I realise that this is an old thread, and I apologise in advance for bringing it back, but I thought that you might like to know that in Australia we haven't paid license fees for decades.

All of our programmes are "free to air" and we have about 15 free channels plus another 4 direct shopping ones.

After midnight we can get the BBC world news and other news programmes for a few hours, and the Govt owned channel SBS is 12 hours of foreign news and programmes in all languages.

Apart from the government one the ABC all of the others fo show ads but they are strictly controlled by the government. I am in a regional area about 800kms away from Sydney so am not sure what they get in Sydney.

The attitude is that it is up to the channels to stay profitable.