I agree that the licence fee is an anachronism and the BBC should have alternative funding instead, perhaps a ring-fenced budget paid from general taxation, but not because everyone has a TV.

Some people don't watch broadcast TV, and the BBC and its agents have been infamous for getting heavy-handed and harassing those who choose not to and who perfectly legitimately and legally do not have a TV licence. This is backed by a controversial law that criminalises the failure to have a licence if you do need one, which under any normal circumstances would only be a minor civil matter.

Meanwhile, today the BBC is very much a multimedia institution, but the licence fee remains tied specifically to broadcast television, a historical anomaly that could be fixed.

A different funding model that broke that link and removed the need for a separate licence fee could fix all of the problems with licence evasion and heavy-handed enforcement that have been a black mark on the BBC's history, as well as providing a fairer system where the public service is funded from public funds rather than singling out a particular group.