English Entertainment
Romedy NOW entralls viewers with a special line up of series & movies all of August
MUMBAI: It’s month number eight and it’s promising everything great! This month, Romedy NOW the exclusive English entertainment channel, is giving viewers a pinch more of its razzle and dazzle. Catch all the cool series that you have always enjoyed on the channel along with bedazzling glitzy fashionistas and all eternal love stories only on Romedy NOW!
Watch celebrity publicist Jake Phillips alter his womanising ways to look for his dream woman in ‘Jake in Progress’. Three best friends try to meet the demands of their relationships in ‘Traffic Lights’. And you also have other hot favourite shows like the endearing day-dreaming lawyer ‘Ally McBeal’, who is forced to work with her ex beau and his wife in the same office. The greatest story told about six friends in ‘Friends’, two broke waitresses – one an heiress and one humble – trying to open their cupcake shop in ‘2 Broke Girls’, and the manager of a science company trying to manage his scientists and his shrewd boss in ‘Better off Ted’ will make for the best entertainment.
Say hello to the fashion-fab gals in the special Romedy NOW line-up, ‘Fashionistas’. A young and na?ve journalist Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathway) makes it to the big bad fashion world The Devil Wears Prada. Watch the fashionable foursome Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda and Samantha deal with the pressures of life and enjoy the pleasures of an all-expense paid trip to Abu Dhabi in Sex and the City 2. Catch Katherine Heigl work for the man of her dreams and always be the bridesmaid but never the bride. Will the wedding bells ever chime for the belle? Find out in 27 Dresses. After the sibling rivalry, two BFFs turn into sworn enemies in Bride Wars as their wedding date clashes. Watch these beauties every Friday, 11 PM. ‘Fashionistas’ is presented by Airtel Mobility and powered by Daawat.
Move on to deep eternal love and catch the most endearing and heart-touching tales in Romedy NOW’s exclusive property, ‘Everlasting Love’. Fate intervenes for two separate individuals bringing them together in The Wedding Singer. Sail forth for true love as a poor artist finds his everlasting love as they journey together on the Titanic. A recently widowed man has an affair to remember with an already-engaged Baltimore reporter atop the Empire State building in Sleepless in Seattle.
Watch the beautiful Debra Messing in ‘The Wedding Date’ where she hires a complete stranger as her escort to her half-sister’s wedding. Be a part of these warm love stories every Wednesday, 9 PM. The presenting sponsor for ‘Everlasting Love’ is SMC and is powered by ‘Viber’.
Not to be missed is your monthly dose of love and laughter with the ‘Romedy of The Month’ – America’s Sweethearts. Gwen Harrison (Catherine Zeta Jones) and Eddie (John Cusack) are the hottest Hollywood couple on and off screen going through an ugly split. Things only get weirder when the eccentric director Hal Weidmann (Christopher Walken) holds the film hostage and will only show it to the press. The film publicist tries to keep the press’ attention away from asking about the movie & hence forces the couple to attend the press junket together. As Gwen chooses her sister and personal assistant Kiki (Julia Roberts) to mediate between her and Eddie, sparks fly between the two. Catch this insane ride on Sat, 23rd August, 9 PM. ‘Romedy of The Month’ – America’s Sweethearts’ is presented by ‘Airtel Mobility’.
So stay tuned to Romedy NOW all this month as the best in Love & Laughter is guaranteed!
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.
