Xynth

He's already got his new toy (Nissan Qashqai 1.6 diesel, so i'm reliably informed, best 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th car in the world)

Yeah, you mean to come as standard on cars... Nowadays almost all the people that i know connect the phone via bluetooth to their cars and listen to their own sonds or radios from god knows where

Fribourg canton not happy, lots of job losses.

https://www.bluewin.ch/fr/infos/suis...ns-billag.html

See first post of this thread

Reason it is a company of its own can actually be found in the law. From the press releases linked in OP:

"According to the provisions of the Radio and Television Act (RTVA), the collection agency may not engage in any economic activities other than the collection of the household fee"

Seems not only can but must.
Oooops, then part of my post 13 was unfair to Swisscom. I appologize

Even if it stayed with billag there would have been job cuts with the new system I guess.

You can start practicing voting the correct thing when it comes up here.

It's the green one ...... eeeehhhhm, I ofcourse mean, make your choice.

From what I see the public Swiss TV serves mostly entertainment. OK, well, they also buy some documentaries, and run a 19:30 news show.
Similarly radio - except for some cheap "let's invite a politician" talks. I'm pretty sure if they vacated the space the private stations would fill it with same cr@p.
These 1.3 billion CHF could be saved for a better cause.
I have a "personal" gripe with the public media here: I never remember a thing like this to see in either RTS or SRF: a journalist with a mic on the street, asking random people about their opinion, and every n-th person barely speaking/not speaking the lingo. It doesn't happen.
I think the worst thing is that they're a lapdog of the establishment, and this limits the space and means for civic grass roots critic of it.
edit: some of this money goes also to private media, so they'll probably not support "kill Bill".

Today I read in a decent paper that the government has rejected the "no-Billag initiative" by scrapping the Billag!

However they didn't want to scrap the fees, as they believe the Swiss national TV stations are important in keeping the country together: by reporting about those folks with the funny accents, across the Rösti ditch.

The TV & Radio fees are also used to finance local radio, which would probably disappear without funding (Remember WRS an English language station in Geneva?)

? for those of you who watch TV: Is SRF commercial free?

If not, what the hell am I going to be forced to pay for now? Subsidizing SRF's advertising income?

This law is complete bullshit. You could go on all day about 'it's what the people decided democratically' - true, but what a reflection of the people's mentality.

I am sorry, but how many foreigners in your home country demand free TV because they don't speak English?

The financial problems here are made worse because Switzerland has to supply programmes in 3 languages, and has a very small population. New York, London and Paris all have larger populations than Switzerland, but they only have to supply single language programmes. Advertising rates are cheaper there too, as the target population is very much larger.

If in the RTS radio there is any cultural exchange, then with France/Belgium/Canada. The other parts are either present in very few specialized broadcasts (I can't even recall any), but otherwise it is just news and politics. Same impression from SRF. Yes, they talk about Switzerland, but they don't do things together. These are two different companies, at least that's my impression, and don't seem to have much in common with each other or with other language regions.
Maybe only that they try to limit the influence of foreign broadcasters?

Of course it is not ad free. TV is super expensive to run, and they get the share of the ad market, thus pushing private stations out of it.

They also voted fairly recently for homeopathy 'treatment' to be included in healthcare insurance so you're right about the 'mentality bit'.

So now we pay for these peoples' homeopathic treatment, and then we pay for a conventional treatment when the first doesn't work. We pay twice.

And people voted for this....

For Game of Thrones on RTS

None that I know of. Do you know of that happening here in Switzerland? How is that relevant?

Personally I don't watch TV. I don't own one. No radio, either. I specifically removed the radio from my vehicle so that I wouldn't have to pay the stupid Billag fee for services that I neither want, use, or agree with. And my German's just fine, thanks - nothing to do with being a foreigner.

I heard some rumours that instead of billag the costs of national TV and radio would be financed from the other sorts of taxes. That would be probably fairer and less annoying (no need to hide from the billag collector man).

And where did Pilatus mention anything of the kind?

Rubbish.

The private stations programs are ALL distributed by SRG.

No SRG, no radio/TV broadcasts by anybody.

(P.S. I personally designed the new system of radio program distribution in Switzerland, as well as it's previous two iterations, so I know how it works. )

Tom

Which is being obsoleted, as we speak, by internet streaming. It would have been already eliminated if not these politicians and their clientele fed on 1.3B tax money to fund a PAL/SECAM/NTSC era system 99% doesn't use.

TV streaming is now 2/3 of traffic in North America. I know, because I wrote/write software for these internet switchboards, and the various cellular radios :-)