English Entertainment
Hallmark aims to expand reach, outlines marketing strategy
Consolidate distribution, increase reach and brand visibility through aggressive marketing. That is the target that general entertainment English channel Hallmark has set for itself in India this calendar year.
We will increase brand awareness in the key cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Calcutta through mass media campaigns, says Laxmi Hariharan, marketing director, Hallmark Asia. A media mix of outdoors, cinema, websites, radio, and print are the off-television promotional activities that are involved.
The channel’s initiatives are already having an impact and this can be seen in the fact that the cumulative reach of the channel has increased by 60 per cent since January, says Hariharan.
Hariharan says the channel is adopting a two-tier strategy by promoting the mother brand and creating event-specific programmes. Towards this end, Hallmark has earmarked $1.2 million this year for advertising and promotions.
The channel’s initiatives are already having an impact and this can be seen in the fact that the cumulative reach of the channel has increased by 60 per cent since January, says Hariharan.
Hariharan says the channel is adopting a two-tier strategy by promoting the mother brand and creating event-specific programmes. Towards this end, Hallmark has earmarked $1.2 million this year for advertising and promotions.
On the programming front, the channel has a three point plan that it is confident will deliver the desired results – original series, television movies and Hollywood blockbuster titles.
Distribution is another area where Hallmark hopes to increase its numbers. From the current 9 million across 18 cities, the channel expects to hit 12 million by the end of the year, Hallmark India general manager Amitabh says. Queried as to the kind of subscription revenues the channel had, Amitabh said last year it was $500,000 and he expected it to reach $ 600,000 this year.
Leading the way for Hallmark on the ad sales front is Mediascope Associates. According to Rohinton Maloo, managing director, Mediascope, revenues close to $1 million is what he is targeting. This is a five-fold jump from last year where the channel raked in just $ 200,000. Queried as to how he could so confidently state this would happen when the fight for a share of the ad pie was becoming increasingly stressful, Maloo says ad revenues of $ 200,000 had been achieved with practically no worthwhile effort. A focussed strategy would bring in increased much more ad revenue, is Maloo’s contention.
And there are new product categories opening up every year – insurance, premium cars, technology and many more. There is enough to sustain niche channels such as Hallmark, says Maloo.
The channel intends to package not just on-air opportunities but the significant on-ground strength of over 430 Hallmark Card stores in India, says Maloo. These stores, says Maloo, can be used for demo and on-ground promotions.
One unique feature that Hallmark can offer to advertisers thanks to its ownership of 80 per cent of the content that appears on the channel is “virtual product placement”, says Maloo. This means that after a particular movie or series has already been shot, the advertiser is offered an option where he can digitally insert his product during relevant scenes. He cited examples of Samsung in Latin America, Visa card in the US and Coke in the Asia Pacific.
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.
