English Entertainment
Comedy Central announces its new year line up with four new shows
MUMBAI: A brand new year calls for brand new reasons to smile and Comedy Central India, India’s only 24×7 laughter destination is bringing to its audience the perfect mix of humor that will set the ball rolling for a fabulous year ahead.
Monday, 20th January 2014 will see the Indian premieres of – House of Lies,World’s Craziest Fools as well as the latest season launch of Arrested Development. Monday was never so much fun before!
January also witnesses the premiere of Just For Laughsfor the first time on Comedy Central India starting 23rd January.
Show synopsis
House of Lies:
This American drama comedy television series created by Matthew Carnahan follows a group of management consultants who stop at nothing to get business deals done. It is based on the book, House of Lies: How Management Consultants Steal Your Watch and Then Tell You the Time, written by Martin Kihn, a former consultant and is a subversive, scathing look at a self-loathing management consultant from a top-tier firm. Marty, a highly successful (played but Don Cheadle), cutthroat consultant is never above using any means (or anyone) necessary to get his clients the information they want.
Don Cheadle has received the Primetime Emmy and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in 2013 and 2013 amongst other awards for best actor like Critic’s Choice Television Award. Tune in to Comedy Central India on 20th January at 10 pm every Monday-Wednesday and you will see why!
Arrested Development
Join Michael Bluth in the latest season as he juggles his job and the disruptive family his imprisoned father left behind. Since its debut in 2003, the series has received widespread critical acclaim, six Primetime Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe Award, and has attracted a cult following, including several fan-based websites. In 2007, Time listed it among the magazine’s “All-TIME 100 TV Shows”. In 2008, the show was ranked 16th on Entertainment Weekly’s “New TV Classics” list. In 2011, IGN named Arrested Development the “funniest show of all time”
Catch up with the Bluth family frenzy on Monday-Wednesday at 10:30 pm as Comedy Central brings back the madness this year!
World’s Craziest Fools
This show features all sorts of silly accidents that people around the world have and in turn look like fools! From jumping off things they shouldn’t be on, parking in absurd places and indulging in a little too much magic water – this show will have you giggling forever. Presented by Mr. T – it showcases clips, sometimes viral of people from all over the world. The more believable it is, the funnier– you could have been in a similar situation too!
Tune in from Monday-Thursday at 11 pm to catch fellow humans in acts of silliness, on your favorite comedy channel – Comedy Central India!
Just For Laughs
Just for Laughs is a comedy festival held each July in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest international comedy festival in the world. Each day, street performers and other acts both vocal and visual perform throughout the city, particularly in the “Latin Quarter” — an area known for its theatres, cafés and boutique shopping. In the evenings, the nightclubs and live venue theatres offer special programs supporting the performers.
Thursday-Friday at 10 pm, tune in to Comedy Central India and experience the magic of this festival of laughs!
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.
