English Entertainment
Peter Roth extends tenure as president at Warner Bros.TV
MUMBAI: One of the most successful and respected executives working in television today, Peter Roth, has signed a long-term deal extending his tenure as Warner Bros. Television president, while expanding his duties to include oversight of the newly created Warner Horizon Television.
The newly created television arm is designed to create lower-budget scripted and reality primetime series for network and cable. These announcements were made today by Warner Bros. Television (WBTV) group president Bruce Rosenblum.
“Peter’s track record at Warner Bros. Television really speaks for itself, not just in the quantity of successful shows he’s launched, but more importantly, in the quality of the series created under his leadership,” said Rosenblum. “To say that we’re absolutely thrilled that Peter will be with us for many, many more years would be a gross understatement. He is truly the best in class. His creative instincts and execution, as well as his relationships with people both in front of and behind the cameras, from the writers’ rooms to the network boardrooms, are unmatched.
“As the television business continues to change and business models evolve, Warner Horizon Television will enable us to take more creative risks,” continued Rosenblum. “We’re incredibly excited about the prospect of this new television arm at the Studio and know that it couldn’t be in better hands than Peter’s.”
Roth joined Warner Bros. Television as its president in March 1999 and has maintained the company’s position as the industry’s preeminent producer of award winning primetime television series. In addition to being the most prolific television studio in Hollywood the last three years, WBTV has been the leading supplier of primetime series 16 of the last 19 television seasons. For the 2005-2006 season, WBTV placed 33 series on the primetime schedule, including a record 17 returning series, 11 new series and five midseason series.
During his tenure, Roth has been responsible for such series as the multiple Emmy Award winning The West Wing, Two and a Half Men, Without a Trace, The O.C., Cold Case, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls, Smallville, George Lopez, Supernatural, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Nip/Tuck and The Closer, as well as the successful continuation of such series as Friends and ER.
Prior toWBTV, Roth served as Fox Broadcasting Company president. There, he was responsible for the development and programming of the Emmy Award-winning Ally McBeal, That ’70s Show, Family Guy and King of the Hill. He also held posts as president of 20th Century Fox Television, Twentieth Network Television (currently 20th Century Fox Television), and of Production at Twentieth Network Television, where he oversaw such hits as the multiple Emmy Award winning Picket Fences, The X-Files, The Practice, Chicago Hope and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Before working at Twentieth, Roth was president of Stephen J. Cannell Productions, where he was involved with the creation and sale of such critically acclaimed series as 21 Jump Street, Wiseguy and The Commish.
Roth began his television career at the ABC Television Network in children’s programming where he served as both a manager and later a director before moving into current programming where held both director and vice president posts, states an official release.
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.
