Saying no to TV saves us £145.50+ a year

Posted by louisa on Monday 6 December 2010 in frugal | 4 comments

Over the weekend, we got a letter from the TV Licensing Authority – a prompt to confirm that our circumstances had not changed, that we’re still not watching TV.

For a long time, the TV Licensing agency’s website was vague – it seemed to suggest that you needed a licence if you owned a TV — it seemed deliberately unclear and phoning the agency wasn’t much better. Now it’s a lot clearer: you only need it if you have a device (including computers, phones, games consoles, digital boxes or recorders) that you use to watch or record a television program as they’re being shown on TV or virtually the same time.

You don’t need one to watch pre-recorded DVDs/VHSs or play games – which is all we use our TV for: we’ve not watched broadcast television for years and years. It saves us £145.50 a year.

(I’m in no way advocating cancelling your TV license if you do watch TV as it’s being shown, on whatever device. As it’s classed as a tax, it’s a criminal offence to avoid paying if you should be. But if you don’t watch television, you can register that you don’t need a licence at http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/noTV )

But the £145.50 is just the tip of the iceberg really. As we’re already using cable services for our landline and broadband internet, chances are, we’d have signed up with our cable provider for TV instead of sorting out a Freeview box or whatever. Our cable provider’s cheapest (non-offer) TV service costs £6.50 a month = £78 a year, but I could see it as a slippery slope – certain channels are only available on the more expensive packages – £11.25 or £23.50 a month… And we’d see a whole lot more adverts and lifestyle inspiration ideas – it’s hard to know how much more that would cost us a year…

For some people, TV – the licence and any monthly cost – is a good deal when you consider it on a per-hour-of-entertainment basis. But for us, it’s not a good deal at all, so we’ve opted out.