Not sure about other places, but in the UK there is a 'TV licence' - which is £131 per year.

It pays for two things - the broadcasting infrastructure and the BBC services (currently about 8 TV channels and 7 radio stations which are all without commercials)

Some think it's like a mandatory tv channel subscription, but personally I'm happy to pay it to keep the BBC up and running. It produces a lot of crap, but from time to time it produces some utter gems :)

If you buy any TV equipment in the UK - they take your postcode and you get a letter basically making sure you have a TV licence. If you don't have one, they have a national database, and tv 'finding' equipment - then a guy can come and see if you have a TV or not and if you do, and you don't have a licence, I think it's a £3k fine.

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/detectionandpenalties.jsp

these - http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/information/excuses.jsp - are particularly funny.

Doug