In the UK we're "supposed" to be paying £174.50 for a TV license each year in order to watch live streaming services, I don't pay for the license as I only watch Netflix and Amazon Prime Videos. Those who don't pay for a TV license are constantly harassed by the BBC by receiving letters and enforcement visits. It got me wondering, what happens if you don't pay for cable in the US?
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Nothing. We don’t have tv license fees. You can buy a cheap antenna and pick up some local channels and the major sporting events as well.
I used to work for a cable company. It gets turned off. They’ll turn it back on once you pay a certain portion of the outstanding balance
Edot: turned off virtually. Physical disconnections are long gone
Regular tv and cable are different. You can get regular local channels free or with a $20 antenna.
Cable is a different TV service with 100s of channels depending on the package you choose. If you don’t pay your service gets shut off
We don’t have license fees, they don’t exist and never have. Over-air TV has always been free.
If you don’t pay for cable and don’t have an antenna…you stream services using your internet service. Most young people don’t have cable anymore.
Edit: just to clarify, our networks like ABC NBC and CBS have always been over the air and free. TNT, HBO, and ESPN have always been cable. You have always had to pay for those via a cable or satellite provider. There is no equivalent to BBC and license fees.
If you’re talking just about cable, that’s run entirely by private companies and they just turn it off. It’s by subscription, just as a magazine company would stop sending you issues.
If you’re talking about TV writ large to include over-the-air broadcasts, that’s free. We have no history of charging a per-TV tax Iike the UK does. We _did_ long ago have a mix of the two models back when the phone company charged for your phone(s).
Broadcast television is free here. The cable company will send door to door sales people who will harass you trying to get you to subscribe. Unlike in the UK, they’re just high pressure sales people. You are under no obligation at all to subscribe
We can watch TV for free in the US. there are free digital stations you can access with an antenna. Our cable isn’t equivalent to your TV licenses. Cable just gets you access to extra channels and also includes some of the free channels as well.
Cable is a private service. If you don’t pay for it you don’t get it. We have broadcast TV you can get with an antenna that’s free, supported by ad revenue (plus donations and other funds in the case of PBS) but we don’t have public access programming you’re required to have or pay for.
It’s like if you don’t pay your Netflix bill. It’s cut off.
Do other countries require a license fee to own a tv or just the UK?
Cable is an optional service to get expanded channels. You still get the free channels of you don’t pay cable.
If you don’t pay for a service you simply do not have access to it. I live in a very rural area and we just don’t get any channels for free over the air. If we want to watch TV we need to pay for streaming
We dont have to pay for a TV license and there’s no mandate for them, our cable subscription works much like any other streaming service. If you stop paying they disconnect your service (on their end) until you pay up. Plus hardware fees.
Cable is optional here. So you have to sign up with a provider to receive their services. If you don’t pay they turn it off and will send you to collections for the balance. I cancelled my cable many years ago.
In the US, cable is privatized; If you don’t pay, you’ll have to make do with regular broadcast television, which is free.
Nothing because we don’t pay for licenses like that.
I don’t even think most people have cable anymore. We just stream everything.
You need to describe this TV license more. Does the BBC provide free cable service in the UK? In the US, private networks like NBC, CBS, etc., broadcast signals over the air for free collection by a tv with an antenna. They get money from the advertisers on their programming.
Cable companies are also private, and you pay them a monthly fee for a much larger selection of channels (100+). You receive that signal via their cable for a monthly fee. Stop paying them and they cut that cable.
You need neither cable nor an antenna to access streaming services, just internet. Which is also provided via a private company that you will pay a monthly fee to access that internet. Don’t pay? No internet for you!
Cable is through a literal cable, they just disconnect it if you don’t want to pay.
There is public broadcasting you can pick up with an antenna that is completely free. There is no charge to watch the local news or sports with an antenna.
Not a fucking thing. Tv is free in America if you have an antenna that can pick it up and they are like $12 on the internet.
If you don’t pay for cable TV here in the USA, they disconnect you from the system and you’re stuck with only streaming video and broadcast TV.
Since cable TV is expensive and since you pay $100/month to just watch a fuckton of commercials and be called nasty names whenever you flip past Fox News, I called up my cable company canceled the service about 15 years ago. They disconnected me promptly at my request.
License fees to receive a broadcast signal are a foreign concept there in the USA. I thought the UK rules on this were crazy when I first heard about it, but I kinda understand why those rule was made (WWII propaganda) and my it persists (supporting the BBC is worthwhile). So, I’ll settle on calling it foreign – it’s like the U.K. is another country or something!
I enjoy BBC programming and told their news in high regard (they’re admirably unbiased when reporting on the USA), I’d be willing to pay a Netflix-like fee to watch BBC from the USA. But, in the US legal environment, this is completely voluntary and they’ll prevent me from accessing the content from accessing the content if I don’t pay.
We don’t have a license. The service gets disconnected if you don’t pay the company.
The closest thing we have to BBC is PBS, which is broadcasted over the air from major news outlets and can be picked up from an antenna near almost any major or even most minor cities for free. Most people in the U.S. only use streaming services today, as well.
People who subscribe to cable typically do it only for a handful of channels, typically sports or specific news channels because they can’t live without them. Many sports have made or are making the switch to streaming. It’s the way of the future and everyone knows it over here
In the UK can you just pay for streaming services and not pay a license fee for basic tv?
The US has free broadcast tv with antenna, and the US free TV presumably has more adverts.
You should have listened to the Beatles
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
I’ll tax the street.
(If you try to sit, sit) I’ll tax your seat.
(If you get too cold, cold) I’ll tax the heat.
(If you take a walk, walk) I’ll tax your feet.
(Taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman
There is no TV tax. That’s a British thing.
If you do not pay for cable they turn it off.
However, in Americ,a we have over-the-air TV which you can use for free. If you watched movies and youtube it is also free, minou the cost of the moviesor streaming service.
Your TV License is a crock of shit and you should really band together and fight it. It’s not like we don’t have our own crocks that we are not doing anything about, though.
So, for regular TV, like the main channels (CBS, NBC, PBS, etc..) before cable, they are free if we don’t subscribe to cable or streaming services. They are paid for by selling commercials to advertisers. We don’t pay a fee to watch. Never have.
I’ve heard the England and Ireland residents have to pay an annual fee for this? It doesn’t make sense to me since I’m assuming the TV stations there have commercials. If they don’t, then maybe it makes sense?
Does the BBC still have tv detector vans? I enjoy watching BBC News and BBC world service for free here in the US…PBS and NPR stations pay for retransmission rights but I listen on tunein app which just plays like one ad at the beginning, or on the internet or steaming video
They turn it off.
Cable TV is private. We subscribe to that just like you subscribe to Netflix. If we don’t pay our bill, they disconnect us.
We don’t have licenses like you do.
If you don’t pay for your cable in America you get your cable cut off. Cable isn’t something automatic. It’s something that you sign up for, so it’s like saying what happens if you don’t pay for your Netflix account.
We don’t have a Tv/cable loisens