English Entertainment
Comedy Central revamps; positions as ‘Your Happy Place’
MUMBAI: Taking a cue from the age of cut-throat competition, which demands constant innovation, Comedy Central India has revamped itself with a new look and tagline. What’s more, the channel has also lined up a slew of new shows.
Moving away from the tagline of ‘Laugh it off,’ the channel has now adopted ‘Your Happy Place’ as its new ethos.
Three and a half year since its launch, Viacom 18’s Comedy Central is now poised for a new beginning with ‘Your Happy Place,’ which will reflect on the channel from 10 September, 2015.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com, Viacom 18 executive vice president – English entertainment Ferzad Palia said, “We had launched with ‘Laugh it off’ three and half years back and now after serving the country with comedy and laughter, we think it’s time for us to call it ‘Your Happy Place.’ The fact is established now that Comedy Central is a place that will make you happy and hence the new tagline.”
Comedy Central aims to bring a fresh take on its brand elements and content with this change. The new look showcases this positioning by using a rich and vibrant color palette, slick animation and an overall design package that is very easy on the eyes. Using the circle to signify locations and happy zones, these elements also help to highlight each show. The use of innovative stickers helps qualify these shows as well. The entire creative aspect was taken care of by the in-house team.
Understanding the pulse of its viewers, Comedy Central India has repositioned itself aiming to increase the engagement with viewers through a new line-up of diverse shows in September including the likes of Younger, Betty White’s Off Their Rockers, Your Family or Mine and The Mindy Project Season 3.
“This is just the beginning. We will have more new shows coming in and it will be a new Comedy Central with ‘Your Happy Place,’” informed Palia.
While content acquisition costs have been increasing at a brisk pace, the question is whether the English entertainment genre in India has a strong enough revenue model. To this, Palia said, “The English entertainment space has spread enormously over the last few years. So the demand has increased and subsequently the cost has gone up. When it comes to Viacom 18, we have our business model and we are doing good. Comedy Central has performed beyond expectations both from consumer point of view as well as business point of view.”
Apart from high cost of content, piracy is another menace that the English entertainment genre has been grappling with. However, now with the US simulcast and instant premieres, that aspect is partly taken care of. That aside, will the emerging OTT platforms and Netflix’s impending arrival, pose a threat to the channels having English shows? Palia replied, “I don’t think there will be an either – or situation in India. Both platforms will compliment each other. By paying Rs 250 per month, one gets a huge number of channels. It will be difficult for an OTT model to come in and cause disruption. I think the emergence of OTT will be good for consumers but it will co-exist with television.”
Palia is of the opinion that English entertainment viewers are not only limited to Phase I and II areas of digitisation, but phase III and IV areas will also play vital role in ensuring growth of the English entertainment genre. “If we see the social media insights, a huge number of impressions are registered from the phase III and IV areas. Those areas are important and English content consumers are very much there. So I think time ahead will be hugely positive.”
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.
