Licensing for UK Television

[Kiwick]

We've always had a TV licensing fee here in Italy, it was strictly enforced until the mid 80s, everytime you bought a new TV the dealer had to notify your purchase to the government.

If you didn't want to pay that fee anymore, you had to sell or discard the TV set, then they came to your home to make sure you no longer had a TV, if you wanted to keep your TV set without paying the fee, they would open it, disconnect the CRT and place a seal on the socket to prevent you from watching it anymore.

I've found many scrapped TVs with seals on their CRTs, those lead and wire seals are a PITA to remove if you don't want to damage the CRT.

the fee was cheaper if you only had a B/W set, the B/W fee was removed in the early 90s and as a consequence, trainloads of B/W sets found their way to illegal dumps and curbsides, it was a good time for TV hunting...

Today, the TV licensing fee is still here but it's basically no longer enforced, many newer households just don't pay it anymore.