The latest flip-out from the NeverTrumpers.
Let us ignore for a second that since 1942 we have a state-run media outlet called Voice of America and nobody flinched at the idea this bad before. But I am willing to bet that a good percentage of those freaking out about the idea are fans of a very well-known News Broadcast and of at least one show of one of the biggest state-run media conglomerates in the world: BBC.
BBC News, Top Gear, Dr. Who, Sherlock, and I have no idea how many Victorian-Era mini series and movies, are/were produced by the British Government and by extracting funding by forcing the British Subjects to pay a yearly license to own a TV within the Kingdom’s realm.
And, just to make sure you are a good subject and pay the Queen’s fee, they have a fleet of TV detection bans that roam the country making sure no Evil TV apparatus are being used without the proper transfer of quid.
Do I support an US version of the BBC? Hell no. It would be just another useless Federal paycheck generator and probably we would not see the return for our money unless it is miniseries like “Karl Marx: Champion of Transsexual Haitian Lesbians with Asperger’s.” I just find funny that many BBC lovers will find the same principle applied to the US absurd and akin to put people inside concentration camps.
Those TV Detection Vans? Totally fake.
Oh, yes, they’re real vans and they really do drive them around neighborhoods trying to scare people into compliance and paying their television tax… But the idea that they have the technology to detect a television inside a house? Absolute hogwash. They’re relying on intimidation and deception.
Would You Like To Know More? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv2ZqZmC7u0&t=606s
It’s technologically possible with over the air TV sets – I worked with a guy who had worked for a company here in the US that did it. The company is long gone.
For the radio savvy, TVs are radio receivers, after all, with a common architecture. By monitoring for the local oscillator, they could find a TV and determine what channel it was tuned to. The company was trying to compete with the Neilsen rating service.
The problem was cable boxes where the TV is tuned to one channel all the time and the cable boxes couldn’t be monitored. Today, we have to deal with internet streaming, which those vans won’t help with at all.
And yet somehow they get warrants to search your home for TVs
https://youtu.be/JgBwq_2e1XY
You can’t forget the contribution of Monty Python to this whole mix.
I seem to recall that when legislation enabling the Public Broadcasting Service, that arguments were made in favor of the legislation that PBS would be just like the BBC. Unbiased, and not beholden to advertisers. No license fees, just taxpayers money.
Yeah. PBS is unbiased…no, wait…..