IMO, the new law represents nothing more than an obligatory church tax towards the new religion of capitalist consumerism...

Personally, I'd like to see a calculation where
- keeping all the correspondents of SRF
- keeping all the news and documentation programs as well as anything that can, with some imagination and goodwill, be described as "informational"
- and getting rid of all the rest


won't save money.

They could rent out the studios to whoever needs them in the time they don't occupy them for news.

Same in Germany. So much crap on TV.

TV is not healthcare and soap-operas and mindless talkshows are not comparable to something like a theater or an opera (that receives subsidies, too).

Let it hurt. They gave me hell 10 years ago when I needed to cut costs and tried to deregister. Everyone else was sympathetic but not Billag.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Well, ok, but that is the point! It's either ad-free, and then you pay something for it, or it's free but you have the ads. Nobody wants to pay for a service full of ads. I understand the costs of running radio and tv are high, but if that is so, then better damn good program! Was (is) the same in Italy. Paying the "canone RAI" is compulsory but nobody really does that. And today, with internet, skype, netflix and whatnot, it really makes less and less sense to make me pay for a supposedly public thing that I am never going to watch.

I always thought that paying for the Billag just because I have a screen in the house (duh!) is borderline criminal.

The Billag (or UK TV licence or any other) is a tax, that falls equally on every household regardless of the means to pay.

Whether the household income is 60k or 600k. This makes it regressive, which is the opposite of normal tax rates.

Not a peep or word from left wingers about this regression who generally are happy to raise tax. Why?

Is it because left wingers dominate in the media and entertainment industries and their gravy train is more important.

Saying that, it is relatively cheap here compared to incomes and the Billag are not as bad as the UK TV licence collectors in terms of tactics or abuse of powers.

I pay for the radios aspect only btw

__________________
Don't let Sean Connery teach your dog to sit

A smartphone is enough.

Actually, I believe it's not even necessary to own a smartphone.
It's enough that you could own one.
Or a PC.

also hits single person households more than those who share and split the cost.

New info:

A franc a day keeps the Billag away.

sauce please?

Sorry, my bad

• https://www.bakom.admin.ch/bakom/en/...on-system.html
• https://www.serafe.ch/en/
• One franc a day: the cost of the radio-television fee from 2019

So what's up with the Billag man?

Will this shady charcater still be prowling his beat every night until 31st December, ringing doorbells, punching up pentioners, stealing babies from their cradles, avoiding garlic and crucifixes and trying to sign up people's cats?

Or seeing there's nothing in it any more for Billag, will they be winding down operations early and spending the remaining cash on whores and champaigne?

If everybody stops paying now, will they even care? Won't the costs of prosecution outweigh the potential damage?

Are you the Local? That is "olds" from last october.

Four the sauce, here the original pressrelease:

https://www.uvek.admin.ch/uvek/en/ho...-id-68454.html

And will the Serafe take over where Billag left off? So does that mean the Billag man will simply be re-branded as Seraphim Man and just prowl the streets cursing all sans-serifs.

I get my infos from EF and this topic was inactive for a year

...all the rest is fake news

I shot the Serafe
But I didn't shoot no Billag, oh no! Oh!

Hehe. Now listening to Eric.

I shot the Serafe,
But I swear it was in self defence.

Talking of which, back in 2005-6 when my income fell off a cliff I looked at resigning from Billag. I had an expensive telly and a decent VHS collection, with plenty more available cheap on flea markets as folks moved to DVD, plus a DVD player.

Nope, the only way to resign from Billag and keep a telly was to get my cable sealed...

So in order to keep an internet connection I needed to go back to a landline. I already had the necessary ADSL kit, but the Swisscom line rental for that was something like CHF 43 a month, and I'd have to pay an ISP on top of that.

Cancelling Billag was going to be more expensive, and Swisscom was going to increase their cut of my outlay.

If I had known Swisscom were the owners of Billag I would have been absolutely furious. That of course was why they were keeping it quiet.

Correction:

I had an expensive telly, expensive VHS system and expensive DVD player.


Correction:

I already had the necessary ISDN and ISDN/ADSL kit, but the Swisscom line rental for ISDN was something like CHF 43 a month, and I'd have to pay an ISP on top of that.

Dropping from ISDN to analogue would have meant that CHF 650 ISDN/ADSL router was a bit, er, redundant. Plus of course ADSL speeds weren't keeping up with cable speeds at the time.

Got another letter from Billag yesterday.

They seem to have re-worded it yet again. So not just firing off the same old one in the hope somebody will bite. The last letter from them was a shade freindlier and softer, but now they seem to have gone back to their old style of ugly threats and creepiness.

I'm wondering what's in it for them still trying to sign up subscribers for maybe another 8 months.

Unless maybe the sherif is paying them per address.

Just pay. Don't ask questions. Thats the Swiss way!