At least S4C is (they say) making an effort to make more of their content available world-wide:
http://americymru.net/profiles/blogs/a-message-from-s4c (hopefully that will actually work elsewhere …)
(Scroll down when you get there, the stuff at the top is not connected to the story.)
I heard or read signs of this coming in recent weeks, and now it seems to be confirmed by the announcements about the BBC licence fee yesterday: basically it seems that they are going to extend the licence to cover those receiving BBC output “on demand” via the internet, i.e. iPlayer in current technology and presumably whatever may succeed it.
How this will impact people outside of the UK I’m not sure. What they might do is impose a blanket georestriction so that only people in the UK can use these services, since up till now, only UK residents would need or have a licence.
However, since they are talking about “modernising” the licence, it could be changed to a subscription that anyone anywhere could take out, and then they are given a password, key, token or whatever which they have to input in order to receive the service. How that would work in practice I have no idea, but in principle it could be done I presume.
I heard Tony Hall (BBC DG) a week or so ago on the radio saying that the number of TV licences had been going slowly but inexorably down over the years, because the number of physical TVs had been going down, presumably because now people are accessing “TV” in other ways. (This surprises me in a way - yes, sure people have other devices now, but on the other hand, large-screen TVs are popular and relatively cheaper than ever). Anyway, so that means that licence revenue has been slowly shrinking, so they have to do something different.
Well those licenses changes I’ve suggested to BBC long time ago frustrated that I can’t watch all the rugby and some other stuff. However I didn’t influence on them for sure.
I can clearly imagine dropping the number of “physical TV” licences as if I look at me I rearly watch TV but rather search on the computer what I want to watch and that’s it. So this might be the case also because people can use big screens as monitors and not only TV also and can attach computers to it.
All in all I hardly wait to see what those changes bring. 
I believe you Tatjana, thousands wouldn’t… 
Seriously, I remember your saying that, and I thought of you when I heard this announcement.
I don’t watch much TV on the TV either, but I still have one, and I can’t see us doing without one any time soon. And technically (within the UK) one has to have a licence in order to receive any live TV signal whatever the device, so that includes live TV via iplayer on a computer (but you don’t need one at the moment if you only “watch on demand”, i.e. after the live transmission has gone out). What they appear to be doing is to change this to mean you have to have a licence to watch on demand as well. How exactly this will be implemented remains to be seen.
Here in Finland they changed the licence to a tax a couple of years ago. Much nicer than the licence system and also progressive so those with smaller income pay less. And the maximun amount I’m paying is less than the licence was…
That’s crazy socialist talk! 
I always did like Finland. Does this mean that Murdoch and the like don’t control your viewing?.
Free terrestrial television including our national treasure, the BBC, has already lost the right to show International Cricket live, the greatest game on earth; we look as though we may lose the Olympics; Soccer is mostly lost to us (not that that matters to me personally) and, worst of all, we are losing or will lose world cup and 6 nations rugby before long. (More “socialist nonsense” I’m afraid 
)
Even the BBC is dumbing down - “Prized Apart”, “Don’t Tell the Bride” - I mean - seriously??
Always thought that we should do this - apart from anything else, you could do away with special provisions for over-75s (or whatever). If they were rich over-75s, they would pay for it in their tax, and if they were not, they wouldn’t. But it would be “politically unacceptable”…
Having said that, I think the reason for the licence fee was that funding for the BBC could be at some distance from the government, so that BBC could maintain some degree of independence. However, in practice, the government is in control (well, in one sense) anyway, as the recent accouncement makes fairly clear, so maybe it’s time to give up the pretence.
Oh, in Slovenia we have more “weird” paying (licence) system. The government (which is in control of national RTV Slovenja) says: whoever has electricity that one for sure has TV so each and everyone who has electricity (and that means all people in Slovenia (well with some exceptions though)) has to pay the licence which is more like subscription to the programmes of National TV.
Commercial TVs have their own system of funding through commercials, special subscription fees to the channels (including Internet ones) which have to be payed etc. Cable TVs and those Internet ones have their own subscriptions to additional contents and main fee which is included into Internet/phone/TV tripple system.
So, if you don’t want to pay TV licence cut off the electricity and even then one can be so bright to charge you one.