Britain and "Free" Television

Disclaimer: 

We are by no means experts in intricate details of anything said in the below blog post. What we tell in detail is conveyed through American eyes with information drawn from other Americans living in England and bits of research we have conducted through the interwebz. Do not treat this post as your one-stop-shop for details on British television fees.

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Some of you may not know this about the charming country of England. In this land, there is no such thing as free television. In fact, there is no such thing as free anything. I am surprised they don't charge you for listening to the radio (oh wait, they used to do that, too).

Since our arrival, my coworkers have emphasized how you must make sure you pay your TV license if you watch or think about watching broadcast television or the TV license boogey man will get you and eat your TV, steal your firstborn and fine you one thousand pounds which is actually one thousand times 1.6 because the Dollar is so weak to the almighty Pound Sterling.

...ok, I had to rant about that one a little bit because lately I've been thinking they enjoy telling me things like this just to scare me. I will probably do the same thing to other new people when they arrive.

I digress.

In England, everyone must pay the TV license fee of £145 per annum (yearly) if you watch or record broadcast programming on any sort of device that has the capability to do so. If you do not pay this fee you will be fined big time. We actually weren't kidding about the £1,000 above. It might actually be more than that. 

You might be thinking, "how does the Queen know you are watching TV without a license?" The Queen is very clever, that's how! Here, they have vehicles that drive up and down every street to check out who is pulling airwaves into the house and if the household have/not paid their yearly license fee.

The Dittmers have decided to not take any chances on this and the other day we set up a nice monthly payment to cover this little British Fact of Life.

Moving on to "free"...

In the UK there are several options for TV programming.  

There is: 

Freeview (much like Antenna TV), FreeSat, SkyTV, and FreeSat with Sky.

Freeview gives you like 7 channels. [We think it's funny how they call it Freeview when us Americans can see right through their little marketing scheme. We know what the real free feels like and that ain't it.]

FreeSat technically isn't free either [of course not]; it costs £175 to install the dish, get an access card and a receiver. But after that, there is no charge for programming. 

SkyTV is just like DirecTV or Dish Network. You pay monthly for a 24-month contract for way more channels than anyone could ever appreciate. Oh yeah, make sure you pay your TV license or the fine will hit your mailbox much quicker than if the radarmobiles catch you.

FreeSat with Sky uses a SkyTV satellite dish and receiver, only with no SkyTV contract--and WAY more channels than plain old FreeSat. These are the channels we get** with FreeSat with Sky.  

OK... so, no TV is free in the UK. But the Dittmers have probably gotten the best deal out of this crazy system: We were given a SkyHD receiver [FREE] from a coworker who was moving out. Also, we have come to find out that our house has a SkyTV satellite dish already installed on the chimney [FREE]. The house is professionally wired to reach every bedroom, the kitchen and living room with satellite TV. Oh, have we mentioned that our landlord kept her little TV/DVD player combo installed under the cupboard in the kitchen? We think it's already installed for FreeSat or something because we've been watching Judge Judy and Top Gear long before our TV arrived.

The only thing we had to do to get FreeSat with Sky was call SkyTV and order an access card for £25 which will last 3-5 years. For £25 + £145/year for the national TV License we get 240 channels. Not too shabby, but definitely not free!

**Just noticed Wedding Channel--Asia, thirty-some shopping channels, seventeen adult channels and thirty international channels. Hey, we said 240 channels, not 240 totally awesome channels. I think we only get five HD channels, too. So... which one has HouseHunters? :)