At one point there use to be separate radio, B&W TV and color TV fees. That was in the 1970s. You only had to pay, of course, for the best technology you owned. The radio fee was dropped first (in 1977), ostensibly because most people who had a radio also had a TV, but the real reason was that radios became so common and small in the 1970s that it was impossible to enforce the fee. After that you did not have to pay a radio fee even if you owned a radio but no TV set.[R_H] wrote:You have a TV fee as well? In addition to that, we also have a radio fee.
The B&W TV fee was dropped in 1996, but ironically you still have to pay the higher unified TV fee even if you own just a B&W TV set (not that many do, but it is still pretty stupid). The law has many incredible idiosyncrasies: for example after digital TV became then only broadcast TV, you don't have to pay the TV fee if you only have an analog TV set, no digital set-top box and you are unable to receive any analog TV channels at all. However, if you are able to receive for example Russian analog TV broadcasts, you do have to pay the TV fee at least in theory. The same is true if your local cable provider has any analog content left on the cable (unlike in most other European countries, cable TV was forced to become fully digital by government regulatory orders in Finland).
