BY PAUL T HORGAN
Looking at the disturbances across the Channel, commentators are worried the same may happen here, and soon. Perhaps they are right, but perhaps not. The weather here is too bad for regular outbreaks of civil disorder. In fact it was a torrential downpour that did it for the Chartists in 1848 while the rest of Europe fell to revolutionaries.
There is also the fact that countries that celebrate uprisings, revolutions, and coups tend to get more of these as they are seen as acceptable expressions of popular views. Persistently celebrating the revolution of 1789 must be a part of the fact that France is now on its fifth republic. Venerating the role of ‘Minutemen’ and raising the Second Amendment to the level of an unalterable religious document means American parents taking their children to school rather uniquely, out of all parents in the developed world, not knowing if their offspring will survive the day in their classroom without getting shot.
In Britain, the only nationwide celebration linked to uprising or revolution is of the Popeish coup that failed on the 5th of November 1605.
No, we British would rather rebel against the state and authority in the privacy and comfort of our own homes. This may explain why ‘The Good Life’, a sitcom featuring a married couple who become self-sufficient in Surbiton, was such a hit. There was even a recording of the show with Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in the audience.
While the news is filled with images of burning French town halls. there has been for at least the last half-decade in Britain a quietly mounting rebellion. That it is quite under-reported has to do with the fact that it does not resonate with a large portion of the media that would do the reporting. It also has the authorities quite baffled.
I am referring, if you had not guessed by now, to the collapse in sales of the TV Licence.
Despite the number of households increasing in the UK as a result of organic and inorganic population growth, the uptake of the TV Licence has gone in the opposite direction. The reason why the authorities are baffled as to why this is happening is because anyone in a position of authority probably pays for a TV Licence. So they have no perspective on the matter. Also, anyone performing the analysis of the data and reporting to those in authority also pays for the TV Licence. So they have no clue either.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee had this to say in its report on the most recent BBC Accounts: “The BBC collected £3.8 billion from sales of over 23 million television licences in 2024–25[…]”. What the report does not mention anywhere is that this represents a decline. In fact the best document to understand this is not the BBC Report and Accounts, but in fact the Television Licence Fee Trust Statement. While this document is referenced numerous times in the Commons report, its contents in this regard have not been discussed, which means neither was the decline.
Regarding collection of the TV Licence, the Commons Committee reports: “The BBC increased enforcement of the licence fee system by carrying out nearly 2 million visits to unlicensed households in 2024–25, about 50% more than in 2023–24, driven by a rise in visiting officers (from 172 to 229) and visits per officer (from 7,660 to 8,670). However, this increase did not lead to a proportional rise in households interviewed under caution or purchasing a licence.”
Again the BBC has no clue as to why. They should know better, especially as they are paid rather well to do so, but they don’t. This is a form of wilful ignorance, a failure of perception.
The Trust Statement makes the issue quite clear, saying “Audiences continue to use various devices […] but there are some households where the television set is being wholly substituted for viewing on other devices […] Traditional television viewing is reducing as a result of digital disruption and increased on-demand viewing[…]. IPTV-only homes (where the TV content is received through an internet connection rather than a traditional broadcast platform) are increasing and consume less licensable content.
The BBC also asserts that there is an evasion rate of 12.5%, meaning that the official view is that one eighth of all households in the UK are watching live TV or using iPlayer without paying for a TV Licence.
This last assertion is untrue.
The method for calculating this ‘evasion rate’ is highly questionable. It is based on an estimate of TV use based on audience research figures. If the wrong groups are researched, then there will be an incorrect estimate. Assuming that simply everyone needs to watch The Traitors or live football so therefore everyone needs a TV licence is bogus. It is quite possible to use a television with just non-BBC streaming services and still have an enjoyable, or even more enjoyable viewing experience. Watching a TV without being lectured in every programme on a range of social, political, or environmental issues, or experiencing the left-wing, and now anti-Semitic bias, in the news and current affairs programmes is actually better than watching the BBC. The bogus estimate is accepted as fact at the BBC and also in the House of Commons, when there should have been more robust questioning by MPs of BBC officials. So the BBC genuinely believes it is ‘losing’ over a billion pounds in uncollected revenue a year. It isn’t.
But while the BBC has recognised that people are adapting their viewing habits to no longer need a TV Licence, they do not understand why.
It’s because sales of the TV Licence relied on a campaign of fear. The letters the BBC sends look like financial demands. They have far more QR and numeric codes than is really necessary in a letter other than to confuse and frighten. The letters talk of investigations being opened. The sales pitch – and it is a pitch – is not about the range and quality of services and programmes offered by the BBC, but instead focuses on an impending visit by an ‘Enforcement Officer’ who is empowered to interview the householder under the same caution used by police officers.
These were designed to scare people into paying for a TV Licence. But these letters are actually just direct mail marketing. the ‘Enforcement Officer’ is just a door-to-door salesman. Up to 2017, these salesmen were even paid commission on the number of sales they made until their sharp tactics were exposed by a Daily Mail undercover reporter
So what changed?
It’s the Internet. While the Internet means that people can now stream content from numerous providers other than the BBC, there were also numerous social media posts regarding the truth about the scare tactics used by Capita, the firm retained by the BBC to collect the TV Licence.
The advent of smartphone cameras and Ring-style video doorbells exposed the true nature of the ‘Enforcement Officer’ as being little different, and sometimes worse, than any other door-to-door salesman.
Clear advice about how to deal with TV Licensing if a household legitimately did not use iPlayer or watch live TV could be given: ignore the letters, and close the door on the ‘Enforcement Officer’ without saying a word.
Here was the true reason why these salesmen were making more visits. Each visit usually lasted less than 30 seconds, or the time it takes to close the door on the unwelcome visitor. The letters are simply junk mail pretending to be something official. Because watching live TV or using iPlayer without a licence is a criminal offence, the letters could be more threatening than anything a commercial organisation would ever write. When was the last time a car insurance company threatened a driver with jail for not renewing their car insurance?
The monopoly of the BBC in being the only broadcaster who collects the licence fee means there is no competitor to whom a household disgusted by the threats could turn, so there is no need for the BBC to show restraint. And since no-one in authority does not pay the TV Licence, they could not understand how offensive these letters actually are, especially as they are built on the repeated lie of deliberately obscure special codes being assigned or investigations being opened, and the threat of imminent visits by doorstep bullies.
But the lies no longer work and the bullies have been exposed. The only reason people watched broadcast television live was due to the limitation in technology: there was simply no means to watch a TV programme on demand as one would read an article in a magazine at a time of one’s choosing. The reason why TV programmes in the late 20th Century racked up viewing figures of between 10 and 20 million was because there was no other way other than watching the programme simultaneously with millions of others at the moment of broadcast. The advent of the Video Cassette Recorder was a partial alleviation, but the programme still had to be ‘watched’ by the machine to record it. It was only the advent of streaming services that the need to make an appointment with the TV mostly evaporated.
The BBC, in addition to sending out threatening letters and deploying squads of bully-boys (probably not so much, if at all, in certain ethnically-cohesive neighbourhoods, one suspects), has also taken to placing 5-second adverts on YouTube promoting the TV Licence as the ‘pass’ to watching live sports. And that, apart from some people’s genuine need to watch Smoggie Queens or Ru Paul’s Drag Race UK or some such, is all the TV Licence is really for. It is an extra charge people have to play to watch Sky Sports broadcast of a Premier League football match in the comfort of their own homes. It actually may be cheaper to watch the match in the pub, even when buying a few drinks to do so.
So there has been a quiet revolution, a Very British Uprising in the privacy of people’s homes by those tired of the patronising and dishonest behaviour of the BBC with their sales goons and unnecessarily threatening letters. The Internet allows people to choose what they watch and when they watch it. The Internet has also educated people on how to deal with the TV Licence. If households have no strong desire to watch any form of live television and no need to watch any programme made available by the BBC (The Goodies and some sketches on Little Britain and That Mitchell and Webb Look are permanently unavailable) then there is no need to pay the TV Licence. There isn’t even any need to inform the BBC that there is ‘No Licence Needed’ for the household. All that happens is that the household’s address is placed on a marketing database to be earmarked for special treatment.
The dishonest, offensive, and threatening letters sent to households can be put in the bin. This is a sales operation, backed by an increasingly obsolete law that has been able to be legally bypassed for over half a decade.
By breaking the conspiracy of silence and fear, the BBC has been exposed as just another content provider – and an increasingly niche one at that – in an ever-expanding marketplace. Its increasingly questionable editorial decisions lack the quasi-monopolistic leverage of four decades ago.
Broadcasting is dying of obsolescence in the UK and the BBC’s business model is dying with it as streaming TV viewers are no longer isolated in ignorant fear, but united in defiant knowledge. Given that the blatant lies and hollow threats persisted into a streaming age to which the BBC’s overpaid executives notably failed to adapt, this is a long overdue outcome.
Paul T Horgan worked in the IT Sector. He lives in Berkshire.