English Entertainment
‘Our revenue target is to grow upwards of 30%’ : Star India senior VP, GM English Channels Saurabh Yagnik
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star India is aggressively building a wide portfolio of English entertainment channels. Its aim: to capture specific needs of different viewers.
Backed by a rise in audience share, Star is eyeing a revenue growth of 30 per cent from its English channels. 
In an interview with Indiantelevision.com’s Ashwin Pinto, Star India senior VP, GM English Channels Saurabh Yagnik talks about the strategy the network has adopted in growing the consumption for English entertainment channels.
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After Star India started overseeing the operations of the English channels, what has been the difference? |
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Could you elaborate on the growth of these channels, particularly with reference to this year? |
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Even in revenues? |
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What are the challenges before English channels at this point of time?
We have done local shows on Star World like ‘Koffee With Karan’ to drive viewership. We are also doing localised promotions around shows. For Masterchef Australia, we brought a jury member down here. Among other things a live chat happened which was well received by the audience. We put legs to our promotional strategy to ensure that people find content that is relevant and relatable. Then you intersperse it with aggregator shows like Koffee With Karan. This is how you break barriers for English consumption. |
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Do content costs present a challenge to the business model? |
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With more players coming in, how is Star Movies fine-tuning its strategy to hold on to its position?
Also, there are a huge amount of online viewers. We will use this to market and talk about our properties. |
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Is viewer loyalty growing for this genre or is it still very much title driven? |
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Is HD the future for this genre? Do all English movie channels need to move towards it? |
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By when do you expect to breakeven on the HD feeds? |
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Tam data shows that Star World has increased its share despite new entrants. What have been the reasons for this? |
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Which are the genres that are working the best for you? Sitcoms and crime dramas work very well as does local programming. ‘Masterchef Australia’ is also performing well. The range of shows that do well is broad based. |
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What role does localisation play for Star World? |
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| Is non primetime becoming important? Yes! We see viewership here as well. The scheduling is based on viewership patterns so that we get unduplicated audiences across time bands for various shows. We slot shows based on viewer profile. We run omnibuses of our weekly offerings on the weekend. So people can do a catch up. This allows more viewers to watch us outside primetime as well. |
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Could you talk about the increase in marketing innovations?
We are doing a high decibel campaign around ‘Terra Nova’ which is a sci-fi show. The Torrentz property on weekends is to bring shows as close to the US airing date to India. This is how we build Star World as the destination for the best American shows fresh from the US. |
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| Are you expanding distribution beyond DTH for FX and Fox Crime? Digital is the right place. This is where a large part of consumption of English GECs is going to happen. The kind of audience that we target is affluent and will move towards DTH as the viewing experience there is better. That is where people consume more. We believe that digital is the right way to go. We don’t have analogue plans for them. |
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| Is the English GEC big enough to have channels according to TG and audience profile? We have had a different strategy based on our own insights. Star World has a healthy portfolio. Fox Crime is not based on a demographic cut or of the TG; it is based on the fascination that people have for a particular genre. With FX, we looked at catering to the evolved sensibilities of the more discerning viewer. Our strategy is based on viewer behaviour and mindset. |
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| As more entrants come in, how much of a challenge is fragmentation? There is enough penetration but lesser category share. We are the second largest English speaking population in the world. But the share of English GECs is nothing to talk about in relation to that. With more affluence, education and people becoming more global in their mindset, the consumption of English content will only grow. Also disposable incomes are growing and the propensity to consume branded products is the highest in this category. |
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.
