English Entertainment
MGM Channel is now AMC
MUMBAI: AMC Networks has announced that its premiere movie channel MGM will now be renamed as AMC, starting today. This will give way to the first distribution of AMC Networks outside of North America, showing the company’s intent to extend itself beyond the US.
Later this year, AMC will be launching locally-versioned channel feeds across Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. This will be accompanied by AMC VOD, HD and TV Everywhere services.
AMC Networks’ original series Halt & Catch Fire and The Divide, produced by AMC Studios, will be one of the first original series to premiere on the channel internationally this year. This apart, the channel will also feature films from big libraries including MGM, Paramount and Sony.
AMC Networks COO Ed Carroll said through a statement: “In recent years, AMC has re-defined dramatic storytelling on Pay-TV via its cinematic approach to original series, including ‘The Walking Dead,’ ‘Mad Men,’ and ‘Breaking Bad.’ It is our intention to replicate our successful US strategy, extending the AMC brand worldwide and creating a broad pipeline for our original content.”
AMC Global and Sundance Channel Global president Bruce Tuchman said, “There is a huge appetite for AMC original programming abroad. That interest, coupled with our successful history of curating films from all the major studios to complement our original programming, gives us a great opportunity to make AMC Global a top-tier entertainment destination worldwide. We are confident AMC Global will be a valuable addition to our distribution partners’ platforms as we continue to work together to grow their business.”
Tuchman is responsible for the programming, marketing, business and strategic development of its global networks.
Liberty Global managing director programming Jeroen Bergman added: “AMC Networks has an excellent creative and business track record and we are pleased to offer this premier entertainment destination to our subscribers.”
Telefónica Director Global Content Ignacio Fernandez Vega stated: “We are delighted to add the new AMC channel to Movistar TV. With this new addition, we continue to consolidate our content offering and positioning the channel as a leading pay TV platform in Spain and Latin America.”
Indovision VP director Handhi Kentjono said: “AMC has established itself as a high quality popular network with outstanding entertainment and we are confident that our subscribers will respond strongly to this new offering. We are thrilled to continue our long and successful partnership with AMC Networks and its channels.”
Last month, the company announced the re-brand of its recently-acquired Chellomedia business (which included the MGM Channel) to AMC Networks International. AMC Networks International consists of six operating units namely Asia-Pacific, Central Europe, Iberia, Latin America, Zone (EMEA) and DMC, a global media technology and distribution company.
Halt and Catch Fire hails from the executive producers of AMC’s celebrated series ‘Breaking Bad.’ The series captures the rise of the personal computing era in the early 1980s, during which an unlikely trio – a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy – take personal and professional risks in the race to build a computer that will change the world as they know it. The 10-episode series is created by Chris Cantwell and Chris Rogers and executive produced by showrunner Jonathan Lisco (‘Southland’) and Gran Via Production’s Mark Johnson (‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Rectify,’ ‘Diner,’ ‘Rain Man’) and Melissa Bernstein (‘Breaking Bad,’ ‘Rectify’). Filmed on location in Atlanta, the series stars Lee Pace (‘Lincoln,’ ‘Pushing Daisies’) as Joe MacMillan, Scoot McNairy (‘Argo’) as Gordon Clark, Mackenzie Davis (‘Smashed’) as Cameron Howe, Kerry Bishé (‘Argo,’ ‘Red State’) as Donna Clark and Toby Huss (‘Cowboys & Aliens’) as John Bosworth.
‘The Divide’ is an eight-episode series written by and co-created by the Academy Award and Emmy nominated Richard LaGravenese (‘Behind the Candelabra,’ ‘The Fisher King,’ ‘Water for Elephants,’ ‘The Ref,’ ‘The Bridges of Madison County’) with Tony Goldwyn (‘Scandal,’ ‘Conviction,’ ‘Justified,’ ‘Damages,’ ‘Dexter’) co-creating the series and directing the premiere episode. ‘The Divide’ is a thought-provoking and suspenseful drama that explores the personal cost of morality, ambition, ethics, politics, and race in today’s justice system through the eyes of Christine Rosa played by Marin Ireland (‘Homeland,’ ‘Boss,’ ‘Side Effects’), an impassioned caseworker with The Innocence Initiative, and Adam Page played by Damon Gupton (‘The Newsroom,’ ‘Prime Suspect’), an equally passionate district attorney and political rising star.
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.
