Daily Junction.mobi portalA TV licence costs £169.50 per year and is required to watch or record live TV on any channel, or use BBC iPlayer. The licence funds the BBC (around £3.7 billion per year), which receives no advertising revenue or government funding. TV Licensing uses detection technology, database matching, and home visits to enforce the licence, with around 150,000 prosecutions per year. The penalty for watching TV without a licence is a fine of up to £1,000, plus court costs, though prison sentences were abolished in 2020. The TV licence is controversial: supporters say it protects BBC independence and funds quality programming, critics say it is outdated in the streaming age, unfair to non-BBC viewers, and criminalises poverty. The government has frozen the licence fee at £169.50 until 2027 and will review its future after that, with options including a subscription model, advertising, government funding, or a hybrid approach. The TV licence has funded the BBC for nearly a century, but its future is uncertain in an age when younger people are abandoning live TV for streaming. Whether it survives in its current form depends on whether the public values the BBC enough to keep paying for it.