English Entertainment
AXN goes Bollywood in attempt to boost viewer connect
MUMBAI: If there is one medium that travels really well across the country other than cricket, it is Bollywood. The action oriented AXN which over the past few years has done on ground events to connect closer with viewers will do a Bollywood themed event over the summer season.
The channel is organising the AXN Action Awards in June. This is a show that seeks to reward action stars and films in Bollywood. Speaking to Indiantelevision.com on this initiative AXN South Asia director Rohit Bhandari says, “We have five competitive categories and one open category for the awards. The five categories are Best Actor, Best Actor in a Negative Role, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Stunt Sequence with Life Time Achievement being the open category.
“We will be short listing nominees for each of the competitive categories and viewers will have to vote in for their favourites. The voting can be done through sms, online and though a paper ballot. The voting process is on from 1 to 31 May 2006. Later a show will be held, which will be hosted by Dino Morea,” he added.
Bhandari points out that action has always been integral part of Hindi cinema which is popularly referred to as Bollywood. “Almost every movie has some scene that depicts action in some form and over the last two decades, there have been movies which have been categorised as purely as action movies. Also, in most of the awards given out to movies, action is always a sub category or is part of the technical category.”
“Given AXN’s association with action and adventure, we have created India’s first award that will honour the action genre of Bollywood, through the AXN Action Awards. Thums Up is the presenting sponsor given the great brand fit that it has with action as a genre for the first ever AXN Action Awards. Scorpio is the associate sponsor,” he said.
When asked about marketing activities that will be done to create awareness, Bhandari says that given the synergies that both AXN and Thums Up have with action and adventure, the two parties will be taking the concept to the ground in the form of road shows in nine markets across India. The aim is to give consumers a first hand experience of both the brands AXN and Thums Up. People will also have an opportunity to cast their votes for the above categories, through a paper ballot.
When asked whether this effort would be start of an association between Bollywood and AXN Bhandari says that given the fact that most of the viewers in India connect with Bollywood, the channel made it a Bollywood based award concept. “Since this is the first year, we will be taking our learnings from the same and working towards improving the concept and who knows, next year, we may also include a section for Hollywood movies. We think the concept is robust enough to embrace both the film industries and hence, scaling the awards accordingly.”
On ideas for other local shows Bhandari says, “There are quite a few ideas on the table, but they are still in the concept stage. We have aggressive plans over the next few months with both acquired and local content.
“The Man’s World show was our first show in the Mens Lifestyle space and we are very happy with the results that we had for season one, which ended on 19 April. We will be resting the show for a while, as we would like to refresh the concept and come back later in the year with some improvements to the original concept.”
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.
