TV or not TV?

I've just been surfin' around - as you do - to try to find comment on the fact that we, in the bits of Europe nearest to the United Kingdom, can access pretty-well all of British television via satellite. Not many people seem to want to discuss this, at least, to link the discussion to the raging BBC licence debate which never seems to subside. Is it because we don't want to make these particular waves?

Ravings over the pros and cons of the BBC licence fee are legion on the web. My own sentiments are equivocal; on the one hand I think the service on  the whole is excellent and the programs generally better than any other service I've seen, and worth paying for. On the other hand, why, I ask myself, do the BBC make it so easy for the whole of Europe to watch their stuff for free by satellite. Knowing what I know now about picking up the transmissions here in south-west France, not to mention all the regional channels, ITV channels, Channels 4 and 5, etc. etc. etc., I'd be anti-paying the licence too if I were still in the UK.

Just look at the coverage (the satellite 'footprint'): It means that even this far south, you get a perfectly good reception even with the tiny Sky-dish supplied in the UK.

You don't need to subscribe to Sky of course for the main channels or the 'freeview' channels; you don't even need a Sky 'digibox'. A digital satellite receiver bought off the shelf in the local supermarket here for 60 euros or so will do the trick. Even our son in northern Italy gets perfect reception with a 1 metre dish.

What is this all about, auntie BBC? Or should I address this question to the British government? You can't prevent hundreds of thousands of us in Europe watching all your channels for free while the law in the UK makes anyone with a TV pay the licence fee. How can this be fair, to make your main source of income a UK tax on a service which can be used with impunity by anyone up to a couple of thousand miles beyond your shores?

There are few disadvantages for us. If we use a Sky digibox, we don't have to subscribe and it will continue to work for all the main channels but we might suffer a little more on reception break-down when it rains. This is often easily cured by installing a bigger dish. If we use a cheap-o receiver bought from the local supermarket, we also suffer a bit when it rains but occasionally 'lose' a channel as the frequencies are sometimes changed without warning, something the Sky-boxes seem to cope with automatically. It's a simple matter to refind lost channels by putting the receiver in 'auto-scan' mode on the Astra 2 satellite. Alternatively, all the up-to date frequencies can be found on the Internet (e.g. 'Lyngsat').

That's enough of that. Time to watch the news and, no doubt, another debate on the UK TV licence fee.

Mapmaker