are there “fewer and fewer French people who say they have a television set”, as Gabriel Attal asserts?

The Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, questioned on Tuesday July 19 on franceinfo said to himself “ready“to look at the track of an assignment of a part of the VAT to compensate for the abolition of the audiovisual royalty.

>> The article to read to understand the debate on the abolition of the audiovisual license fee

The government has indeed included the abolition of this tax in its bill on purchasing power currently being examined by Parliament. Paid by households who say they have a television, the fee amounts to 138 euros per year and should bring in 3.2 billion euros this year. But Gabriel Attal believes that this tax is “unfair“and above all, that it is no longer suitable. “It’s a tax that is dated, since the French pay it who say they have a television at home. And for years you have had fewer and fewer French people who say they have a television”, argued the Minister.

Audiovisual fee ➡️ “What we are eliminating is not the public audiovisual budget, it is the tax on the French”, says the Minister of Public Accounts. “There will be a parliamentary debate.” He says he is ready to direct part of the VAT towards public broadcasting. pic.twitter.com/DvU0kQG8Ee

— franceinfo (@franceinfo) July 19, 2022

Surveys conducted by Arcom, the new audiovisual policeman, in partnership with the Observatory of audiovisual household equipment, show that there is a drop in the number of households declaring that they own a television. This decline has been underway for ten years, but Arcom describes a decline “light and continuous”. And for good reason, more than nine out of ten homes are still equipped with a TV at home. Precisely, 90.9% of households against 98% ten years ago.

In fact, it is therefore a drop, but television remains the number one screen for the French, ahead of computers, smartphones and tablets. However, the momentum is currently on the side of smartphones: the household equipment rate has increased by 4 points in 3 years, while it is stagnating for computers and falling slightly for TV and tablets. According to Arcom, the households that tend to equip themselves less with a television set are one-person households, young people, CSP+ and city dwellers.