English Entertainment
HBO gets into Oscar mood with specials, contest
MUMBAI: They may not have the rights to the live telecast of the most important event in cinema The 75th Annual Academy Awards but that is not stopping HBO from gaining leverage by innovating around the event.
The channel has announced what it claims is the most extensive television tribute to the Academy Awards by presenting an Oscar feast of Oscar winners spanning over five decades of cinematic excellence. Viewers can catch blockbusters like Lawrence Of Arabia, Ben-Hur, The Exorcist, Gladiator every Saturday after the 9:30 pm movie and after the 9 pm movie on Sunday.
An official release informs that ever since its launch, HBO has been credited with the tradition of making March an Oscar month showcasing the best of the Oscars through the month. This year the theme is ‘quality vs. quantity’. The eight films being showcased have earned a combined total of 39 Oscar awards including four for Best Picture and another four for Best Director. ‘So why settle for the nominated “could have beens” when you can get the real deal on the one & only true Hollywood channel HBO’ is the pitch that has been made.
In order to create viewer interactivity the channel has gone a step further through its HBO Oscar Pick the Winners contest. The contest is about nominating a winner each from the four main categories: picture, director, actor and actress. Winners will get bumper prizes for getting all correct answers. Also even the ones who get at least one right answer will not be disappointed.
The contest is hosted on hboasia.com and is actively promoted on the channel as well. Film buffs can also catch HBOs 75th Academy Awards highlights, which showcase the respective nominees in each category. The promos will also include movie clips and interviews of various stars and footage on the potential Academy Award winners. Right now the musical Chicago is the film to beat with 13 nominations. Martin Scorcese could at long last wear the best director cap for Gangs of New York. . Star Movies will air the event live once again on 24 March and it will be interesting to note if the ratings fall drastically from last year due to the absence of Devdas.
The telecast schedule on HBO is as follows:
Date Film Time Number Of Oscars
1 March Batman 11:30 pm 1
2 march Ben Hur 11 pm 11
8 March Lawrence of Arabia 11:45 pm 7
9 March The Nutty Professor 11:15 pm 1
15 March The Bridge on the River Kwai 12:30 pm 7
16 March The Exorcist 11:15 pm 2
22 March Saving Private Ryan 11:30 pm 5
23 March Gladiator 11 pm 5
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.
