English Entertainment
HBO proudly presents the second season of the award winning series ‘Huff’
NMumbai, August 16, 2006: HBO, the world’s leading movie channel, returns with the most critically acclaimed Emmy® Award winning and Golden Globe® Award nominated series Huff Season 2 premiering exclusively for the first time on Indian TV starting 24th August at 11:15 pm and thereafter every Thursday right after the Prime-Time Movie with two back-to-back brand new episodes.
The first season of `HUFF’, premiered on HBO last year, dexterously chronicled the comedy and the pathos of a psychiatrist, Dr. Craig ‘Huff’ Huffstodt, entangled in a web of dilemma and dysfunction in his personal life. This year, HBO celebrates the comeback of the series with Heff Season 2, starring Hank Azaria (3-time Emmy® Award Winner for Actor, as also an Emmy® Award 2005 Lead Actor nominee), Oliver Platt (of ‘Kinsey’ and ‘Ice Harvest’ fame) and Blythe Danner (of ‘Meet the Parents’ and ‘Meet the Fockers’ fame). While this season showcases the gripping storylines that are distinctly characteristic of the series, it also welcomes Emmy® Award winner Sharon Stone and Academy Award® winner Anjelica Huston as guest stars in multi-episode arcs.
Celebrating the premiere of HUFF Season 2, Shruti Bajpai, Country Manager, HBO South Asia, said, “We are proud to be associated with an award winning series like Huff. This special presentation of Huff Season 2 is part of our constant endeavor to bring the best of English programming to our patrons.”
Returning for the second season, HUFF continues examining the professional and personal life of a psychiatrist, Dr. Craig `Huff’ Huffstodt (Hank Azaria), who finds he’s drifting perilously close to the border between sanity and insanity. According to HUFF creator Bob Lowry, “HUFF is about the unpredictability of human nature. It is an episodic drama about people and their interactions with each other – not so much about what they do as much as how they react to what’s happening around them. We’re not a formulaic show that you typically see on television”
HUFF Sesaon 2, spanning 13 episodes, finds the Huffstodt family ties slowly coming undone. While Dr. Craig is still clad in the guilt of the suicide of a 15-year-old gay patient in his office, he is also deeply disturbed by the paranoid ramblings of his schizophrenic younger brother Teddy (Andy Comeau). Huff’s once close friend, Russell Tupper (Oliver Platt) continues to be an adorable alcoholic misogynist drug addict. And HUFF finds an attractive new client Dauri Rathbun (Sharon Stone), who is in desperate need of his legal advice.
HBO brings the best of Hollywood by premiering the top blockbuster movies on television first in South Asia through exclusive licensing deals with four major Hollywood studios – Paramount, Sony Pictures Entertainment (Columbia/ TriStar), Universal and Warner Bros.
Prime time viewing on HBO includes HBO Blockbuster Of The Month, a special television event that premieres a mega blockbuster movie every month, HBO Saturday Nights, which premieres a new box office hit each week throughout the year; HBO Sunday Super Hits, which showcases the blockbuster hits, star-studded hits, favourite genre hits, Asian hits, highly acclaimed hits and so much more. In addition, HBO features at least 3- 4 new movie showcases every month to offer viewers an interesting mix of Hollywood movies based on exciting themes.
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.
