Yes, Ken, there is (was?) a fee to be paid for having a television. I remember vans driving around at night, sussing out those who had a tv but didn't purchase a license for it. Remember when HBO was new, and some folks would "steal" it? I remember vans going around seeking out those rascals. Could some Brit please help Ken more than I could?
yep we have to buy an annual licence to watch TV...off the top of my head it's about £145 .... believe it or not , it's an imprisonable offence to watch Tv without a licence, and there are many people who've been jailed for it. Mug someone in the street , or beat up an old lady and you have less chance of going to prison than watching tv without a licence... ETA, you don't need a licence to own a TV....but don't you dare switch it on and watch it without the licence. The vans that used to come around were called TV licence detector vans, I haven't seen one in ages.. so I have no idea how they catch people these days, but catch them they do... Incidentally the UK is not the only country in the world with a tv licence fee...
No license required here, although we do have to pay the cable company if we want cable. When I bought a house in Los Fresnos, of course the previous owner had moved everything out of it before I moved in. After I was there for about six months, someone came by from the cable company telling me that I owed for seven months of cable. Cable? I didn't even have a television because I was working four jobs and was rarely home. Yes, he pointed to a cable on the outside of the house and said that cable had been hooked up and the bill hadn't been paid in months, which began about a month before I moved in. I tried to explain to him that one of several cables hanging down the outside of my house is not the same thing as having cable, that I had never ordered cable, that I had never used cable, and that I damned well wasn't going to pay them because they didn't disconnect the cable when their last customer moved. I told him I ought to charge them rent for their cable. He still insisted that I owed them a few hundred dollars for cable. I had to call the cable company and talk to a supervisor before I could straighten it out.
Oh yes we have to pay for satellite channels on top of the tv licence, I think our is currently about £500 per year. I know exactly what you mean about fighting the cable people when you have no tv even... I've had similar battles in the past with those who insist I owe something or using something and I'm not