English Entertainment
Hallmark going the subscription route to grow
MUMBAI: This is surely a first of a kind move on Indian television. English general entertainment channel Hallmark has decided to do away with advertisements completely and rely only on subscription.
Speaking to Indiantelevision.com this afternoon Hallmark India GM Amitabh said that the decision had been taken earlier this year not just for India but also for the Asia Pacific region. “This is one way we can differentiate ourselves. Viewers will hopefully stay longer with us as they see films and shows without a break. At the same time other channels are in a rush to attract advertisers. We are targetting a 15 per cent growth in revenue this year. One has to keep in mind the fact that the Cas mess set us back quite a bit on the subscription front.”
It must be noted that Hallmark never had many ads to begin with. In the not too distant past during each break this writer does not remember seeing more than three ads at a time. So while it is certainly a unique move one doubts as to whether not taking ads will make much difference in India at least.
Amitabh further added that Hallmark would stay on the Modi platform. While a few channels in the past had jumped ship he denied that it had affected distribution efforts. The price of the channel will stay the same.
As far as content is concerned Amitabh said that the channel would be building up its comedy repertoire with Bewitched. The show will air every Tuesday at 4 pm from 15 June.
The show deals with a young married woman who is in a tug of war situation. On the one hand her witchy mother keeps haressing her to return to her witcherly ways. The mother is a witch of the old school who doesn’t go for any universality between mortals and her world. On the other hand the woman loves her family.
Should Samantha give up witchcraft completely for a whole year–no tricks at all — she could become a mortal herself. It may be recalled that Sony’s local version of the show Meri Biwi Wonderful sank without a trace. One can only hope that viewers will be more involved with the original.
Hallmark is certainly trying to get in more variety into its programme line up and not merely rely on the sentimental stuff. In July it will start airing the gritty crime series The District. Despite having over 30 law enforcement agencies, Washington DC still has the highest crime rate in the US. With politics and indifference being a large factor in this, the city hires Newark PD Chief Jack Mannion played by Craig T. Nelson.
The movie-quoting, lounge-singing former NYPD transit cop claims he can and has successfully in the past cut a city’s crime rate in half with his get-with-it-or-report-to-meter-maid-duty attitude. Nelson’s character takes over as commissioner of the DC Police.
One thing that Hallmark will not be doing is going the dubbing route like AXN and HBO. As Amitabh pointed out dubbing makes more sense for action oriented fare. There the sound and visual effects take precedence over dialogue and character.
Watch this space for more news on the channel.
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.
