English Entertainment
AXN looking to cement brand loyalty with critically acclaimed ‘Alias’
MUMBAI: AXN’s action plan to maintain and increase channel share is simple. Build up viewer loyalty by exposing viewers to fresh and invigorating programming genres that they cannot get elsewhere. Towards this end, the channel will launch Alias next month exclusively in India.
On hand to explain the programming strategy at a media briefing was Gregory Ho, AXN Asia V-P marketing. Said Ho: “AXN’s brand values are adventurous, daring and irreverent though the last one is not in the dictionary sense of the term. We are not serious in tone like CNN. We also don’t aim to educate like Discovery or National Geographic. Our aim is to add panache and pizzazz without which peoples’ lives would be boring. AXN is a place where the viewer can escape the humdrum routine of everyday existence. Unlike broadcast veterans we are upstarts who feel the need to build a certain kind of lifestyle where one can chill out.”
On the advertising front, Ho noted that although last year was tough, this year the situation was improving with some clients returning to the channel. After all, Ho reasoned, one can only retreat to a certain extent when the business environment is unfavourable. If a company goes back too much then it risks losing out on market share.
As far as marketing initiatives were concerned, Ho said the channel would look towards the radio as a medium to get the “buzz” across. Though relatively new, the radio medium is fast catching on with upwardly mobile urbanites, he said. Then there is the AXN action movie festival that kicks off on 17 September in Chandigarh. It will travel to 10 cities across the country including Mumbai, sometime in October – November.
Ho stressed that it was the channel’s serialised shows and not movies that helped build brand loyalty, as films are essentially title driven. Citing TAM data for the five metros Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore for 1-29 June C&S homes Section A, B in the 15-44 age group, AXN got a market share of around 33 per cent when Guinness World Records aired, he said. The closest rival was HBO with a share between 15-22 per cent. Likewise Ripley’s Believe It or Not garnered a share of 28 per cent with closest rival HBO at 13 – 22 per cent. Records’ ratings no doubt were helped by the Record Holder contest held by the channel earlier in the year in Mumbai, he added.
The most impressive ratings were however, generated by C.S.I. The show airs every Monday at 9 pm and for the period 30 June to 3 August the all adult share was 38 per cent. With women the share rises to 42 per cent. No other channel for the same time band bagged a share of over 15 per cent. Assistant V-P Sony Rohit Bandhari said that a certain trend was noticeable over the past couple of years on AXN. If a show had an intelligent and intricate storyline then more women tuned in.
Alias should have women tuning in as the central character played by Jennifer Garner deftly dodging stereotypes of the bimbo or the quintessentially dumb blonde displays a vulnerable emotional side, which is easy to relate to. In January Garner won a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Sydney Bristow, a seemingly average woman who in reality lives a double life working for a spy agency with an anti-government agenda. Besides possessing a useful knowledge in martial arts she also speaks foreign languages like Japanese. ‘Alias’ was one of only three shows which had unrestricted access to the CIA and its resources. The show has received 11 Emmy nominations. In Asia the show is launching exclusively in India every Monday from 2 September at 8 pm in the Prime Zone band. It will replace C.S.I. The show will also repeat on Wednesday’s at 10 pm replacing Wolfgang Peterson’s The Agency, which will complete its first season on the channel this month. The show managed to attract a share of 26 per cent last month, says Ho.
In other Asian countries Alias will launch next year Ho said.
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.
