I won't pay to watch drivel on the telly

Why on earth - and in Yorkshire in particular, home of the greatest economisers in Britain - would anyone pay to watch television?

This question reared its controversial head recently when I moved to a new home and immediately received a threatening letter from TV Licensing.

Call me a socialist or just a cranky American, but I refuse to pay for a service that has been provided free of charge my entire life. In protest, I do without. Which isn't easy for me, a virtual TV-aholic. Nevertheless, when moving to York in 1996, I took the pledge: no telly. Then, the considerations were financial (the combined costs of television set and licence fee were a luxury on a self-funded student's budget) and practical (I'd neglect my studies to watch TV).

Luckily for this addict, I didn't have to go cold turkey. Almost from the start, I've watched a few hours of TV each week at my partner's house. Because of this exposure, I now have an even better reason for keeping to my pledge: the quality and variety of what's on offer.

Some readers are already reaching for their pens to rebuke me for casting aspersions on the BBC. Me, a Yank whose native land is home to Hollywood, birthplace of all that's crass and commercial, while the Beeb is known throughout the world as a benchmark for broadcasting quality, a creator of top-drawer news programmes, drama, and comedy.

True enough. However, like a gourmet chef who secretly eats ready meals, there's more to the story. For this is the same BBC that presents the National Lottery Draw, a truly dire programme, and Last Of The Summer Wine, a so-called comedy whose plot, jokes, and filming technique are trapped in a Sixties time warp.

It's also the BBC that, with only two terrestrial channels to its name, resorts to filling airtime with US-produced shows that run the quality-gamut from The X-Files and The Simpsons to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

But the Beeb is commercial-free, you'll say. While licence fees support costs, they don't entirely cover them. Okay, then, while you fund the BBC, I'll just watch the channels where the only payment is having to sit through adverts. Oops, it doesn't work that way, meaning you Brits pay twice for Channels 3, 4, and 5.

Speaking of the latter, they're loaded with US imports, too. Not just the good (Friends, Frasier, and ER), but the bad (The Roseanne Show, Hercules, and Xena, Princess Warrior) and the ugly. Can you imagine my horror to discover that British television, so highly regarded in the States, shows Jerry Springer and the marginally less offensive Ricki Lake?

What's more, these programmes that demean those who watch as well as those who participate have spawned British versions. How much longer before you get your own Talk Soup, a cheap and nasty US weekly "highlights" show of the most appalling moments from the dozens of chat shows nation-wide?

We can only hope that the recent scandals over fakery will drive programmes like these into oblivion on both continents.

So, I refuse to pay for drivel I wouldn't even watch for free back home. While we're at it, I don't appreciate being presumed guilty by some Big Brother organisation that prowls neighbourhoods, spying on people trying to bring some small measure of entertainment into their lives.

If the assumption is that everyone these days owns a television, then let this country follow the States and use a portion of income tax revenue to fund a national broadcasting scheme. That way, pensioners and others on fixed incomes won't pay the same rate as high earners.

Think about it the next time you pay your annual fee or switch on the tube.

03/03/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.