[petre]

Other (mostly European) countries rely on a tax to fund or partially fund state TV/radio so that the government doesn't broadcast government propaganda over state TV or control it by cutting their budget. It's also easier for them to make cultural shows as opposed to Oprah style reality TV that's the equivalent of clickbait and sells ads. In some of these countries state run TV is the most propaganda/advertising free TV. BBC is one example.

[Amezarak]

NPR and PBS neither air reality TV type content, or are outlets for government propaganda.

I understand that's one stated reason for the license tax, but the American model pretty well proves that it isn't necessary to get independent content that's not ad-driven.

[Renaud]

You seem to forget that the US is about 5x the population of the UK. Voluntary donations are nice but assuming generosity in the US and UK being the same, the UK would end up with 5x less funds than what PBS and NPR have (about US$550 and $270 yearly, respectively).

The BBC has about US$6.5B and produces a much wider array of programmes than PBS and NPR combined. So not relying on public's mandatory contribution would clearly not work.

[petre]

I don't know how it works in the US and whlile I fully agree with you about NPR (not familiar with PBS) I also know that it wouldn't work in my Eastern European country (an EU and NATO member). Our gov't tried to subvert national TV several times for their own corrupt schemes - with parliamentary backing. They just got rid of the TV tax, everybody and their dog voted for them and now they're indtrducing new and even more interesting taxes in place of the ones they got rid of to get the votes. Some people have a really short attention span.