English Entertainment
HBO to premiere “Tsunami: The Aftermath” in Asia
NEW DELHI: HBO channel today announced the Asia premiere of its latest original mini-series, Tsunami: The Aftermath, a film based on the experiences some tourists had on the two islands of Phuket and Khao Lak in Thailand on the fateful day of 26 December 2004.
It is a film about how human beings faced personal tragedy and then fought back and rebuilt their lives.
The film is being released to mark the second anniversary of the catastrophe that had shattered the lives of millions and shaken the world. Suitably, the show will not carry a single commercial, announced HBO country head Shruti Bajpai.
Bajpai also said that HBO had had a very successful sixth year in India and that the theme for the year 2007 would be “bigger and better”, which she asserted, sans, of course, the revenue figures.
The mini-series, based on the book of the same name by Morgan Abi, is directed by Bharat Nalluri, originally from Andhra Pradesh, and will have a lot of big names in the cast, including several Academy Award nominees like Tim Roth, Sophie Okonedo, Hugh Bonneville, Gina McKee and others.
Though the subject had been extensively researched with interviews of survivors, government officials and rescue agencies, the film rotates around a fictional group of tourists. It also a central Thai character, a waiter at the hotel which is the scene of this film, whose own family entirely perishes but who works with the survivors helping them reach higher ground.
Bajpai was on the defensive regarding no Indians being there in the film, but said that the film transcends national boundaries and represented the true genre of HBO Originals, which are quality productions that provoke thought.
“One reason we are not running commercials is, we decided that thought this would be a big hit yet, you cannot have a commercial just after a scene of someone dying. There are things we do where we do not look for money. We have enough and more blockbusters and other programmes which get us the money,” she said.
The key characters include a young couple of African origin searching for their little girl; the Thai waiter who later fights against realtors trying to take over his devastated village; a young journalist (who often gets the wrong end of the stick from survivors); a British official whose faith in the system breaks down, and a Thai meteorologist who had earlier predicted the disaster but had been ignored.
Tsunami: The Aftermath, has been produced in association with BBC, Bajpai said.
She also explained that the film was in line with similar, life-based programmes like Band of Brothers on World War II and other quality productions. She said that though this cannot be termed a docudrama, the style is as true to life as possible.
Terming the channel’s run in India this year as “great”, she said that HBO’s motto for the next year would be “bigger and better.”
“Bigger,” she explained, “because there would be many more blockbusters. And better because there would be many more such quality productions than in the past.”
Among the blockbusters coming up on HBO in the first three months of 2007 are King Kong, Da Vinci Code, to be followed later by Batman, Pride and Prejudice, Constantine, a Julia Roberts festival, and Constant Gardner, a moving film on how drug companies exploit African people doing illegal human testing.
She defended the noticeable reduction of classics from the channel, saying that research showed that there wasn’t too much viewership for that. “Still, we show such films under various themes, like war movies, romances, etc., and that trend shall continue,” she assured.
There will be, as in every year past, special programmes on Holi, Diwali and other major Indian festivals.
Refusing to discuss revenue, she said that the growth is about 20 to 25 per cent year-on-year.
Regarding CAS and fixing of the price pr channel at Rs 5, she said: “We shall go by the orders of the government. The issue is that the whole system will create an environment of choice for the viewers. Our position is that when that when that choice is made, we should be part of that choice… people should say, ‘give us HBO, we shall pay for it’.”On the issue of which is the number one entertainment channel, Bajpai said that this never really works out, because on some occasions one channel is on top, the others are not, and then over the next few hours, the situation can reverse.
“We can assert that we are among the top English entertainment channels, but if I say that we are always higher rated than our rivals, that may not be true all the time. But yes, in the English entertainment category, it is among the top two. The others are way behind.”
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.
