English Entertainment
Ratings: Star Movies tops English film genre despite absence in Mumbai
MUMBAI: With Cas having come into the Metros, the niche channels will have a better fix on what the audience prefers. Tam data for the last six months paints an interesting picture of what the viewers are likely to go in for.
Tam data c&s 15+ all India shows that in the English film genre Star Movies has a clear lead. In fact it has widened the gap between itself and arch rival HBO. This, one must note, is despite the fact that it is not present in Mumbai which each week contributes an average of 15 per cent to the viewing of this genre.
| ENGLISH MOVIES – TG: CS 15 years |
15 JULY-15 AUG | 15 AUG-15 SEP | 15 SEP -15 OCT | 15 OCT-15 NOV | 15 NOV-15 DEC | 15 DEC-30 DEC | 01 JAN – 13 JAN 07 |
| Hallmark Channel |
0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| HBO | 38 | 33 | 33 | 32 | 33 | 35 | 33 |
| PIX | 9 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 |
| Star Movies | 42 | 40 | 44 | 45 | 47 | 41 | 49 |
| Zee Studio | 11 | 17 | 16 | 14 | 13 | 15 | 9 |
For the period 15 July – 15 August 2006 Star Movies had a share of 42 per cent followed by HBO with a share of 38 per cent. Zee Studio has a share of 11 per cent and Pix which had recently launched had a share of nine per cent. For the period 1-13 January 2007 Star Movies boosted its share to 49 per cent compared to 41 per cent in the last two weeks of December.
Star Movies’ gain in January is Zee Studio’s loss which shows that there is some overlap despite the fact that while the former focusses on blockbusters the latter focusses on niche films. In fact Zee Studio has recently been doing initiatives on world cinema. Zee Studio’s share fell from 15 per cent in the last fortnight of December to 9 per cent bringing it on level terms with Pix. HBO’s share fell by four to five percentage points in August but has since stayed steady at 33 per cent.
Star India GM content Harsh Rohatgi gives the credit for Star Movies’ leadership position to the compelling movie library it has. “Even if you look at the Metro market to which Mumbai contributes 35 per cent viewership we are still ahead. We have done initiatives like a Bond festival, creature festival.
“Mind you Star Movies in the past six months did not do anything special in terms of marketing besides on-air promotions. So the content sold itself. We are doing an Oscar festival at the moment. Our clients have supported us despite concern about Mumbai. We expect to be back on air within the next one week to 10 days.”
As had been pointed out earlier, HBO’s main concern now is to ensure that it is in the priority list of channels in homes which are getting the set top box. So it ran a campaign last month educating people on what the channel is offering. Its message for this year is Bigger and Better.
The challenge, Shruti Bajpai, country manager, HBO, notes, comes not only from more television competition but also from outside in the form of multiplexes, gaming etc. As Tam CEO L.V. Krishnan had pointed out in a recent interview, in the Elite group which comprise the bulk of the English film channels audience, the more technology options there are for entertainment like the DVD, the more their viewing of television drops.
So there is all the more reason for this genre to be on its toes as its core audience will become even more choosy. Bajpai is counting on the strength of the HBO brand which has been built over the years to see it through this period of change. Going forward for this year it will try to build up the non primetime block through slots like It’s A Guy Thing for men. Last year HBO built on its thematic, festive blocks. So there was a full one month special for Diwali which had different themes depending on the daypart.
This year HBO, Bajpai notes, has upped the marketing ante. A case in point is what was done with King Kong where there was radio, online and an outdoor presence. “It is not a question of having a huge budget. It is a question of optimising the different avenues which is what we have been able to do. The reason why we have not fallen in share despite not being present in Mumbai for a while is that the mini Metros are growing. They are hip and happening and you are getting viewership from a place where there was none earlier.”
Media planners feel that each channel has its own USP. As Starcom’s Rahul Panchal points out, “Pix has its USP in that it targets an older set of viewers 25+. HBO on the other hand has a lot of teens tuning in which is why it has blocks for that set. Therefore there will be some difference in the brand profile.
“Brand saliency is also what one looks at vis-a-vis just numbers. Pix and Zee Studio offer an environment that is less cluttered. They are also more flexible on the rates. Therefore though I put money on the two leaders (Star Movies and HBO) I would not ignore the other two players.”
Panchal adds that Star Movies’ distribution in the small towns is probably better in terms of the frequency it is on. Clearly it’s gain there has more than offset the loss of Mumbai. One also has to consider the fact that with Cas coming in, putting in money will not be such a gray area.
There will be better clarity also with Tam having launched its Elite Panel. Media planners also point out that in English films there is better stickiness compared to say, general entertainment. If someone likes a film he/she will stay with it. The question now is whether viewers will choose a channel like Pix when there are three competing channels.
Pix business head Sunder Aaron says that Pix has carved a niche space which has been due to films being carefully chosen. “We have built up our programming by focussing on slots like 8 pm and 10 pm. Our stance has been that of telling a good story. Viewers who see value in this will, I am confident, choose us in their basket. To add variety we have also done original content like Framed, which saw director Aparna Sen being interviewed. We will be doing audience research this year to find out more in terms of preferences. We are doing a marketing campaign in Bangalore as we felt we needed to boost our visibility there.”
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.
