Television / media licence

According to this list in Wikipedia, Denmark is the country with the 3rd highest tv licence fee in the world per year (€288), after Iceland (€347) and Switzerland (€290)! Actually, from 2008, the fee in Denmark has increased to 2190 DKK (€294 / S$576), so if the fee in Switzerland has not changed, that would make the fee in Denmark the 2nd highest in the world! And it'll get higher each year (2260 DKK in the year 2010).

It is no wonder that we complain so much about this here, especially since they now call it "media licence" instead of "tv licence", which covers appliances such as TV sets, radios, video or DVD recorders, computers with internet access, and mobile phones and similar electronic devices, that also work as a television or radio receiver.

In other words: you have no excuse anymore not to pay.

Oh, and it doesn't matter if you don't use their service; you'll still have to pay. You just need to pay because it is possible to use their service, intentionally or accidentally.

If the licence fee was much lower (eg. 418 DKK / S$110 like in Singapore), I, and I'm sure every one else, will not have many complaints about it. I can understand the need for some form of "public service", but when "public service" costs a bomb at 2190 DKK, then I start to question if it's really "public service". I don't care how good this "public service" can be, that kind of price for it will still not be justified.

In that case, I'd rather that it becomes a "private service" where people can choose whether or not they want it. Pay-per-view, if you must. Or if they claim that people can easily watch some of their programmes online via their website (hence the need for a "media licence"), then I would suggest that they provide logins and passwords only to people who want to pay for their services so that non-payers have no access to these programmes online.

But no...even if we should never go to http://www.dr.dk/ ever, we will still need to pay for a media licence, simply because you have the possibility of going there... .

All you non-residents of Denmark - don't be surprised if you one day get a bill from Danmarks Radio demanding some kind of payment. After all, it's not just residents of Denmark who can go on their website, right? So it's not fair to charge only the residents here. The whole WORLD should be charged. Well, at least those households with Internet access... . Nevermind that you may not even know the existence of their website, because the fact is that you still have a possibility of chancing upon it.

Hmm...maybe I should start collecting money from every one too... . For entertaining current readers, future readers, potential readers, and non-readers with my blog.

Anyway...I better go to bed now. Martin's going to kick me out of bed early tomorrow (even though it's a Sunday) because we are going to visit his parents out in the countryside... . I hope there won't be a storm on the way back at night, because if there's 1 thing I don't like, it's driving when it's dark+wet+slippery.