English Entertainment
‘Friends’ bids a graceful farewell
MUMBAI: As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Even Friends. One of the shows that gave a major boost to the sitcom genre, Friends has closed the books after charming the world for ten years.
Yesterday, the final episode aired on NBC.
The happy news for fans was that Ross and Rachel played by David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston got back together. In the final scene the six friends gave up their key to Monica and Chandler’s apartment.
NBC estimates that around 45 million people saw the final episode. However, those who missed out need not fret. The DVD of the season will be out in a few days with plenty of juicy extras.
One of NBC’s publicity stunts was in New York. The finale was beamed on a big screen in Times Square. It got an audience of around 3,000.
Still, the 45-million projected figure is nowhere near the record set by M-A-S-H in 1983. Its 2 1/2-hour send-off that was seen by nearly 106 million viewers still stands as the most watched US telecast ever. The last Cheers episode was seen by 80.4 million people in 1993 and Seinfeld had 76.2 million for its 1998 conclusion.
The final episode had been filmed in January under a heavy veil of secrecy. The broadcaster did an excellent job in making sure that the story was kept under wraps. It charged advertisers $ 2 million per 30 second spot for the finale.
At the end of the show Monica and Chandler have a pleasant surprise when she delivers twins. Phoebe, played by Lisa Kudrow, was already married, and Joey headed west to get serious about his acting career. In fact Matt LeBlanc who plays the character will have his own show. Joey has the unenviable and perhaps impossible task of trying to sustain the enthusiasm and global following that Friends was able to build.
The question now is what happens to the sitcom genre. Sex And The City wrapped up on HBO recently. Frasier comes to a close next week. Ray Romano is also hesistant about returning to CBS’ Everybody Loves Raymond after the current season.
Compounding the problem is a Newsweek report which bluntly puts forth the suggestion that the sitcom is dying. New shows like Its All Relative and Two and a Half Men could be considered as mere variations on Everybody Loves Raymond. There does not seem to be any effort to go past the stereotypes of the American family. Executives are apparently fixated on the notion of merely having the audience laugh every three seconds.
What the networks seem to be missing sight of is the fact that in 1994 the concept of a show like Friends was unique. There wasn’t a show at that time on the airwaves which focussed on 20 -year-olds living single in Manhattan In fact at that time it had been felt be network executives that another character would be needed like an older character or a cop on the beat or the guy who owns the coffee shop who gives the friends advice.
If the Newsweek prediction does come true, it will be real pity. For now though, one can only live on the hope that somewhere out there the next great sitcom is waiting to be born.
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.
