English Entertainment
Enjoy the festival of colors with English entertainment channels
MUMBAI: When they say life is colourful, it can also mean that life is full of different shades of emotions. In a country like India, Holi is celebrated not just as a festival of colours, but it also symbolises unity and friendship.
With such a lively festival round the corner, can the English entertainment channels stop from immersing themselves into the vibrant colours of this gala event? To add to the dash of happiness and to brighten the day, English entertainment channels have lined up power packed shows for their viewers.
After perusing the available options on channels like FX India, Star World Premiere HD, Sony Pix, Romedy Now and Comedy Central, we recommend a few under-the-radar titles for your Holi viewing pleasure.
Read on:
Romedy Now
Romedy Now has planned a special property called Colors of Romedy starting from 0955 am. The channel will air the animated film Happy Feet Two. An Australian-American 3D computer animated family musical film that has been directed, produced and co-written by George Miller. The channel will also air the Alex D Linz and Olek Krupa starrer Home Alone 3, written and produced by John Hughes at 1155 am. Adding more fun to the line-up, Romedy Now will telecast Monster-in-Law starring Jane Fonda and Jennifer Lopez at 145pm
Also, witness the inspiring journey of Chef, a 2014 American comedy-drama film written, produced, directed by and starring Jon Favreau will air at 345 pm.
Comedy Central
The channel will play Outsourced and Citizen Khan all day long starting from 10 am. Outsourced depicts the story of an American novelty products salesman Todd Anderson after his entire department is outsourced. He heads to India to train his replacement. Todd is not happy but when his boss Dave informs him that quitting would mean losing his stock options, he goes to train his Indian replacement Puro.
Citizen Khan is a family based British sitcom created by Adil Ray. It is set in Sparkhill, East Birmingham, described by its lead character, a Pakistani Muslim Mr Khan, as the capital of British Pakistan. Citizen Khan follows the trials and tribulations of Mr Khan, a loud-mouthed, patriarchal, self-appointed, cricket-loving community leader, and his long suffering wife and daughters Shazia and Alia.
Sony Pix
Sony Pix is all geared up to celebrate the festival with a special programming line-up of entertaining and engaging movies starting from 9 am. The channel will air animated movies like Stuart Little, Wreck It Ralph, The Adventures of Tintin, Ratatouille and Brave.
The viewers can watch how the family Little adopts a charming young mouse named Stuart in Stuart Little, followed by the trail Wreck-It Ralph, a story of a video game villain trying to become a hero at 1047 am. This will be followed at 1249 pm by the Oscar nominated movie Steven Spielberg directed The Adventures of Tintin. The tale of Remy the rat will be presented in Ratatouille at 259 pm, followed by Brave, a multiple award winning entertainer at 507 pm. The adventure will conclude with the academy award nominated story of a super-dog, Bolt at 710 pm.
Star World Premiere HD
Star World Premiere HD is all set to run an all-day marathon of season 1 of the craziest, musical show, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend that has all the ingredients that Holi is known to possess – love, friendship, music, dance and most of all colours. The show will air starting 12 pm to 5 pm and then between 10 and 11 pm.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend revolves around Rebecca Bunch, a single woman who still longs for her long-time soul mate Josh, who dumped her after their summer fling during summer camp in 2005. In 2015, after being inspired by a TV commercial for a butter spread, she restarts her pursuit of Josh after she spots him in New York City.
FX and FX HD
Laugh out loud this Holi as popular comedian Louis C.K. makes his way to FX in a special marathon of season 5 of his show Louie between 12 and 330 pm. The series is loosely based on Louis C.K.’s life, showing him as a comic onstage and depicting his life offstage as a newly divorced father of two girls.
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.
