Swiss here: Pretty certain this is part of a pressure campaign by the SRF ("Swiss Radio and Television"). They are facing budget cuts nationally through an initiative that will be voted on probably later this year (https://srg-initiative.ch/). By preemptively cutting services on their own (that they are not forced to under the text of the initiative) they probably hope to sway voter's opinion.
Cutting service costs on their own while burdening the cost to their listeners is so backwards. My car radio can't do DAB and it would cost me quite a bit of money to install a replacement radio if I want a proper setup (i.e. as before in terms of usability/integration).
Some politicians in my country have worked out that when someone tries to force them to spend less, they can cut funding to something popular like libraries, immediately get a bunch of complaints and protests, then declare "Well we tried, it seems voters don't want us to spend less after all"
>...The Washington Monument syndrome,[1] also known as the Mount Rushmore syndrome[2] or the firemen first principle,[3][4] is a term used to describe the phenomenon of government agencies in the United States cutting the most visible or appreciated service provided by the government when faced with budget cuts. It has been used in reference to cuts in popular services such as national parks and libraries[2] or to valued public employees such as teachers and firefighters,[3] with the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore being two of the most visible landmarks maintained by the National Park Service.[1]
>...The term was first used after George Hartzog, the seventh director of the National Park Service, closed popular national parks such as the Washington Monument and Grand Canyon National Park for two days a week in 1969.
Technically, if you don't have a device capable of receiving their broadcasts, you can get an exemption from the fee. Unfortunately a single computer or TV is enough to incur the obligation.
Serafe will only let you waive the fee if everyone in your household is both deaf and blind, or you are on certain social benefits (can't afford it), or you are a diplomat.
Everyone else has to pay CHF335/year, and good luck getting a partial refund if you leave the country (we didn't).
That's not quite right. You don't need a TV License if you're in possession of a TV.
You do, however, require one if you watch TV as it is being broadcast, utilise BBC iPlayer (their online catch-up service), or consume TV via satellite / terrestrial receiver equipment[0].
Consuming catch-up TV (e.g. My5, Channel 4, etc.) does not require the purchase of a TV License, nor does Netflix or YouTube.
The "Enforcement Officers" (who pay you a visit if you cancel, and try to intimidate you) tend to play into misconceptions regarding how the law works, so it's best to be equipped with knowledge before cancelling to avoid being tricked.
>Everyone else has to pay CHF335/year, and good luck getting a partial refund if you leave the country (we didn't).
Not Swiss here(it's the same kind of tax in Austria), and I hate useless taxes that incompetent governments shove down our throats, but I support the idea of citizens having an independent, impartial and transparent publicly funded media, and unfortunately that costs money to fund and maintain either through direct or indirect taxes, but either way you'll still be paying for it one way or another from the state budget.
We can't have a functioning democracy expecting citizens to make informed decisions on important things like Brexit, when their only sources of information are controlled by big-ad-tech like Meta or Google and Warren Buffet.
The only question remaining is the traditional "who watches the watchmen", as in what assurance do we have that the publicly funded media is truly unbiased and independent and not paddling its own biases and political agendas.
It's not controlled by the state, but funded by it. There's a kind of a people's council everyone can join and vote about stuff which in part control the direction of it, it's called SRG.
If it's like in Austria, then the state media doesn't receive cheques from the state government, but directly from the taxpayers via a separate tax collected by an independent agency granted power by the state, and not from the state itself.
On paper this makes it so that the state media is reporting directly to the paying citizens similar to a national Patreon, in practice IMO, it's still state control but with extra steps and middlemen designed to give the illusion of independence.
On paper it's not controlled by the state, but awarded independence by law. On paper. In practice, it's still subject to the laws and influence of the state it's funded by, so take that as you will.
At least here in Austria I can't put too much faith in the state media since they don't cover any major corruption scandals of the parties in power, but mostly report on neutral stuff like whatever new laws passed and that the sloth family at the local zoo had a baby.
Attacking public broadcasters is a pretty standard playbook of the far-right and even Conservatives - the latter in Germany for example killed off fibre buildout under Kohl in favor of cable TV/radio because they wanted private broadcasters as competition against a "too left" public TV [1]. The consequences of that decision haunt us to this day, with many households still getting internet access via decades-old twisted pair phone lines.
