English Entertainment
Larry Namer of Metan Global Entertainment to get top award at Asian Television Awards
NEW DELHI: Metan Global Entertainment Group president/CEO Larry Namer is to receive the Outstanding Contribution to Asian Television award at the 19th Asian Television Awards (ATA) on 11 December at Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.
An entertainment industry veteran with more than 40 years of professional experience in cable television, live events and digital media, Namer is the founding partner of Metan, a venture created to develop and distribute entertainment content and media specifically for the China market.
He is also the co-founder of E! Entertainment Television, a company now valued at over US$3.5 billion, and the creator of several successful companies, including Comspan Communications that pioneered Western forms of entertainment in the former Soviet Union and Steeplechase Media that served as the primary consultant to Microsoft’s MiTV (Interactive Television).
Metan’s flagship series Hello! Hollywood, a weekly entertainment news series tailored to Chinese audiences, is available on the company’s Hollywood Channel on Tudou. Metan has developed the successful sitcom ‘Return to Da Foo Tsun’ and Web series ‘Modern Life’, which have garnered a viewership of over 40 million viewers.
Recently, Metan and a coalition of North America’s top TV and film writers partnered to launch Metan Wen Zhi Ku, a joint venture linking Western writing talent with transmedia projects for China. Namer is also the co-founder of MINGYIAN INC., a China brand management startup for Western celebrities and influencers.
ATA chairman Raymond Wong said, “ATA is pleased to recognise Larry Namer for his remarkable contributions to the entertainment industry. He has accomplished a great deal, while positively representing the entertainment and digital media industries, and he fully deserves to be honoured for his achievements.”
Meanwhile, Yang Weidong senior VP and president of Tudou.com at Youku Tudou Inc., has joined the Advisory Board. The 10-member board has only one Indian, K V L Narayan Rao of NDTV.
Launched in 1996, ATA is the Asian TV industry’s most significant and celebrated event, recognising excellence in programming, production and performance.
Determined by an expert panel of over 60 judges from across the region, the results are tabulated and audited by international auditing firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers, with the winners only announced during the Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner in December. The judging process has also been brought into the digital era by being conducted on-line. This is designed to lessen the judging workload and provide judges greater comfort and flexibility by enabling them to screen the entries at their own pace.
The Awards comprise over 30 categories and represent the industry’s foremost recognition by enjoying the support of every major industry player throughout the region. ATA attracts a multitude of entries from a wide range of broadcasters, including free-to-air television stations and pay-TV platforms, as well as many independent production houses in Asia.
ATA is positioned as the only event of its kind within the Asian region, and upholds a prestigious reputation of showcasing quality television production.
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.
