With the TV licence being in the news again recently, due to the fee increasing by £3, I wanted to look at what we, as customers, actually get for our £150+ every year. Without getting into whether the licence fee should be scrapped, there are so many channels available which you can watch 24 hours a day. From entertainment to movies to sports, let’s see what content is often be overlooked but is readily available to watch on freeview channels.
You Don’t Need Netflix
If you’re shelling out over £150 a year for a TV licence, do you really need to buy a subscription to Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or NowTV? With so many streaming services available these days, including the new Disney+, they are all fighting for your sign up. By all means trying the free trials but do you really need to have access to more than what’s available on freeview channels? Freeview gives you 70 channels and 15 HD channels. That’s not to mention catch up services such as BBC iPlayer. When you think that not so long ago we had four channels to choose from, surely there’s now enough variety for everyone?
Entertainment Shows
We love to be entertained. It’s part of human nature. Whether it’s soap operas, binge worthy box sets of award winning comedy, you can find them all on freeview. The BBC have got Peaky Blinders, ITV make powerful dramas such as Liar and Channel 4 keep us on our toes with Hunted. These are just a few of the hundreds of shows available. In our house we love The Apprentice, Coronation Street and anything with Bear Grylls in it. There are more channels with more offerings though. DMAX, Pick, Dave, 5USA, Yesterday, Challenge and ITVBe are just a handful of channels. That’s not including children’s TV such as CBeebies, CBBC, CITV, Pop and Tiny Pop. Whilst not entertainment, there are dedicated News channels available on free to air TV too.
Free To View Sport
Freesports is the only free to air UK sports channel. It has football, ice hockey, snowboarding and much more. Whilst it might not have a lot of mainstream stuff to watch, if you want to settle down and watch some sport, you can. You might even find a new favourite sport to enjoy every week!
The main broadcasters also have great sporting coverage throughout the year. From Wimbledon and the Cheltenham Festival to Six Nations Rugby and FA Cup football, there is plenty of coverage, week in week out. The Olympics and Paralympics are coverage along with marathons and motor sport. The new cricket competition The Hundred will also be on free to air channels.
Whilst some say it isn’t a sport, wrestling is now available on free to air channels! WWE has partnered with Channel 5 to bring weekly highlight shows of RAW and Smackdown. Paramount has NXT UK highlights, FreeSports has MLW and ITV has AEW programming here in the UK so it’s never been a better time to be a wrestling fan! Gone are the days of having to sign up to watch wrestling now freeview channels are carrying it instead.
Great Movies For All
You don’t need Sky Cinema or similar channels in order to access great movies. There are great freeview channels which specialise in movies, as well as those that occasionally show film in the evening. Film4, Sony Movies, ITV2 are freeview channels that all show fantastic films including The Hunger Games, John Wick and Pulp Fiction. For the kids there is usually an animated feature on around tea time on Saturday nights, such as Minions and Ice Age. Whilst a lot of these films will be older, finding their way onto these free to air channels, if you haven’t seen them or they are family favourites, you don’t need to pay for more recent films, simply wait for them to work their way through whilst you enjoy what is available to watch.
You Might Not Need A Licence
Maybe the licence fee is too much considering you must have one in order to watch live TV, even if it’s not a BBC channel. The thing is, you don’t have to pay the TV licence and many people don’t. The official rules to follow are this.
You don’t need a TV Licence if you never watch or record programmes as they’re being shown on TV, on any channel, or live on an online TV service, and you never download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer – live, catch up or on demand.
So if you don’t do any of those things, you don’t need a licence. You can still watch ITV and Channel 4 shows on demand. You certainly don’t need a licence to stream Amazon Prime Video or Netflix. If you don’t watch live TV and you avoid iPlayer and you don’t need a licence. You may get people knocking on your door to check you’re not watching and if you do watch without a licence you could end up in trouble or fined.
Go Watch
Hopefully this post shows you that there are great channels and programmes available to watch if you decide to pay your licence fee. Should you ditch paying the money to BBC, there are other great entertainment channels out there too. The choice is yours.
