As an American in Germany.....one of the top fifty things that fascinate me....is the TV tax. For decades, there's been a TV tax in Germany. It used to be fairly comprehensive and difficult to figure. They actually wanted to know the precise number of TVs and radios within your household and they'd calculate the proper tax for your home. Then you paid this monthly.....out of your bank account or they'd remove it from your account.
Hostility from Germans over the tax? I'd say from humble observation.....that fifty percent of the population now have a negativity over the TV tax. From the crowd under thirty years old.....I doubt if you can find more than twenty-percent of that age group who watch five or more hours of state-run TV per week. The majority of those under thirty years old....simply don't use the state-run TV and they don't think they should have to pay the tax.
The radio side of this? It's slightly different....with most Germans using state-run radio at least three or four hours a week.....as they go to or from work.
State-run TV managers know that they've got a problem. They try to toss in various sports events.....mostly soccer, auto racing and boxing.....to attract younger viewers. Channel One and Two? They put a fair amount of their time and effort into news programs, movies for the over forty crowd, and a handful of documentary shows to satisfy the intellectual crowd. Because of the limited appeal to the under-thirty folks.....they just don't think the tax is fair.
Oddly, over the past five years.....the younger crowd have dumped TV and gone to the internet instead. They sign up for various media delivery devices (Netflix for example) and that's the only TV in their house.
Bild put out an interesting short piece over the last day or two.....for the 2014 statistical coverage.....that four million homes in Germany refused to pay all or part of the 2014 TV tax. Reminders have been sent out and there's going to be some pressure applied to these folks.
What the German state-run TV folks make off the crowd who does pay? Roughly 8.3 billion Euro.....which is tossed around between the top two networks, and the twenty-odd minor networks....along with the radio networks around the country.
The state-run TV folks got wise four years ago and noted this was a "media" tax....so even if you didn't have a TV and you were doing everything with your laptop/computer.....they still wanted you paying the tax.
I'm expecting at some point shortly that the German court system gets dragged into this and they kinda hint to the state-run TV managers that they need to dump the tax and go commercial.
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