English Entertainment
Comedy Central sees potential in localised content
MUMBAI: English GECs for a long time have been intending to telecast shows that are locally produced and involve local talent. One such GEC from the Viacom18 cluster, Comedy Central, has finally decided to take the plunge.
Two new local properties are going to soon be seen on the channel- The Other Week That Wasn’t and The Living Room. The former is a spinoff of its hit series on CNN-IBN The Week That Wasn’t. Speaking about two new properties, Viacom18 executive vice president and business head English entertainment Ferzad Palia says, “We wanted to localise in every market as it is important for us to have local connect with our audiences. We earlier experimented with video spoofs on journalists like Arnab Goswami and Rajdeep Sardesai which gave us a lot of positive feedback from our audiences. This is just the beginning of getting on board more localised content as we have important plans for India.”
When quizzed what these plans were, Palia provides a three pronged strategy that the channel will follow for the next year, “First, our focus will be to crack some more potential local talent. Secondly, we want to extend our brand beyond television through various tie ups and on ground events and thirdly we will be bringing some of the best international shows and be disruptive with the formats.”
The Other Week That Wasn’t will be hosted by funnyman Cyrus Broacha along with Kunal Vijaykar and Kaneez and will revolve over fashion, entertainment and sports. The weekly show will air every Sunday starting 16 November at 8 pm on the channel and is presented by Micromax. Palia dismisses rumours that The Week That Wasn’t will discontinue on CNN-IBN. “The Week That Wasn’t will continue to air on CNN-IBN whereas this show has the same cast but the content will be different,” he adds. CNN-IBN and Comedy Central are both part of the Network18 Group.
Comedy Central’s other property The Living Room centres on Kenneth Sebastian, a next door stand-up comedian from Bengaluru and his friends. These friends include the hilarious Kanan Gill, Kaneez, Abish Matthew, Naveen Richards, etc. The guy from the silicon valley of India has been presenting since the age of 19, and has over a hundred shows up his sleeve. The show that went through several alterations before receiving the final stamp will not have any script, retakes and will be 100 per cent improvised says the channel.
“We started in 2012 with shows like Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, That 70’s Show, South Park and have now progressed to acquire fresher and bigger content like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and the Graham Norton Show. The Tonight Show is being telecast 24 hours from its original US telecast,” Palia informs. The Graham Norton Show will begin from 29 November on weekends at 9 pm.
The channel for the first time introduced an animation block with Sponge Bob and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in late October during the festive season because it wanted to cater to a different set of audiences- youth who loved animation. Additionally shows like Billy On The Street, Psych (season one to four), Penn and Teller Fool Us were telecast.
For the two new shows promotions are being run on air across the channels networks and will be promoted on the digital medium. Comedy Central currently has 25,99,439 followers on Facebook and 3 million followers on Twitter.
The channel and its on ground events have seen advertising interest from brand categories right from diamonds, to chewing gum to apparels, automobiles and telcos. “Today humour is the fastest growing genre in the world and every category of brands is seeing monetisation opportunities, be it on digital, television or on ground events. Brands also want to go beyond television and therefore integration through tie ups and events offer that opportunity. Advertisers see more value as we offer differentiated solutions,” says Palia.
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.
