If they could find a way to fund Radio 4 without it I'd be in favour of scrapping the fee.
      - nottorp 6d ago
        Hah, considering the surviving B&W TVs are collector's items now, you probably can't save money by getting the cheaper license...
  - amiga386 6d ago
    "TV licensing" exists in a lot of countries and it funds the public service broadcaster. It is essentially a tax, it just happens to be collected by a third party (in this case, Crapita) rather than other tax collecting mechanisms. Some countries (like Finland or Switzerland) require you to pay it even if you don't own a TV. It's really just a tax. The reasoning for it not being a tax is that the public service broadcaster should have political independence from the government. Most people don't want their country to have a "government mouthpiece" state broadcaster, and it is much easier for the government to tell the broadcaster what to do and say by fucking with its funding if it's directly funded from the treasury. Other countries do the same thing with a different trick, such as inserting it into your electricity bill. The UK is a powerhouse in media production, part of that is due to the BBC funding all sorts of productions, both the visible (actors, etc.) and the invisble (camera operators, set designers, costumers, writers, directors...). It has also been clear for centuries that private media, historically just the newspapers, but now TV channels, film studios, etc., have been disastrous, as their private owners either focus on profitability and pump out scandal and lurid stories, or if they've made their millions some other way, they run a paper in order to pump out biased propaganda. So a state-funded but not state-controlled broadcaster is an ideal thing to have.
    - jbs789 6d ago
      You raise great points. Feel like this should be in their letters rather than (or in addition to) the threat of legal action.
      - amiga386 6d ago
        It should be, but as Crapita are run by useless, feckless arseholes from top to bottom, it's not. You have my sympathies. It could be worse, though, Crapita also run the civil service pension system and have completely fucked it up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg54750gdo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg54750gdo
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
- LandR 6d ago
  > the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats. I get a letter every month from the licencing people, it just goes in the bin. I've had 1 visit, he asked to come in, I said no. That was basically the end of it. (For the record, I have a TV but I currently have no way to watch live TV on it, so why should I have a licence! I don't use their service)
vjvjvjvjghv 6d ago
There are lots of insane people though. They fall for the “cheaper than a cup of coffee”’trick repeatedly
FinnLobsien 6d ago
I don’t think the point is that this is the assumption of people’s real subscription behavior, more to show that it’s getting more expensive overall.
subtlejellyfish 6d ago
I have 8 of them plus YouTube TV and Prime Video. Some of it is a function of my household's love of sports, and their fragmentation across the services. Some of its just sheer laziness to pick one and stick with it or rotate the subscriptions. I don't think I could realistically drop lower than 3 on this list though: Spotify gets used constantly. One TV/Video streaming service. My wife would likely divorce me if I cancelled YouTube Premium.

bnastic 6d ago

Apple Music, Netflix, Disney+, BBC. That's four. I don't want any of them. Three I have to take due to kids' nagging, the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats.

jaffa2 6d ago
Tell your kids ‘no’ Bring some sanity back to the world.
mystifyingpoi 6d ago
Easy, just make kids pay for these, if they need them this much.
eptcyka 6d ago
I never paid for the licence for I never used iPlayer and the investigators were welcomed into my house to take a look at the chromecast dongle.
jbs789 6d ago
The TV license is insane to me, as a non-brit moving to the uk. I am happy to pay a reasonable price for something I use. But the threats I get about a GBP 1,000 is very un-british. I don't know who runs the TV licensing scheme but they need to be sacked. Thankfully if you can look past this gamesmanship then it is possible to call them and decline to participate in this nonsense.
- nottorp 6d ago
  The "licensing" has a point because it does make the BBC more impartial since the current government cannot adjust their funding down or up depending on their programming. However, the same aim could be achieved by just setting a formula in law. 1 pound per british citizen, or 0.0001% of the average income per citizen last year. Numbers pulled out of ass as i have no idea what an UK tv license costs. As long as they make the formula extremely hard to change, it will work.
  - zelos 6d ago
    £180/year (£60 for black and white only!). It is becoming increasingly hard to defend given the low quality of a lot of their output. If they could find a way to fund Radio 4 without it I'd be in favour of scrapping the fee.
    - nottorp 6d ago
      Hah, considering the surviving B&W TVs are collector's items now, you probably can't save money by getting the cheaper license...
- amiga386 6d ago
  "TV licensing" exists in a lot of countries and it funds the public service broadcaster. It is essentially a tax, it just happens to be collected by a third party (in this case, Crapita) rather than other tax collecting mechanisms. Some countries (like Finland or Switzerland) require you to pay it even if you don't own a TV. It's really just a tax. The reasoning for it not being a tax is that the public service broadcaster should have political independence from the government. Most people don't want their country to have a "government mouthpiece" state broadcaster, and it is much easier for the government to tell the broadcaster what to do and say by fucking with its funding if it's directly funded from the treasury. Other countries do the same thing with a different trick, such as inserting it into your electricity bill. The UK is a powerhouse in media production, part of that is due to the BBC funding all sorts of productions, both the visible (actors, etc.) and the invisble (camera operators, set designers, costumers, writers, directors...). It has also been clear for centuries that private media, historically just the newspapers, but now TV channels, film studios, etc., have been disastrous, as their private owners either focus on profitability and pump out scandal and lurid stories, or if they've made their millions some other way, they run a paper in order to pump out biased propaganda. So a state-funded but not state-controlled broadcaster is an ideal thing to have.
  - jbs789 6d ago
    You raise great points. Feel like this should be in their letters rather than (or in addition to) the threat of legal action.
    - amiga386 6d ago
      It should be, but as Crapita are run by useless, feckless arseholes from top to bottom, it's not. You have my sympathies. It could be worse, though, Crapita also run the civil service pension system and have completely fucked it up: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg54750gdo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yg54750gdo
deleted 6d ago
[deleted]
LandR 6d ago
> the fourth I have to take due to state apparatus' nagging and legal threats. I get a letter every month from the licencing people, it just goes in the bin. I've had 1 visit, he asked to come in, I said no. That was basically the end of it. (For the record, I have a TV but I currently have no way to watch live TV on it, so why should I have a licence! I don't use their service)

vjvjvjvjghv 6d ago

There are lots of insane people though. They fall for the “cheaper than a cup of coffee”’trick repeatedly

FinnLobsien 6d ago

I don’t think the point is that this is the assumption of people’s real subscription behavior, more to show that it’s getting more expensive overall.

subtlejellyfish 6d ago

I have 8 of them plus YouTube TV and Prime Video. Some of it is a function of my household's love of sports, and their fragmentation across the services. Some of its just sheer laziness to pick one and stick with it or rotate the subscriptions. I don't think I could realistically drop lower than 3 on this list though: Spotify gets used constantly. One TV/Video streaming service. My wife would likely divorce me if I cancelled YouTube Premium.