English Entertainment
AXN eyeing July premiere for Steven Spielberg’s Extant
MUMBAI: Launched in 1998 as the first 24×7 cable and satellite television channel in Asia dedicated to action and adventure programming, AXN continues to stand by its promise of delivering intelligent, edgy and high-energy content for an unparalleled entertainment experience
With programming encompassing the latest in action blockbusters, international hit series, reality and lifestyle sports programs and AXN originals, the channel enjoys a high viewership not just in metros but also tier II and tier III cities across the country.
AXN business head Sunil Punjabi spoke to Aashay Dalvi of indiantelevision.com about the channel’s programming line-up this year, its digital strategy and so on. Excerpts…
Q: How has the audience response been ever since the CBS acquisition deal?
At a macro level, the audience response has been very good. Take for instance, the two shows with which we launched the CBS catalogue i.e. Elementary and Beauty & the Beast. We have seen a fairly growing traction for Elementary while Beauty & the Beast has its own loyal audience. The first season of both the shows premiered sometime ago, with Indian audiences being exposed to Elementary for the first time. Initially, there were comparisons between BBC’s Sherlock and Elementary and people were vehemently opposed to having a female Dr Watson; something we expected.
The difference between the two is that Elementary has more investigation while Sherlock has more drama. This has led to a lot of people slowly getting accustomed to Elementary. So after the initial backlash, we have now seen tremendous growth in audiences, which has been very encouraging for us. We have season 2 airing right now and season 3 will air in September, very close to the US telecast.
The other good news is Hawaii Five-O will have a special episode featuring Mallika Sherawat, and you will soon see it in India. Blue Bloods, the fourth series that we’d taken up is also expected to do well since it is a very strong series. In the US, the show has done phenomenally well. We have also acquired Sex & the City, which we plan to air soon at 11pm. We’re giving it some rest now but once it begins, episodes will air back to back.
Q: Currently, you are airing Beauty & the Beast and Elementary five days a week. Will you be moving to airing them weekly to be closer to the US telecast?
We had two options, the first of which was to run the series close to the US telecast, but for viewers who are not familiar with the older season, that tactic wouldn’t have worked. So, we decided to go with option 2 entailing stripping the first two seasons and allowing viewers to binge-watch them one after the other. This would build enough anticipation by September when season three premieres.
Q: There has been no official statement from either CBS or The CW on subsequent seasons of Elementary and Beauty & the Beast. Can your earlier statement regarding the airing of season three of both series be considered official?
As far as we know, both Elementary and Beauty & the Beast have been renewed for sure. However, from the public’s perspective, you will have to wait and hear from CBS and The CW since I cannot speak for them.
Q: Programming-wise, what are your plans for the new fiscal year?
The acquired properties we would like to talk about are some of the big ones like 24: Live Another Day. On Thursday, Variety Magazine reported that the second most expensive ad in the US is benchmarked on 24, with half a million dollars for just a 30-second slot. The entire prospect of 24 has blown out of proportion and this season is set in the UK. Content wise, it is shaping up really well. We believe that it is going to be one very large tent-pole property for us.
After 24, the second large tent-pole property for us is Top Gear, with the new season returning in the month of July, which is where we have seen some tremendous amount of traction. We just had season 21 premiere in January and presently, only the core Top Gear audience is watching it though we want to get a much larger audience. Anybody who currently owns a car should be watching Top Gear, which is a fairly large population of the country by itself.
Also in July, we are trying to get another big property, Extant, produced by Steven Spielberg, which marks the TV debut of Halle Berry. We have the second season of The Hero and we plan to air all episodes of 24: Live Another Day at a stretch. While getting so much new content, the old content tends to get lost. So, while I want new content, the problem lies in scheduling and timing.
Q: AXN programming was earlier known for its male skew but over the past few years, it has been increasingly targeting the female audience. Was that deliberate?
There are two main changes that we’ve seen; one, there has been a systematic change in female consumption, and two, the female audience too wants the thrill factor while watching TV. Shows like Orphan Black, with a female protagonist, have helped us get more female viewership.
But whether we have become a female-skewed channel, we will never be that; we will remain a predominantly male-skewed channel. But, we have seen a lot women come and consume our content. The male vs. female audience ratio earlier was 70:30, but is now 60:40.
Q: Which programmes get more advertisers? Are there any emerging large spenders?
Fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and telecom services form a significant share of the advertising spends. One very large advertiser that we’ve constantly been adding is automobiles, having already increased its share because of Top Gear. We believe it will be much bigger, going forward and it won’t be just auto but also auto accessories.
Q: What’s in it for these advertisers?
As an advertiser, the two main things you look for are a premium audience and a large brand fix, and we offer both.
Q: How do you plan to engage digital media to increase viewership of your channel?
We’ve now reached a stable point in the digital media initiative that we started a year and a half back. We had a couple of things to consider; the first being a consumer survey of social media and the second, connect, which has almost become equivalent to word-of-mouth. There is pre-launch and post-launch chatter that takes place. That is where we have been pushing ourselves on the digital front; what are people saying before the show is launched, and what are they saying after seeing the show. Engagement at the pre- and post- level helps us get loyalty for the channel.
Q: Which platforms is AXN making its presence felt in terms of social media? Do you plan to add more social platforms?
Facebook and Twitter have been our primary digital platforms. We have received more traction on Twitter than on Facebook. We have got a good response to a lot of good shows on Twitter in the last four to five months. We have trended many a times on Twitter; not just on the days of our premieres but even regular days.
As for the second part of your question, we don’t want to be jumping too many trains. We started with Facebook and Twitter a year and a half ago and we want that to mature before getting onto a new train. The amount of people engaging with us on these platforms is growing almost daily. We want to grow our hold on Facebook and Twitter for the next six to eight months, and we hope other things will follow.
Q: Do you have specific digital marketing strategies to bring out that extra special something?
We have MSE, which handles social media for us. Gone are the days where you used to pay for posts. Now, people are getting more agnostic towards such posts. So, last year, we had a Supernatural Thrillathon and a six city on-ground activation along with it. We did that again at the time of Sherlock to know what people thought of the content. We have seen the community of Supernatural grow nearly 50 per cent in the last year. We are not driving it; we have been only the facilitator in the process. So, the viewers are driving it themselves…
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.
