The Swiss Federal Council has announced a reduction in the licence fee paid by households from CHF365 (€347/$377) to CHF335 per year, a 8.2-per-cent fall.
The licence fee, which had already been cut from CHF451 to CHF365 in 2019, has been reduced further following a new collection system put in place at the start of last year.
Billag, the subsidiary of Swiss telecoms giant Swisscom that collected the payments, was replaced by Serafe as the government’s collection agency as the licence fee was made mandatory for all households. This has led to significantly higher revenues than initially projected after data problems around household addresses were cleared up.
The government has now moved to reduce the licence fee on the back of the increased revenues.
A further cut to the licence fee will not mean a reduction in funding to SRG SSR. The Swiss public-service broadcaster will in fact receive an additional CHF50m from the Federal Council to help offset a fall in advertising revenues. The broadcaster’s share of the licence fees was raised to CHF1.2bn per year upon the change of the licence fee collection system.
SRG SSR announced a fresh round of austerity cuts in September 2019 and recently temporarily laid off 600 employees due to the impact of Covid-19. The broadcaster, a European Broadcasting Union member, expects a “double-digit million” loss in revenues as a result of pandemic. Many sports and cultural events that SRG SSR airs – and provides the host broadcast for – have been postponed or cancelled and advertising revenues have fallen significantly, the broadcaster said.
In 2018, 71.6 per cent of Swiss voters rejected a proposal to scrap the television licence fee. The scrapping of the licence fee system could have threatened SRG SSR’s future as it was generating three quarters of its funding from the levy system.