any news regarding TV License fee ???

[Cory]

The whole idea of the new tax is it will replace the old, ailing TV fee system. Unlike the old system, the tax will no longer be tied to the ownership of a television set. If you’re an adult whose annual income is in excess of 7,813 euros, you’ll pay the tax no matter what you decide to do to your existing TV. (The ‘technicality’ of owning or not owning a TV set is no longer considered too relevant as these days most everything YLE produces is also provided to the general public on the Internet – and via FM radio, of course – and because the concepts of “TV”, “radio”, “Internet” (as services) and “TV set”, “PC”, “smartphone”, “tablet PC” (as devices) are converging anyway.)

Yeah, yeah... can't fight the system but as someone else has mentioned on here, I believe that I'll be paying double since we do pay to put internet into our home. It's still a choice to watch or not and my choice is not to watch.

There is techonolgy available to allow YLE to broadcast into homes (via TV, computers, smart phones) who've paid and to cut broadcast into homes/devices who've not paid ie many TV programs from other countries are not authorised to be shown, in Finland, from their websites via computers, smartphones,etc.

We're paying to provide support to those who don't work and/or have lower incomes. If all programming were indeed educational then I would be in full support of this new proposal but programmes are not all educational or interesting. Grab a book/magazine/newspaper and read. Taxes support libraries putting books on the shelf. All people use the library in one form or the other.

TV is not a necessity in one's life. It's a time-killer, yes, but if someone has the time to actually watch TV, that's their choice, ain't it?

[interleukin]

TV is not a necessity in one's life. It's a time-killer, yes, but if someone has the time to actually watch TV, that's their choice, ain't it?

I pay for other people to have their kids in daycare or school. Having kids is not a necessity either. I also pay for a bunch of roads I don´t use. We either decide that we have a system of high-ish taxes where you accept that you sometimes pay taxes for things that only benefit other people, or we skip this taxes thing completely and move to a country where everyone pays for their own stuff.

[Upphew]

TV is not a necessity in one's life. It's a time-killer, yes, but if someone has the time to actually watch TV, that's their choice, ain't it?

I pay for other people to have their kids in daycare or school. Having kids is not a necessity either. I also pay for a bunch of roads I don´t use. We either decide that we have a system of high-ish taxes where you accept that you sometimes pay taxes for things that only benefit other people, or we skip this taxes thing completely and move to a country where everyone pays for their own stuff.

Agreed. But while this might be fairer than the previous tv license, it is not fair enough. Yle gets its share and the share is only going to grow, there is no mechanism to shrink it. Thus we end up with yle that gets money as Manu his dinner and there is no pressure to save money at any point, like there would be if they would be funded from the government budget. And 0,64% only applies to people earning average or smaller wages, high earners will have smaller tax. 0,64% (or what ever percentage) from the government budget would have been fair (and would have been trivial to collect), but this coming system is neither.

[DMC]

There is techonolgy available to allow YLE to broadcast into homes (via TV, computers, smart phones) who've paid and to cut broadcast into homes/devices who've not paid ie many TV programs from other countries are not authorised to be shown, in Finland, from their websites via computers, smartphones,etc.

Does the technology really exist to stop reception in a home that has not paid? Yes, you can make an internet broadcast unavailable to a whole country, but can this be done to an individual home? Even for an internet connection I think that would be impossible, let alone TV.

All people use the library in one form or the other.

I don't follow your logic there. What form does my use of a library take if I never go inside one?

[Jukka Aho]

Does the technology really exist to stop reception in a home that has not paid? Yes, you can make an internet broadcast unavailable to a whole country, but can this be done to an individual home? Even for an internet connection I think that would be impossible, let alone TV.

Err... all Finnish TV broadcasts are digital these days, and the DVB platform allows encrypted (“conditionally accessible”) channels. There are encrypted pay channels on air and on cable right now. These can only be viewed if you purchase a viewing card and subscribe to them, paying your monthly subscription fee which unlocks them. Technically, all the YLE TV channels could be put behind that kind of a lock, too. But in order to maintain the TV viewing experience you now have, you would then need separate smartcards unlocking the programming for each TV (in kitchen, living room, the children’s bedrooms etc.) and for each PVR you own, and also for each location (such as home and the summer cottage) to make it practical. Also, some early (or cheapest) DVB-T set-top boxes don’t have built-in cardreaders or CI slots so these devices would need to be replaced with more capable ones.

Similarly, if you’d want to put things behind a paywall, the news services and streaming video YLE now provides on their website could be made to require a registration, a paid subscription and a secure logon.

It’s just that the entire point of having something like YLE in the first place is making their services accessible to everyone... as they’re the national public broadcaster, responsible for serving minorities and educational/cultural/local/national interests which are generally not served too well in an all-commercial environment due to the typical nature of commercial TV (cost of production vs. ratings vs. ad revenue, the tendency of sinking to the lowest common denominator, conflicts between the advertisers’ interests and content, etc.) The simplistic desire to turn YLE into just another subscription-based or ad-sponsored TV service, indistinguishable from the others, is kind of like missing the point of what YLE is supposed to be – and required to be, by the law.

[DMC]

Err... all Finnish TV broadcasts are digital these days, and the DVB platform allows encrypted (“conditionally accessible”) channels. There are encrypted pay channels on air and on cable right now. These can only be viewed if you purchase a viewing card and subscribe to them, paying your monthly subscription fee which unlocks them. Technically, all the YLE TV channels could be put behind that kind of a lock, too.

Yes, you are right, they could ... if, once again, you make people change their hardware. I can't be the only one with no place to put a card.
Not quite the way my brain was working though. I was sidetracked by the phraseology of

There is techonolgy available to allow YLE to broadcast into homes (via TV, computers, smart phones) who've paid and to cut broadcast into homes/devices who've not paid

and thought the claim was that YLE could choose where their broadcasts went rather than who was equipped to decode them. Looked at as you describe it obviously makes more sense. Don't worry, I'll wake up soon.

[Cory]

TV is not a necessity in one's life. It's a time-killer, yes, but if someone has the time to actually watch TV, that's their choice, ain't it?

I pay for other people to have their kids in daycare or school. Having kids is not a necessity either. I also pay for a bunch of roads I don´t use. We either decide that we have a system of high-ish taxes where you accept that you sometimes pay taxes for things that only benefit other people, or we skip this taxes thing completely and move to a country where everyone pays for their own stuff.

If we didn't have TV man-kind would still reproduce, freight would still get delivered to remote regions.

[Cory]

All people use the library in one form or the other.

I don't follow your logic there. What form does my use of a library take if I never go inside one?

Most people use the library in their lifetime.

[Cory]

kind of like missing the point of what YLE is supposed to be – and required to be, by the law.

It's public broadcasting. Time for a change. With the growth of information gathering being available in so many forms, I would hazard a guess that television, especially these types of channels, will be obsolete in the next decade or so. Laws can be changed.

[Karhunkoski]

I'm in favour of anything that moves away from the current system, where some avid TV watchers who can well afford the fee, choose not to pay it. Scummers.

[Jukka Aho]

With the growth of information gathering being available in so many forms, I would hazard a guess that television, especially these types of channels, will be obsolete in the next decade or so. Laws can be changed.

I think the only real change is people are increasingly watching the produced content “on demand” instead of slavishly following the broadcast schedules (unless it’s a live event where it being “live” holds some special significance to the viewer.) Somebody still needs to produce the content, though.

[Cory]

With the growth of information gathering being available in so many forms, I would hazard a guess that television, especially these types of channels, will be obsolete in the next decade or so. Laws can be changed.

I think the only real change is people are increasingly watching the produced content “on demand” instead of slavishly following the broadcast schedules (unless it’s a live event where it being “live” holds some special significance to the viewer.) Somebody still needs to produce the content, though.[/quote

Young people favour social media to TV broadcasts. As these people grow, we'll see the likes of public broadcasts be wiped away. Stations sponsored by ads will probably be the ones to follow the trends much quicker than old dodgy public television.

[Cory]

I'm in favour of anything that moves away from the current system, where some avid TV watchers who can well afford the fee, choose not to pay it. Scummers.

Yeah. This gets me, too. A colleague, who's addicted to watching any sports on TV, has never paid the TV fee. He's nearly 50 and very "loud" about his refusal to pay. If it weren't for YLE picking up the rights to broadcast all the top sporting events in the world, the freakin' TV fees wouldn't be as high, I'm sure I'm really not one to get worked up about the "evils" of a socialist state because I'm generally a supporter of the system (being Canadian and all) but this f'ing TV thing burns my butt whenever I think about it. It's a choice just like a damned magazine subscription or internet connection.

[Upphew]

If it weren't for YLE picking up the rights to broadcast all the top sporting events in the world, the freakin' TV fees wouldn't be as high, I'm sure

Percentages:
Uutiset 11,6
Draama 11,3
Aluetoimitukset 10,4
Urheilu 9,7
Asiaohjelmat 8,8
Kulttuuri (myös RSO) 7,2
Uutiset ja urheilu (ruotsink.) 6,6
Viihde 5,3
Populaarimusiikki ja -kulttuuri 3,8
Fiktio (ruotsink.) 3,7
Lapset ja nuoret 3,4
Fakta (ruotsink.) 3,1
TV:n ajankohtaisjournalismi 3,0
Oppiminen ja tiede 2,2
Nuoret (ruotsink.) 1,0
Kanavat ja uudet palvelut yht. 8,6

So at max 15% savings by discarding sports...

[Oombongo]

never owned a TV since I am in Finland. Yle looks quite boring channel and it seems this channel is mostly aimed to old folks and boring people.
I watched one short Christmas animie movie back in 2003. Can't remember the name but it is about snowman flying around with kid with a very spooky music. Do they still show it on TV?