English Entertainment
‘Kyunki… ’ changed people’s viewing habits substantially: Kevin Vaz
MUMBAI: There was a time when not many English General Entertainment Channels (GECs) existed. Star World, launched in 1996, belongs to that phase. Today, the channel has grown to include others of its ilk even as it betters itself with each passing day. Aashay Dalvi of indiantelevision.com spoke to business head of Star English channels Kevin Vaz to get a lowdown on the programming – past, present and future – of Star World and its more recent sister channels, Star World Premiere and FX.
One of the first channels to air the best shows of that time like Ghost Whisperer, Smallville and The O.C., Star World discontinued these after the first few seasons. “They failed to gather as much viewership and ratings as were expected. And taking into consideration TAM ratings and heavy consumer research, we made our decision to axe the Indian broadcast of these shows and air new content that was constantly being produced,” reasons Vaz.
Why only these, save for Masterchef Australia, Star World also scrapped reality shows like Beauty and the Geek, Are You Smarter Then A Fifth Grader?, I’m A Celebrity, Get Me out of Here and American Idol. According to Vaz, “Indian audiences simply could not connect to the foreign content. Indians would much rather watch Indian adaptations avec plaisir. And, the evidence is right in front of you with Bigg Boss (based on Big Brother) and Kaun Banega Crorepati (based on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), both tremendously successful Indian adaptations of essentially British series.”
Even a daily soap as popular as The Bold and the Beautiful (B&B) was axed and so was General Hospital, the sole reason being declining viewership.
Thereafter, Star World tried substituting soaps with telenovellas such as Desire: Table for Three and Fashion House, which aired every weeknight at 11 with a Saturday recap marathon but without success.
Finally, when the channel decided to air weeklies as dailies, it worked and how!
Shows such as Grey’s Anatomy, Supernatural, Mad Men and Revenge struck a chord with the masses and managed to increase viewership over a period of time.
So much so, Star World now has Castle re-runs every night. And who better to blame than Ekta Kapoor? “During the years of Ally McBeal and Buffy, The Vampire Slayer, the entire country would watch weeklies. However, with the advent of Kyunki… Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, people’s viewing habits changed substantially. They now wanted to watch their favourite TV shows every day,” argues Vaz.
Then again, Star World loyalists continue to wait for a week to see a brand new episode of their favourite show. To its credit, the channel airs latest episodes of hit series including Dexter, Homeland and Once Upon A Time very close to their US broadcast.
With a growing number of viewers wanting to catch the latest such series, fresh from the US, Star added Star World Premiere to its bouquet of English GECs.
In fact, at the time of its launch, Star World Premiere had as many as 26 latest series from the US. As things stand, newbies Intelligence, Rake, American Horror Story: Coven, Mom, The Millers and The Goldbergs have joined the likes of The Blacklist, Sleepy Hollow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to create a captivating programming line-up on Star World Premiere.
Meanwhile, Star World continues to hold sway, what with Vaz revealing that all of the new shows (and that includes marquee series Mad Men) on Star World Premiere will soon be available on Star World for binge-watching.
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.
