Fugato

I just got visited by the TV people. Not the ones Carol Anne welcomed in Poltergeist. Nope, these are altogether more real. They are field agents of RÚV, The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service.

For non-Icelandic readers: RÚV is the state television and radio company. RÚV has the legal right to charge fees of anyone who has a television or radio receiver in their premises — regardless of whether they ever watch or listen to RÚV. Watch one of the privately-held TV stations? Tough, you have to pay RÚV as well. It is effectively a tax on anyone who watches TV or radio — i.e. everyone (except for stray nutcases like myself).

Now, that might seem OK: it’s state-run, like U.S. public access TV or the U.K.’s BBC, so presumably it has to be paid for by the state, and doing it this way is nicer than just doing it straight through taxes because this way people who don’t use TV or radio don’t have to pay — right? Well, sure, until you consider that RÚV is not exactly like U.S. public access TV. In fact, it is in direct, head-on competition with the private stations for commercials and sponsorships, and their material is similar to a considerable extent: cheesy US sitcoms and reality shows, new movies, etc. So they are engaged in competition … in which they get the advantage of mandatory subscription fees from everyone who does business with their competitors. Still sounds fair?

Now, a rather large number of people are not happy with this state of affairs, and a lot simply refuse to pay. Mostly by claiming they do not, in fact, have a TV. Granted, some people may be doing this more for parsimony than principle. In any case, what is RÚV’s reaction? Field agents. RÚV sends people out (our tax dollars at work!) to people’s homes to check. Honestly. They can’t enter unless permitted by the owner, of course, so they just ask. I’m not for such invasions of privacy, in principle, but in practice, I just invited them in, to remove all doubt on the issue, so that I wouldn’t have to have any more visits of this kind. I have neither a TV nor a radio in my home (I’m a little odd that way), so I had nothing to worry about. They apparently noted that in my demeanor; in any case they didn’t even accept the invitation, just checked me off their list, courteously apologized for the inconvenience, and left.

So, to all you people worried about their visits: apparently a cheerful invitation to enter, along with a bashful confession of being an internet nerd who gets his news from blogs and news websites, will convince them that you have nothing to hide. Try it out! :)

(And to all those people who do not invite them in and don’t want to seem incriminated by that: sorry. I guess I did not help your case. But hey, I have a better solution; chuck your TVs! Works wonders for your lifestyle: you can spend Friday nights home alone blogging instead of spending them home alone watching TV!)

I’ll give them that; these agents were perfectly polite. I’ve heard all kinds of stories of the RÚV field agents, some of them first-hand, all of them nasty, but these two did not fit that stereotype. So apparently the complaints about manners have been heard … now for all those complaints about the unfair competition inherent in the TV tax! Those have been ignored for a long time, and that doesn’t look set to change.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2004 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.