English Entertainment
JEREMY WADE RETURNS IN ANIMAL PLANET’S ALL-NEW SERIES ‘JEREMY WADE’S DARK WATERS’; PREMIERES ON ANIMAL PLANET AND DISCOVERY PLUS ON JULY 06
Biologist Jeremy Wade has spent the last 35 years solving mysteries that lurk in our planet’s rivers, lakes and seas. In 2017, he hung up his rod after nine seasons on Animal Planet’s one of the top-rated series, River Monsters, where he reeled in some of the rarest, most elusive and most dangerous creatures lurking beneath the water’s surface. But the waters of the world run deep; they’re dark and forever changing and many mysteries remain. Jeremy returns to Animal Planet in a captivating new series that brings him back to the water’s edge to investigate reports of the unimaginable and unexplained in JEREMY WADE’S DARK WATERS premiering July 6 at 9 PM on Animal Planet, Animal Planet HD and Discovery Plus app.
In JEREMY WADE’S DARK WATERS, Wade spotlights the bizarre, the weird and the mysterious as he investigates baffling, unsolved mysteries. He takes Animal Planet’s audiences on journeys beneath the water in remote areas, to islands lost in time and out into the open ocean to investigate reports that include, among others, entire fish species suddenly disappearing; unexplained sightings of mythical beasts; once thriving rivers now empty; and genetic oddities that may have produced the biggest monsters yet.
“These are detective stories with a difference – fishy tales from remote waters, and from right under our noses,” said Wade. “If anybody thought that by now, I’d seen it all, you’re in for a surprise – as I was.”
“Jeremy is adventurous, passionate and one of our best storytellers. We look forward to sharing new stories and mysteries with our audiences across all screens around the globe,” said Global President of Animal Planet Susanna Dinnage.
JEREMY WADE’S DARK WATERS episodes this season will include:
· Italy’s Lake Monster – According to legend, one of Europe’s most beautiful lakes guards an ancient secret. First reported in the 16th century, the Lake Garda Monster has been described as a huge humped beast – half snake, half dinosaur. Jeremy travels to Northern Italy to investigate but is faced with more than one possible culprit. It turns out these lakes and rivers, despite being in one of Italy’s most populous regions, could be hiding more than one enormous beast worthy of the monster title.
· Alaska’s Lost River Kings – Jeremy Wade travels to Alaska to investigate reports of the mysterious disappearance of the majestic King Salmon. His search for answers takes him from the state’s most heavily fished rivers to the mighty Yukon River where the King Salmon is the lifeblood of the native communities and out into the ocean, following a trail of evidence that leads him to encounters with some of Alaska’s most formidable predators. Who or what is killing the kings?
· Return of the Outback Beast – A report of an underwater attack in Australia has caught Jeremy Wade’s attention. The story of a diver tangling with a colossal fish is intriguing, but according to most people, there shouldn’t be any fish of significant size in the area. Chasing a lead, Jeremy travels to eastern Australia to investigate, and discovers that the fish responsible for the attack could be a species back from the brink of extinction.
JEREMY WADE’S DARK WATERS is produced for Animal Planet by Icon Films where Laura Marshall and Andie Clare serve as executive producers with Nicholas Head as showrunner. For Animal Planet, Lisa Lucas is executive producer with Patrick Keegan as supervising producer.
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.
