A petition with 143,000 signatures has been handed in to federal authorities calling for a massive reduction in the annual licence fee for radio and television.

The non-binding petition aims to put pressure on parliament and the government to cut the licence fee to CHF200 from CHF462 per annum.

They argue that the publicly-owned Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, which includes swissinfo.ch, produces too many programmes and is too powerful for private competitors.

The petitioners are also opposed to a decision by parliament to make the payment of a licence fee mandatory for every household or company, regardless whether they use radio and television.


Swissinfo

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'd like to see maybe one or two Swiss German stations with a couple of french and Italian stations. All in all I think financing more than 5 total Swiss stations is unnecessary....maybe one extra one for politics and/or Parliamentary procedures

I dont see the need for a Tele-Züri,Basel, Berne, SG, .....all with their own budget. There should be enough capacity on 5 channels to provide 8 million people with Swiss specific programming. Expensive shows like law and Order, Simpsons, Desperate Housewives...etc have no place on these channels and should stick to the "imported" channels like VOX, RTL, TF1..etc

Tele Züri etc are privately operated. This is about the state-run stuff.

Good to know....In that case keep them around

Fancy how everybody avoids mentioning that they're in line with the SVP all of a sudden...!

Why should party alignment have any consideration when considering a specific issue?
Billag's a joke, everyone knows it - who cares who gets rid of it, as long as it's gone.

Or at least smaller.

if only ...

Over on the Billag thread a good many people have been defending it tooth and nail.

I'd love to see Billag given a good beating though. The arrogance of the way they have dealt with the criticism so far is enough to make one's blood boil.

When we move over to a totally pay-per-view system we'll all be shouting for the current system to be reinstated. You mark my words.....

At least there will be choice when that happens - right now, it is a pseudo-tax.

Perhaps, but they still get state money (though not a lot).

Tom

In any case a free marke is better than an assisted system (only to some chanels)
in the other hands the problem is that the most famous private TVs (SKY for exaple) at the end it will be the unique to have the money to buy the rights for the best events