Television licence

Funding of European public broadcasters

TV licence   Television licence only   Television licence and advertising   Television licence, advertising and government grants No TV licence   Government grants, and advertising   Commercial only   Government grants only   Unknown

A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is an official record of payment required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set where some broadcasts are funded in full or in part by the licence fee paid. The licence is sometimes also required to own a radio or receive radio broadcasts. A TV licence is therefore effectively a hypothecated tax for the purpose of funding public broadcasting, thus allowing public broadcasters to transmit television programmes without, or with only supplemental, funding from radio and television advertisements. However, in some cases the balance between public funding and advertisements is the opposite - the Polish TVP broadcaster receives more funds from advertisements than from its TV tax.

Whilst TV licensing is rare in most of the world, half of the countries in Asia, a few countries in Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television.

The early days of broadcasting presented broadcasters with the problem of how to raise funding for their services. Some countries adopted the advertising model, but many others adopted a compulsory public subscription model, with the subscription coming in the form of a broadcast licence paid by households owning a radio set (and later, a TV set).

The UK was the first country to adopt the compulsory public subscription model with the licence fee money going to the BBC, which was formed on 1 January 1927 by Royal Charter to produce publicly funded programming yet remain independent from government, both managerially and financially. The licence was originally known as a wireless licence.

With the arrival of television some countries created a separate additional television licence, while others simply increased the radio licence fee to cover the additional cost of TV broadcasting, changing the licence's name from "radio licence" to "TV licence" or "receiver licence". Today most countries fund public radio broadcasting from the same licence fee that is used for television, although a few still have separate radio licences, or apply a lower or no fee at all for consumers who only have a radio. Some countries also have different fees for users with colour or monochrome TV. Many give discounts, or charge no fee, for elderly and/or disabled consumers.