A television licence (or broadcast receiving licence) is official permission required in some countries for the reception of television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set. The licence is sometimes also required to own or receive radio broadcasts. A TV licence is generally a hypothecated tax for the purpose of funding public broadcasting, thus allowing public broadcasters to transmit television programmes without, or with only supplemental, funding from radio and television advertisements (however this is not always true, for example TVP receives more funds from advertisements than from its tv tax).
Whilst TV licensing is rare in the Americas, half of the countries of Asia and Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television.
Read more about Television Licence: History, Television Licences Around The World, Detection of Evasion of Television Licences, Opinions of Television Licensing Systems, Internet-based Broadcast Access
Famous quotes containing the word television:
“Television ... helps blur the distinction between framed and unframed reality. Whereas going to the movies necessarily entails leaving one’s ordinary surroundings, soap operas are in fact spatially inseparable from the rest of one’s life. In homes where television is on most of the time, they are also temporally integrated into one’s “real” life and, unlike the experience of going out in the evening to see a show, may not even interrupt its regular flow.”
—Eviatar Zerubavel, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life, ch. 5, University of Chicago Press (1991)