German order, German thoroughness

[Skybird]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7648021.stm

[Letum]

Well, it is true that he hasn't paid his TV license.

[CCIP]

You can't escape the taxman, Mr. Schiller! :lol:

[baggygreen]

Wait..

you germans have an annual fee on owning a TV and radio??

what the hell for?!

[CCIP]

Wait..

you germans have an annual fee on owning a TV and radio??

what the hell for?!

It goes into a fund which Uwe Boll uses to make more crappy movies :doh:

[AntEater]

Wait..

you germans have an annual fee on owning a TV and radio??

what the hell for?!
For paying for public TV.
Our public radio and TV network is modelled on the BBC, only that we don't have one channel but a lot of them. Used to be one channel for every state, but some have merged.
There's a common channel of the state stations, the ARD plus an independent second channel, the ZDF.
Also, while BBC is free of commercials, ARD and ZDF are allowed commercial breaks before 1800 and "sponsored by" ads later.
But the bulk of the financing comes through license fees, which are collected by the GEZ (society for fee collection).
In contrary to the BBC, DF cars were never employed in Germany

I'm not so sure about public TV. They make great programs like Phoenix or Arte, and the news (like with the BBC) are simply far better than those of commercial TV.
However, there was a sharp drop in quality in recent years, with Telenovelas and all that stuff.
Also, there was some scandal with product placement.
Yesterday, the former head of sports coverage of the Hesse state network was sentenced to two years in prison for Fraud.
He did all contracts through a rights agency silently owned by his wife
An actual prison (not probation) sentence for a non-violent crime is something almost unheard of

[TarJak]

Australia actually has a fee for the ABC services but it is taken from the consolidated revenue fund that our Taxation goes into. Don't you remember those 8c per day ads?

[Konovalov]

Australia actually has a fee for the ABC services but it is taken from the consolidated revenue fund that our Taxation goes into. Don't you remember those 8c per day ads?
It's a little bit more visible here in the UK regarding our money going towards funding the national broadcaster unlike back home in Oz.

[Rhodes]

Ehehehehehe! They are similar stories around the world! Here in Portugal there was also a TV annual tax, which one paid to the state, for owning a television etc. This ended possibly during the 80´s. During the time of tax, when one person switch television, they had to tell the finances of that change, so the tax would pass it to the new television. Almost like cars taxes!
My father best man (in the wedding) continuated to received the letter to pay this tax, of the older television that he had. After a number of letter's explaining that the TV was no more, he continuated to receive the letter, until he just send it one last letter saying: " Dear Sir, go to (bad/rude word in portuguese that IMHO does not have a english translation). Best regards and signaded!
That was the best thing since they stop sending letters.

mistakenly sent letters to "Mr. Friedrich Schiller" - which arrived at a primary school bearing his name.
Similar thing was one day in the Mineralogical and Geologic Museum of the University of Coimbra, which have the name of José Bonifácio d’Andrada e Silva Gallery.
One day, the headmaster or the president of the faculty (can't remember now) telephones there to say that he can not attend the meting with doctor José Bonifácio because he had another compromise!!! And to help the story, the telephone receptionist had a particular way to talk, she couldn't say the R's, and so, she says the G word instead. So she had to tell him, that Mister José Bonifácio d’Andrada e Silva was dead, almost 250 years...

[Skybird]

In principle I'm fine with the german TV tax system, but unfortunately the emerging of private TV during the late 80s led to a competition that saw the number of TV channels increasing, but general quality degrading constantly, with the last years having seen a free fall. The pirvates finance themselves by plenty of adverts, and i am happy to pay a tax for not having my program interuoted every 15 minutes for 7-10 minutes, or have adverts fading in and out in the running program- and ruins the program, and completely so. but the privates with largely garbage-TV put the public stations under so much pressure that they

a.) had to raise their taxes (which is an anachronism when at the same time ever private household is expected to manage his existence with less, why are public institutions spared from that),

b.) started to copy the garbape-patterns of private TV and statretd to procude the same garbage - this time with my money

c.) using the taxes to start financing off-purpose operaitons like internet presences (you now also have to pay the TV tax if you do not own a TV, but have an internet access, even if it is just 28 modem - but almost nobody watches the internet presences of the public stations)

d.) allow political parties to have started years ago to massively project their influence and party's desires to change the orientation of programs and the way in which news is reported, and office positions are manned,

e.) waste hilarious, ridiculous, laughable, monumental ammounts of money to pay licence fees for some f#ucking football live coverage,

f.) waste money for a special channel that features boring life coverage of parliamentary debates (quotas are constantly falling), and another channel, ARTE, coproduced with then French, also has constantly detoriated in quality and has lost tremendously in quotas.

The system has seen it's best times long time ago, and then it was good. But now it just is annoying.

On German TV market, we have more channels to choose from, put the quality of choices available has become constantly poor and poorer. I prefer to have far less channels, but better ones. Of the 27 channels I get, you can delete two thirds immediately, and it wouldn't be considered a loss. We also were happy when we had a choice of just three, in my childhood, with antenna and a small black-and-white-portable. what I mean: having plenty of TV and radio is no essential of life, but today has become even a danger: that of cultural mass manipulation..

[Letum]

The BBC is the UK's greatest cultural ambassador.
There are not that many places in the world not coved by the world service or BBC news.

Outside schools, it is quite possibly the biggest single educator of the people.

Not to mention entertainment, hard journalism, BBC Parliament etc.

[jeremy8529]

waste money for a special channel that features boring life coverage of parliamentary debates.

I actually wished we had something like this over here. I think the average citizen needs to be on in the politics of it's own country. I think the greatest problem with out system, is Apathy, we don't care what happens, 50% of the people vote, they select someone to represent them, and then this person gets to do whatever he wishes until its election time again.

While having a TV station dedicated to just what is happening in House and Senate would not make more people interested in politics, it would let those who are watch it, and see in person what is actually happening, without having the spin you get from a journalists. Who knows, it might even help promote a revolutionary new concept..... accountability.

[AntEater]

The german system has some distinct differences to the classic BBC.
I heard the BBC is not what it used to be either, though

- Federalism: Originally, every single german state was supposed to have a radio/TV station.
That's right, some dozen BBCs, each with the same convoluted, semi-political structure the original BBC had.
Some merged, leaving about half a dozen large ones (HR, WDR, BR, MDR, SWR, NDR) plus two diminutive ones (RBB, Radio Bremen), but the latter does only radio.
At EVERY one of the six major state station has the budget of the whole BBC!
Today, the organisation varies from quasi-private (MDR) to old fashioned BBC style (HR, WDR).
ARD is the federally broadcast joint Channel of those eight.
Add to that the independent federal second channel ZDF, which was instituted in the 1960s after the supreme court had stopped Adenauer's attempt at private television.
Adenauer wanted another television network because he regarded the contemporary TV people as a bunch of commies :D

Problem is, large sports events like football championships and olympic games are always covered by both ARD and ZDF, with both stations alternating coverage daily.
In Bejing, ARD and ZDF sent more than twice as many people to the Olympics, yet managed to produce only about half as much coverage as the BBC.

Regarding the additional channels, I love Arte (joint Franco-German), Phoenix and 3Sat (joint German-Austrian-Swiss), but you could never run those channels on a profit oriented basis.
Phoenix is more than a german CSpan.
They cover many Bundestag debates on weekday afternoons, but the majority of their programs is documentaries and news.
Problem is, the public TV seems to think that "we got rid of our intellectual viewers via Arte and Phoenix, now we can dumb down the program on the regular channels".

[Respenus]

Well, Slovenia has the same system as Germany. We must all pay a certain amount of money in order to get the national TV and radio. The only problem is, there are no limitations to adverts and our national television has come exceedingly to the amount of adverts private station have. Plus the quality of our programmes has never been any good (in comparison with the BBC) and they are deteriorating every year. We have awful spin-offs of different humorist series and each one is worst them the last one :damn:

Yet contrary to what Germany has seen in private TV proliferation, Slovenia has seen in the printed media. In the last few years, several new newspapers of different quality and content amount has sprout out and many of them are those free everyday newspapers. My God, we have so many, they are left around to rot in the streets and in schools. People only use them to solve crosswords. Then when there are reports as to which newspaper is the most read one, they come out number one (of course, as by the end of the day, there is none to be found).

Don't even get me started on what this newspapers dare to write. I have a feeling, every newspaper I take into my hands, being old with a considerable history, or a new one, all I'll hear is gossip and public manipulation. Yet now I have deviated from the topic of this thread.

[lesrae]

The BBC is the UK's greatest cultural ambassador.
There are not that many places in the world not coved by the world service or BBC news.

Outside schools, it is quite possibly the biggest single educator of the people.

Not to mention entertainment, hard journalism, BBC Parliament etc.

I agree completely, and in my opinion Frankie Boyle on Mock The Week is worth the licence fee alone :D

NSFW links:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lrCAPV2V7xs (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=lrCAPV2V7xs)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4yjJFt3uFVw (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4yjJFt3uFVw)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=srJ6Sd_nGrk (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=srJ6Sd_nGrk)

[Hitman]

Do you pay that tax also if you don't have a TV? :hmm: It seems to be payed per house (householder), not per owning a TV.

That is a bit unfair, since you might actually own a house but not a TV and never watch it (Like I do for mental health reasons :lol: ).

[Sailor Steve]

Well, a part of our taxes goes to funding public television and radio, but we don't have a specific tax, which we might object to. Instead they just raise taxes in general to cover things like that.

Your way might actually be better. At least you know what you're paying for.

[Skybird]

You pay one tax for any device that is capable to receive ARD's or ZDF's "media presence", wether it be TV, internet connection, VHS recorder, or refrigerator, and you pay a second tax for radio. Eventually you also pay these taxes twice - for having a TV at home, and a PC at work in your self-owned office (even it is is inside your appartement, since it is a PC used for your working place). If you are employed, the employer has to pay. - They designed the system so that it is impossible for you to evade paying the tax - even if you do not watch TV at all. You would need to have a monitor and a DVD player without a TV receiver, and not having a PC or laptop or handy (!) with internet connection, in order to evade the TV tax. Then you still would be left with having to pay the radio tax.

[Letum]

In the UK it is a single payment per household with a TV in it. However amny you have.

Radios, PC, and anything not a TV are free.

I prefer this to the German fees.

[lesrae]

In the UK it is a single payment per household with a TV in it. However amny you have.

Radios, PC, and anything not a TV are free.

I prefer this to the German fees.

Anything capable of receiving a TV signal is liable - a PC with a TV card for example, it's £140 a year in the UK.

[Schroeder]

In Germany you only pay if you have a tv or a radio (radio allone is cheaper).

[Skybird]

In Germany you only pay if you have a tv or a radio (radio allone is cheaper).
No, see my specification above. A receiving device, is the criterion. Wether that be a TV, or a VHS with receiver, or a PC with internet access, does not matter.

the PC thing is new. Have they withdrawn it again? not that I heared of.

[UnderseaLcpl]

In principle I'm fine with the german TV tax system, but unfortunately the emerging of private TV during the late 80s led to a competition that saw the number of TV channels increasing, but general quality degrading constantly, with the last years having seen a free fall. The pirvates finance themselves by plenty of adverts, and i am happy to pay a tax for not having my program interuoted every 15 minutes for 7-10 minutes, or have adverts fading in and out in the running program- and ruins the program, and completely so. but the privates with largely garbage-TV put the public stations under so much pressure

Why don't you just do what America does and pay a company for channels with no adverts? That way you get a choice at least. This is reminiscient of that E.U.-sponsored TV station that does nothing but cover the E.U. parliament and various councils. Why pay taxes when you could have something like c-span for free?


On German TV market, we have more channels to choose from, put the quality of choices available has become constantly poor and poorer. I prefer to have far less channels, but better ones. Of the 27 channels I get, you can delete two thirds immediately, and it wouldn't be considered a loss. We also were happy when we had a choice of just three, in my childhood, with antenna and a small black-and-white-portable. what I mean: having plenty of TV and radio is no essential of life, but today has become even a danger: that of cultural mass manipulation..


27 channels!?:D I can only assume you have so few because you're not a huge fan of television. Neither am I, but I get 200+ channels and cable internet and telephone for the reasonable price of 65 USD per month. Competition and capitalism are beautiful things.:yep:

Sure, the media can be manipultive, but if we're going to have mass media, I would prefer having many different companies compete to manipulate me rather than one state. Not that I pay them much mind, anyhow.

Still, Kay Granger has been unresponsive to the letters from myself and the Texas Libertarian Party requesting that PBS be abolished. Fecking government:damn:

<storms off muttering>

[Skybird]

Why don't you just do what America does and pay a company for channels with no adverts? That way you get a choice at least.
There are Pay-TV-stations, two or three, but the costs for them would be additonally to the taxes, also, I do not need and do not wish for them. I think 27 alraedy is more than what me and other people need.



27 channels!?:D I can only assume you have so few because you're not a huge fan of television. Neither am I, but I get 200+ channels and cable internet and telephone for the reasonable price of 65 USD per month. Competition and capitalism are beautiful things.:yep:

200, well, thought so, but really - who needs that? i do not wish germany to get that range of stations, really. as I said, I would even prfeer the existing ones getting reduced to one third of what we currently have. Too much waste there, is, too much garbage. what I would prefer is better regular access to international news stations, at least those of our neighbours. In our regional cable, currently they only feed CNN, and on part-time Dutch TV. BBC was deleted on my state some years ago, and several other stations also no longer are fed into the cable network, you would need satellite for that, or Pay-TV again.

Sure, the media can be manipultive, but if we're going to have mass media, I would prefer having many different companies compete to manipulate me rather than one state. Not that I pay them much mind, anyhow.

I thought the same until some time ago, but now have my doubts. the vast range of stations mostly spread information from one, two or three major outlets, and mirror their news without critically questioning or checking it for truth. If you have crap TV, and 20 stations of that, then you cannot compensate the loss of quality by multiplying the number of crap TV stations by a factor of ten - it seems to me, and that'S how I perceive the current media world, that this strategy only leaves you with ten times more of crap TV - a quality gain I do not really see. In fact, what I see is a more and more advancing streamlining of media. Political parties take massive influence in program policy of the public stations in germany. Or think of berlusconi in italy. Especially the BBC is on my mind as well. I considered it to be one of the best I could see, 20 years ago. Today, no more, it is a politically correct proclamation office. That I already thought when I still had it on TV until some time ago, and i still think so when reading it on internet. Their documentaries also have severly suffered. The pictures are spectacular, but the general tone of their docus, the wording of commentary and the sensational music is pushing people's thinking into a certain direction - and that is not what a documentary should, no matter if about animals, or astronomy.

[Letum]

[
Why don't you just do what America does and pay a company for channels with no adverts?

In the UK the license fee goes towards things that may not otherwise be made on
a purely commercial basis and provides a range of public service features.
Because it goes to a single company, the public know where the fee is going and
the BBC can be held to account. It also means the BBC does not have a conflict of
interest when handling public money.

[AntEater]

27 channels is what you get from public TV, so this is "what you pay for".
With cable TV (yet another payment, this time to a cable company) you get up to 400, including practically every foreign language from Porto to Vladivostok.
Actually you don't need any of them, except if you're a foreign national and want to feel at home.
A russian I knew never watched german TV at all, you hardly noticed his flat was not in Russia when the TV was running.

I've basically given up on TV:
News are ok, and I occasionally watch documentaries. The only thing I regularly watch on TV is football.
Regarding normal entertainment, I turned to the internet or DVDs long ago.
It used to be that 90% of the series and movies on german TV were US made, now it is around 50% or even less.
Problem is, "german made" does not mean every TV program is a "Downfall" or "das Boot". Most of it is simply utter crap. Some nice crime shows, but they get repetitive.
US TV series like BSG or whatever are generations ahead of everything Germany produces currently, strangely not for effects or cost of production, but really for good scripts, stories and acting.
Problem is, while US series and movies are shown on german TV, they're always dubbed. Cable TV has bilingual programs where you can switch to original, but sadly the normal programs, no matter if private or public, force you to watch dubbed versions.
While german dubbing is better than lets say russian (couldn't watch "Mongol" due to the extremely stupid russian voice-over), you simply cannot transplant dialogue.
Dialogues that sound dry and witty in US english simply sound like bragging adolescents if translated directly into german.
I simply can't watch a dubbed movie anymore.
And since that means german programs are 90% simply too stupid and US programs ruined by dubbing, there's no TV entertainment for me.
What I do enjoy are non-english european productions, scandinavians or something, for example "the crime", a danish series AFAIK nominated for some US award.

[Skybird]

I actually I consider german synchronisation setting a standard, except the usual exceptions from the rule. I am often dissapointed when hearing american or english original tone. but soemtimes they make one of two mistakes: they completely change the original text during translation, making it something totally different, or they stick to the orginally to closely, even when a super-precise word-by-word translation does more damage than good. However, often the choice of German voices for foegin actors is extremely good. In absolutel most cases the german voices for a given actor I like much better then the sound of the actor'S origianl voice. Especially when his voice sounds high and thin like Micky Mouse. for example, the german voiceover for Sean Connery imo beats the original hands down. :D also, in the past many synchronisations wehre done by people with classical theatre background and classicaol stage actors, not just by some dude picked up on the streets. and that pays off.

So, translated program does not automatically mean bad program for me. In many cases, I prefer it to the original, for improved matching between character you see and voice you hear.

What I don't like at all, is subtitles. It is too destracting, especially when it is a high quality program, or soemthing with a focus with slow, artistic visuals.

[AntEater]

German dubbing is most likely the best in the world, but actually I prefer subtitles
:D
First of all, I don't like all my actors to have impressive voices.
That's ok for Macbeth, but not if you have a show about average life dudes.
The funniest example was Scully in X-Files.
Her german voice was very deep and smooth, something like a later day Zarah Leander.
Originally, Gillian Anderson just sounds like your average american woman.
The problem with dubbing really is the anglish fetish.
The worst thing I've ever heard was "Ahhh, wir crashen!" in "broken Arrow"
They try to make it sound as american as possible. Dubbing was better when they took greater liberties in translation.
For example "a rebel without a cause" worked well in german language because they simply used 1950s german teenage slang instead of directly translating the dialogue.

I didn't watch it sofar, but I can't imagine how they dub "Californication".

[Skybird]

Alien is on my mind for bad dubbing, also the new version of Blade runner, that is a total desaster, and not just because I love the film.

Famous is the chnaged texts for classical Star Trek, and the even more famous translation for "Die 2" (The Pursuaders) wrote TV history. The French, when buying the series from the British, also bought the german dubbed versions and then translated not the British but the German dialogues to french. That way, what was a boring series that was highly unsuccessful in Britain, became one of the greatest successes of comedy TV in both Germany and France.

I agree on the high quality of Germany dubbing, which in fact was a known at l.east until the mid-90s. no other country dubbed so much (almost completely) foreign programs it bought, and did that with so high quality. Also, many foreign productions came to german sound studios to use the technology there to record or chnage the text they did in their own productions, it is also was a question of know-how and technology, as weoll as having a wide range of very cometent speakers with a huge varietey of voices available. I am not aware of dubbing being done with such perfection on a regular basis anywhere like it is done in Germany.

On the other hand, straneglym the sound quality of recoridngs done for German Tv productions very often is extremely bad, as if the sound engineers were doing their jobs with deaf ears. Ver yoften they have no good sense for balancing different channels. I think this myself, but my father, professional musician he is, thinks the same. His orchestra also has a black list of names with sound engineers from rcord companies with whom they rejected to cooperate.

If you are into classical music, Decca has a very good reputation of having extremely good sound engineers, btw.

[Hitman]

Wonder how they can control that :hmm: Of course an internet connection is controllable, but a TV? Or is in germany all TV emitted by cable? In Spain we still have antennaes on top of all houses (Making the appearence of our cities and small villages really awful :shifty: ), and I guess it would be impossible to tell who has one and who not without entering the house and searching (For which you need a judicial authorization)

BTW do you also pay again the tax for the TV system of the car navigator, or the car radio? :hmm:

Here in spain our state TV has only two channels, now also a third one emitting in digital signal, but I can't tell if they are good. I have not watched TV in more than two years :smug: (And before I already did seldomly)

I get the information now from the newspapers in internet and have no interest in the films or rubbish programs that are usually emitted, nor do I have enough time to watch the only thing that could interest me -documentaries in a specialized channel- :doh:

[lesrae]

Wonder how they can control that :hmm:

These days it's just done via the database they have, you're the exception if you don't have a licence so it's easy for them to check on those people. You also have to gove a name and address when buying any TV, Freeview box or whatever over the counter and they'll get you that way too; presuming you don't just lie - Mr L.P. Blower, 29 Acacia Road etc.

[Skybird]

They have controlers who walk from door to door and check the households with their database. If they find a household that is not listed in their databse, they will ring and try to check. They are known for being aggressive and also to play with foul tricks and wrongly quoted legal rules on occasions, just to get access to the flat and see if there is a TV or radio around somewhere.