English Entertainment
I-Day: Entertain yourself the English way
MUMBAI: English is entertaining on I-Day. It’s that time of the year when the patriot in you is in high spirits. Indians will celebrate its 70th Independence Day on 15 August. Twenty-one gun shots are fired after the Prime Minister hoists the Indian tricolour in honour of the solemn occasion.
After covering the Prime Minister’s address to the nation, flag-hoisting ceremonies, parades and cultural events, patriotic songs in Hindi and regional languages are played on news and radio channels. Hindi movie channels air patriotic or Indian classic films throughout the day.
If you are done with patriotic movies and songs on the Indian media, do not fret. As the Red Fort prepares to usher in another year of liberty for the world’s largest democracy, Indiantelevision.com has compiled the programming schedule of a few English entertainment channels.
Read on:
Colors Infinity
The channel will play back-to-back episodes of Orange Is The New Black starting from 6 am. The stories of cell-mates ride alongside Piper’s as they try to figure out their life in prison and attain freedom from their own inner inhibitions.
Comedy Central
Feel the freedom and get inspired by Mindy on Comedy Central. The channel will play continuous episodes of The Mindy Project for its viewers. Mindy is successful, independent and sassy. Everyone feels a sense of self-awareness and power each time she states, “I don’t need marriage. I don’t need anyone to take care of all my needs and desires. I can take care of them myself now.”
The show will begin at 1pm
FX and FX HD
To pay tribute to one of the stalwart sitcom series, the channel has a special day planned on the Independence Day. FX will air a day-long marathon of season 3 of that 70s show starring Topher Grace, Mila Kunis, Ashton Kutcher, Danny Masterson, Laura Prepon and Wilmer Valderrama from 10 am to 7pm.
Set in the mid-late 1970s, the show follows the daily lives of six teenagers. The head of the group is Eric Forman played by Topher Grace who lives under the authority of parents Red and Kitty. Living next door is his girlfriend Donna Pinciotti enacted by Laura Prepon and her parents Bob and Midge. The rest of the gang includes Fez played by Wilmer Valderrama, Jackie Burkhart enacted by Mila Kunis, her boyfriend Michael Kelso played by Ashton Kutcher and Dany Masterson playing the role of Steven Hyde.
The gang usually spends its time in Eric’s basement, thinking of their lives, parents, and futures, but they manage to get into funny adventures and mishaps along the way through their teenage lives. The season 3 begins with Hyde getting out of the jail, but Red is now on a strict warpath. Despite a few missteps, Eric and Donna’s relationship makes strides as they begin to imagine their futures together. Eric also makes progress at work — as does Donna — but Donna also discovers some painful truths about her dad. Jackie sets her sights on a resisting Hyde, while Kelso makes a concerted effort to win her back. Fez finally gets a girlfriend, Caroline, who turns out to be crazy. Eric and Kelso decide to take their relationships with Donna and Jackie to the next level, but with unforeseeable results.
Movies Now
The channel will showcase the best of Hollywood in a special Fight to Freedom property showcasing movies that inspire the feeling of freedom and the struggle one has to go through to claim it. The movie marathon will air from 1 pm to 9 pm.
The movies scheduled for the day include inspiring tales of freedom struggle, with titles like: Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, 300: Rise of an Empire, and Edge of Tomorrow.
Man of Steel, the movie narrates the story of an inconspicuous super-human, who is forced to fight his own race to save planet Earth. The movie Pacific Rim, is an intense war drama between humans and monsters and the responsibility has fallen upon a former pilot and a trainee, who are desperately trying to save the world from the apocalypse. The next movie on the binge is 300: Rise of an Empire. It’s a tale of courage, where an admiral of Athens leads the pack of just 300 brave men who stand up against the vast Persian army that is marching to conquer Greece.
‘Edge of Tomorrow’ is another exciting alien story and a fight of one soldier to win a war against aliens, despite set-backs of starting all over again, every time he dies.
MTV
The channel will kickstart their #IamFlawsome campaign through a very crucial episode that will be played out on Girls on Top. An upcoming sequence will see the character of Gia Sen standing up for a bar dancer who is looked down upon because of her profession. Seeing injustice taking place in front of her, Gia will stand up for the girl and remind them of the fact that, just because someone belongs to a certain background, it does not mean they are not talented.
Speaking about the same, Barkha Singh who plays the character of Gia Sen, shared, “We live in the progressive era but sadly people’s thoughts and mentality is still regressive. Everyone has flaws and having them is no shame! What really matters is how you channelize these flaws and use them to help you be a better person. MTV’s #IamFlawsome campaign is a very bold and commendable step towards encouraging people to celebrate who they are and the fact there is no fun in changing one for the sake of the society.”
Star World and Star World HD
Star World and Star World HD will give viewers a reason to laugh out loud this Independence Day. The channel will play back-to-back episodes of season 12 of Two and a Half Men from 10 am onwards. The show features Ashton Kutcher as a billionaire internet entrepreneur, Walden Schmidt and Jon Cryer as the helpless Alan Harper in lead roles.
The American television sitcom follows the tumultuous lives of Walden and Alan as they navigate situations involving dating, sex, divorce, career choices, love and friendship among others. From chasing love interests to getting married to each other as a sign of true friendship and companionship to adopting a child, Alan and Walden do it all and more, often with hilarious consequences!
Vh1
Vh1 will celebrate noteworthy music with Vh1 Trending in India, a list of songs that has moved millions in the country. Find out what’s trending in India and revel in 69 years of the country’s glorious sovereignty from 12 pm and 6 pm.
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.
