Taking out of context, but I found "Having a television antenna is every American’s right.” to be pretty funny.
In the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies, any household watching or recording live television transmissions as they are being broadcast (terrestrial, satellite, cable, or internet) is required to hold a television licence. Since 1 April 2010 the annual licence fee has been £145.50 for colour and £49.00 for black and white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
You guys ought to try it.
We have somehow ended up with a jewel that keeps producing fantastic quality work. It will find a way to navigate entertainment for the next 70 years too, I hope.
Also, have you seen British television? The quality of the original programming far surpasses most of the networks we have in the U.S., and is easily on par with premium channels like HBO.
The British TV licence pays for BBC TV, and BBC Radio, (Now including the World Service, which used to be funded from the Foreign Office department of government) and the BBC Website stuff.
It's amazing.
There are some quirks, though. Buying the licence allows you to watch or record tv broadcasts.
So, it's possible for a person to never ever use any BBC services but still need a TV Licence.
And it's also possible for a person to listen to BBC Radio all day every day, and to heavily use the website, and to watch BBC programmes using the catch up service, but not need to buy a licence.
And a lot of people (mostly women) were in prison because they did not pay the fines they got for not having a tv licence. Prison's probably not the right solution for that problem.
I happily pay my license.
This is kind of a problem when trying to import UK shows into the US, aside from being two nations separated by language, its hard to figure out how to shoehorn "an hour" of show into our 1/3 advertisement schedules. Even PBS has about 10 minutes of ads and "sponsorship ads" per hour.
My superficial opinion is BBC shows transmit at an IQ around 100 or local population average, compared to USA TV around an IQ of 60 or so. I believe this discrepancy is demanded by advertisers wanting the eyeballs to be more gullible, a more easily duped audience. So aside from imports being "too long" for US viewers, imports assume the viewers actually graduated high school, etc, which is another impedance mismatch. Its hilarious comparing shows that jumped the pond, like scrapheap challenge/junkyard wars. Similar, yes, but a definite class distinction of being aimed at grade school level vs high school level.