English Entertainment
‘The Night of’ to end on Star World Premiere HD!
MUMBAI: Steven Zaillian’s The Night Of turned out be the big hit that no one ever expected it to be. After all the obstacles it overcame and the amount of years it took for the miniseries to finally make it to television screens, The Night Of, since its premiere, led to a lot of conversations among audiences and continued with the same momentum to consistently peak everyone’s attention.
The show follows the journey of a lawyer Jack Stone (John Turturro), who seeks to absolve a young Pakistani-American student (Riz Ahmed) accused of brutally murdering a girl on the Upper West Side.
Drawing close to its end, The Night Of, has managed to garner immense conversation, suspecting, assuming and contemplating Andrea’s real killer. Now with the last episode on the cards this Wednesday night at 10 PM on Star World Premiere HD, questions are being raised more so now than ever before. Could it be her gold-digging step-father or her mother’s financial advisor? Could it be the creepy neighbor or the weird black guy Naz and Andrea encounter while heading to her place? Or is Naz himself the killer? Will we get the definitive ending we have hoped for all this while?
The finale episode of The Night Of airs in India this Wednesday, August 31st at 10 PM on Star World Premiere HD!
Coming from Oscar winner Steven Zaillian and renowned novelist Richard Price, The Night of is a strong mix of heavy-duty performances, layered character developments and a complex core mystery that is equal parts horrifying and frustrating as we approach the nail-gritting finale episode.
Speaking about if he ever had any misgivings about telling the cast the end of the story, director and producer of the show, Steve Zaillian stated, “First of all to me that’s not the crucial piece of information in the whole story – but obviously people are interested in that. I never had long conversations with any of the actors about that. If they would ask me, ‘well why do you want to know? Would you play it differently if it was this or that?’ If the answer is yes, well then we’re not going to talk about it any more. It shouldn’t matter to the performance.”
He further spoke about the attention to detail used in the series that has been widely spoken about and appreciated, “I like conveying a story point visually as much as I can, as opposed to in dialogue. A lot of times that requires to shoot it in a certain way in order to tell that story. I just prefer that; I’m not a big dialogue guy, I’m not a guy who wants people to come out and say what they mean; usually if they say anything it’s something other than what they mean.”
Starring stellar actors – Poorna Jagannathan, Riz Ahmed, John Turturro, Peyman Moaadi and Amara Karan in the lead, the 9.1 IMDB-rated show airs its finale episode this Wednesday, 10 PM on Star World Premiere HD!
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
