SG Complains

Time to abolish radio and TV licence fees?

According to AsiaOne Digital News:

MORE and more countries have abolished the archaic radio and TV licence fee in the last 10years.

But here, some are paying for a cable set-top box from StarHub and perhaps another from SingTel (Mio TV). And on top of this, they, like everyone else, have to pay the Media Development Authority for TV shows they may never watch.

A number of other countries including Australia, Belgium, India and New Zealand – and even Malaysia in 1999 – have abolished radio and TV licence fees.

The reason was simply that commercial channels would have to earn their keep from advertising. This ensures that TV and radio organisations are run efficiently. It’s the drip-feed from taxpayers’ money that can make organisations act like dinosaurs.

Interestingly enough, 11 other countries, including the US and Canada, never ever had a TV licence fee.

In the UK, the licence fee goes directly to the BBC, which is commercial free. But it does not stop the BBC from wide use of merchandising, sale of programmes, books and television rights, to bolster its revenue.

However, it seems it won’t be long before this goes the way of the dodo.

Yet homes here have to pay $110 a year (and another $27 for each car) though MediaCorp is a commercial entity, and its revenue comes from advertisers. Even their newsreaders wear watches, clothes and maybe even undergarments, from advertisers.

So, is it still really necessary to have this stealth tax?

Letters to newspapers have repeatedly argued against it. But those who don’t pay face the threat of a fine and perhaps even jail.

$111 million in past year

Read the full article at AsiaOne Digital News:

- I fully agreed with this article that in this time and year we should fully abolish Television Licensing Fees as these are making zero sense when many people only watch television from cable TV or the internet.

This money given to Mediacorp to produce unpopular television shows should be faced out and replaced with privately owned media companies to make more popular shows.

The bad television shows that are more like Government Propaganda machine and always produce shows that sided with the Government policies like babies shows and smiling newscaster to tell you the positive side of the economic downturn.

We should not fund these televisions if they are not popular and should follow more towards how the West did it with more television networks to compete for viewership and advertising.

The newspaper had also increase their prices from 80 cents goes up to 90 cents in weekdays and a whopping $1 for weekend.

This TV license fees should be either be totally wiped out in current times of economic down turn and never be mentioned again.

The Government GST credit hand out is hardly enough to cover all the hikes that the people are facing from increased public transport fares, ERP hikes, Electricity tariff hikes, additional surcharges by taxi companies during peak hours and more!

The poor cannot really benefit from the Government sporadic hand out but there should be a way to solve this problem.

First we me abolish unnecessary cost such as TV Licensing Fees or at least cut it by half…

Other charges such as conservatory charges to clean up the rubbish is over valued and recently are not up to standard in their rubbish collection as well. Many dust bins are overflowing and not cleared daily…

If the Government can earn huge amount of money from investment overseas, why not use these to subsidise the above mentioned charges so that the people of Singapore will be happy with their choices during election times.