English Entertainment
&Privé HD to showcase top notch film titles at prime time
MUMBAI: Ooh la la! Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd’s premium English movie channel &Privé HD has even bigger plans to tickle the fancy of its exclusive audience. The channel has announced that its prime time programming slot from 9 pm to 12 pm every day will feature some very recent gee-whiz award nominated or winning titles. Among the titles which will be on offer includes: the critically acclaimed Steven Spielberg directed, Meryl Streep Tom Hank starrer The Post, the Aaron Sorkin directed Molly’s Game, the Luca Gauadagnino directed, James Ivory written Call Me By Your Name. Most of the films in this slot will be those which were released theatrically in the US in the last two months of the calendar year 2017. The overall catalogue of &Privé HD today consists of 450 library and 48 premieres. At launch, it was at 350 titles with 40 premieres.
The new content been curated from different studios and distributors such as Paramount, Reliance, Tanvir and PVR. “We picked up the content from small, small producers from Europe who own three to six movies. That meant dealing with close to 30 independent studios globally,” says Zeel business cluster head – premium & FTA GEC channels Aparna Bhosle. Some of these will be available on Zeel’s soon to be launched OTT play – Zee5.
It has plans to push the top daily pick movie through newspapers like the Times of India and Hindustan Times. “On the digital front, we will be using Google and YouTube banners or video promos,” reveals Bhosle.
&Privé HD, which competes with Star Movies Select HD, MN+ and Sony le Plex for the estimated Rs 600 core English movie advertising pie, has been doing well since its launch in September 2017 with its non-conformist 22-50 age group viewers. It was number one in its fifth week with the film Lion and also in the month of December in six metros according to BARC ratings claims Bhosle. The channel has gained a lot of traction in Mumbai and Delhi.
“The way we design and package the channel – it is the constant effort and is the endeavour that the ad rates should increase,” Bhosle points out. “The ad rates are absolutely comparable to channels that are considered leaders in the space.”
Bhosle is hoping to expand the channel’s distribution with deals being signed with distribution platform operators that have not been showcasing &Privé HD as yet. “Talks are still in progress with Videocon D2H, as they had some bandwidth issue at the time of launch. We are planning to have a deal with Hathway in some time” she adds.
The channel – by virtue of its positioning – is aimed at high net worth homes and individuals who can afford a high definition viewing package. Their tribe has swelled to around 14 million in India today. And Bhosle believes that it is this audience which will ensure that the English movie genre will continue to do well. “The OTT platforms will never affect the business of English movies channels. Yes, they could offer some competition – but finally content is king,” she says.
Adds an analyst: “A part of the audience that consumes &Privé HD content has access to massive internet bandwidth as well as smart TVs in their homes. They could not care how they consume – through OTT or through linear TV. If &Privé HD can lure them to watch the linear TV service of the channel, then it could be on a good wicket. Additionally, all these movies are freely available on pirate streaming and torrent sites. How it manages to curtail the pirates will also help build its audience.”
That’s a challenge the entire media and entertainment sector faces.
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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.
