How about a small flat fee everybody pays to sustain the national broadcaster?
Whether they watch it or not is not relevant. It's a nation-wide service at their disposal.
Either it's worth it to have, like a dam or a highway system or whatever, and it's ok for people to pay for it in taxes, or it's not, and it should close.
Yes. In many countries that's how nation-wide infrastructure, services, art programs, and so on are funded. Not on a person per person basis.
Not everywhere it's all about the individual and their whims. If the majority (well, through elected representatives) wishes to have and sustain a public good (whether a public broadcaster, or national health service, or arts grants, or whatever), individuals have no other say on the matter.
Some countries believe in public goods, and in maintaining through taxes infrastructure to make citizens more educated, informed, cultivated, etc. If someone is a brut and could not care less, they don't get to dictate to the nation not to have those services.
E.g. the German example of the tax for the national broadcaster a fellow commenter mentions:
"Any household in Germany is legally obliged to pay this quarterly fee, regardless of whether or not you watch the TV channels or listen to the radio stations covered by it. It also covers media consumption online via on-demand services such as media players, streaming services accessed online via computer or smartphone, as well as in-car audio.
Shared households are only required to pay this per household, so 4 students living together for example would only be liable for paying the fee once."
I don't mind that for infrastructure (roads, power grid) and core services (police, fire dept), but TV is not a requirement. Or rather, entertainment is not a requirement for life. If they want public funding for a channel for emergency broadcasts then I wouldn't object too loudly (other than questioning value vs radio and web).
By that logic though you should be able to only contribute for the specific programming you watch. As in "I agree with paying for BBC news, but not kid's programming".
In Australia we fund the ABC and SBS through tax, which have charters requiring a certain amount of locally produced programming, and serve as publicly owned news media (which I think is in the public interest so long as the government isn't exerting too much in the way of influence), as well as programming that could be considered too niche to be profitable otherwise.
When I was a teenager SBS was how I was exposed to some really good stuff I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise because it was anime or foreign language films.
Yes please! I 100% support unbundling and buying exactly what I actually want
Edit: It took a reread for me to realize that you were actually arguing in favor of it. I do see your point about positive externalities, but I'm still not convinced it's a good trade off overall.
>but TV is not a requirement. Or rather, entertainment is not a requirement for life
Well, life is more than the base "requirements". Humans are not wild animals that only understand bare utility, so some societies/states can acknowledge that and also provide some "non-requirements".
Besides TV (and cultural products in general) is not universally viewed as mere "entertainment", but also as information, culture building, citizen development, and so on. Some nation states do trust themselves to have capable people to provide quality programming -- whether many of their folks just care to watch reality shows and entertainment or not.
Whether they watch it or not is not relevant. It's a nation-wide service at their disposal.
Either it's worth it to have, like a dam or a highway system or whatever, and it's ok for people to pay for it in taxes, or it's not, and it should close.