English Entertainment
MIPCOM: GRB announces new titles; Walt Disney doc, real-life crime, docu-series
MUMBAI: GRB Entertainment, a trendsetter of unscripted, and scripted, alternative programming with a proven track record worldwide, announced a slate of new titles to debut at MIPCOM.
As the 50th Anniversary of Walt Disney’s death approaches, GRB brings a documentary on his life and career with exclusive footage and over 50 interviews with celebrities, directors, and animators. WALT: The Man Behind The Myth is the official biography of Walt Disney, sanctioned by The Walt Disney Family Foundation. This 90 minute documentary is presented by Diane Disney Miller and narrated by Dick Van Dyke and is filled with never-before-seen color home movies shot by Walt himself.
Real-life crime is often more dramatic than fiction and GRB Entertainment owns many of the best series and docs in this genre. Occult Crimes takes a look inside the devilish minds of the most unpredictable and dangerous killers in history who take their orders from Satan to commit heinous murders. Until Proven Innocent: The Hannah Overton Story tells the true story of the death of Andrew Burd, a four-year-old from Texas who died mysteriously of salt poisoning. His foster mother, Hannah Overton, was charged with capital murder and sent to prison for life. But is this churchgoing woman a vicious child killer or had the tragedy claimed its second victim?
Turning to music, Follow The Rules is a 12-part series following Grammy-nominated international rapper turned actor, Ja Rule, and the hectic household that he and his wife Aisha are trying to keep under control. With their two sons, daughter, and Ja’s mother and mother-in-law living under one roof, the house that Rule built is anything but quiet.
In Cleveland Hustles, NBA superstar LeBron James and longtime friend and business partner Maverick Carter give four aspiring local entrepreneurs the chance to realize their business dreams while also helping to revitalize neighborhoods in their hometown of Cleveland.
GRB also brings a series of CNN documentaries from Soledad O’Brien. In Babies Behind Bars, follow the lives of female inmates in a remarkable program allowing them to raise their babies while they serve times. Black & Blue tells the shocking real-life stories of young black men facing persistent racial profiling and police brutality. In Black In America and Latino in America, both multi-documentary collections, Soledad O’Brien explores interpretations of race and cultural identity for people living in the United States.
“Our official doc on Walt Disney – an iconic man with a great impact on pop culture – offers amazing exclusive footage of his private life. We also have two fun and inspiring series featuring Ja Rule and LeBron James. We continue to bring riveting, real-life crime with Occult Crimes and Until Proven Innocent: The Hannah Overton Story. We are also thrilled to represent a number of Soledad O’Brien’s CNN documentaries, which span crime and human-interest,” said Michael Lolato, SVP of International Distribution, GRB Entertainment.
GRB is well-known for its gripping real-life crime series as well as intriguing and inspiring factual programs, and serves up both for the upcoming market. Intervention, GRB’s groundbreaking A&E series (200+ episodes), received two Emmy® Award nominations in 2016, a Critics’ Choice Award nomination in 2016, an Emmy® Award nomination in 2015, and an Emmy Award win in 2009 from the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences for Outstanding Reality Program.
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.
