English Entertainment
Discovery to co-produce documentary on Steve Fossett
NEW DELHI: Discovery Communications has announced a partnership with Northern Ireland independent Brian Waddell Productions Ltd. (BWPL) to co-produce a documentary on Steve Fossett’s upcoming attempt to complete the first solo non-stop flight around the world in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer.
BWPL has acquired exclusive behind-the-scenes access on behalf of Discovery to film this historic event for broadcast later this year on the Discovery Channel.
Piloted by renowned aviator Steve Fossett, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft will depart from Salina, Kansas as early as February 8 to travel a distance of 25,000 miles at 45,000 feet in excess of 250 knots (285 mph) during the estimated 67-hour flight around the planet.
To capture every detail, a documentary crew will shadow the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer throughout its journey in a seven-seater chase plane. A camera will also be positioned on the tailfin of the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, and a second camera in the cockpit will allow Fossett to create his own video diary of the flight, providing Discovery viewers with the exclusive inside track on the highs and lows of this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
New technology from NASA will also beam pictures of Fossett back to mission control. A second crew will be installed at mission control in Salina, where they will track Virgin Atlantic chairman Sir Richard Branson as he communicates with Fossett during the flight.
“This is a great story of bravado and imagination for Discovery viewers worldwide,” an official statement from Discovery, quoting Discovery Networks International senior vice president, creative development and brand management Rebecca Batties stated.
According to her, “Documenting events like this tenacious attempt to set the last great aviation record is the lifeblood of Discovery’s long-standing tradition. It’s about people exploring their world and realizing their dreams.”
“We’re privileged to be working alongside the top designers and technicians in the business, as well as Steve Fossett and Sir Richard Branson, both pioneers in different ways. We believe the result will be a thrilling landmark show for Discovery,” BWPL director David Cumming was quoted as saying the statement.
After taking off from Kansas, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer will follow the jet stream across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom. From there the aircraft will head south to the Mediterranean, through the Persian Gulf to Pakistan, India and Japan, and then across the Pacific on the last leg of the journey back to home base in Salina.
The provisional flight path for the chase plane containing the documentary crew will be Kansas, Boston, London, Athens, Dubai, Delhi, Shanghai, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Kansas. En route, both planes will fly over some of the world’s highest mountain ranges and longest ocean coastlines. From this exceptional vantage point, Discovery viewers will share in the thrills and beauty of some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet in the company of Fossett, Branson and the entire Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer team.
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.
