English Entertainment
Sony Le Plex HD launches; destination for acclaimed & blockbuster movie titles
MUMBAI: Movie buffs are in for a treat as folks at Sony Pictures Network India (SPN) have come up with a premium fun hangout place for Hollywood film lovers. Called Sony Le Plex HD, the channel will be a house to not just from mainstream Hollywood movies but also acclaimed movies. With the brand tagline #WhereYouBelong, the channel is aimed at providing true plex experience on television.
The channel went live on 23 August.
SPN already has a English movie channel Sony Pix. After a 3-4 month long research, the network saw a clear need gap wherein the viewers were underserved with acclaimed movie titles. The differentiator amongst the two channels apart from their unique product packaging is unique content properties providing a clear audience demarcation between the two.
According to SPN India English cluster EVP and business head Saurabh Yagnik, what lacks in the industry is clear distinctions between Hollywood loyalists and casonava. He says, “The two channels have different boundaries true to the consumers need gap. As viewers were not able to watch their loved movies, we thought about coming out with a perfect solution. Building a channel is not just about great titles. There also is a need to build conversations around the product so as to build a brand in mind.”
Apart from securing deals with existing production studios, this new channel has first output deals with Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, PVR and Lionsgate.
Sony Le PLEX boasts of 400 plus movie titles that include 200 award winning movies. In their Le Premiere slot, one can catch 52 premieres in 52 weeks of the year with one on every Sunday at 9 pm. The other slots of the channel are The Magicians slot which will showcase the movies and the magic that happens behind the camera of critically acclaimed movies such as The Inglourious Basterds, Schindler’s List, Taxi Driver, Gladiator, Philadelphia and many more.
The Noon Show which will air movies every Monday to Friday at 1 pm, 9 o’talk aimed at inspiring conversations through listicles. 12 listicles inspired themes will connect the common elements amongst the uncommon audiences driven by a distinguished anchor. And, other spots like The Night Show and Love That Scene.
“The growth of Hollywood cinema in India has resulted in segmentation of audiences into two distinct categories. One, being the mainstream cinema offering action and special effects movies, while the other is the non-mainstream cinema that focuses on the storyline, plot and the acclaim of the movie. The market for non-mainstream cinema is currently underserved in our country and Sony Le Plex HD aims to cater and own this segment. The channel will not only showcase critically acclaimed films but also build an ambience around them in a way that enables great conversations and will help create a common ground for people to build a community of quality movie lovers,” says Yagnik.
Zoya Akhtar has been roped in as the community ambassador for the Sony Le Plex community. Akhtar will be talking about few premieres and will build the community. The key premieres will have conversations with her. Her role will be to reach out to all movie lovers and build a tribe that appreciates good cinema. Akhtar will also be seen actively engaging with movie buffs across various social media platforms owned by the channel.
“Zoya represents contemporary style of filmmaking and have made beautiful movies. She is relatable with our brand and people look at out for her work. We needed a person who can create communities. She is a movies buff and loves conversation around movies. Her persona and the way we perceive our brand have many things in common,” adds the channel head.
“Great movies and great storytelling is what I constantly chase and this is exactly what Sony Le Plex HD has to offer. It’s that perfect space where movie lovers, including me, can interact with each other over their favourite Hollywood movies. Sony Le Plex HD has an exhaustive list of quality and acclaimed films and the top three that come to my mind are Foxcatcher – which is awesome, Spotlight which is an academy award winner and Ex Machina. The channel is not just about showcasing great movies but will also create a community of movie lovers who will drive great conversations around movies. I am glad to be the Community Ambassador for Sony Le Plex HD and co-create this community of people like me who simply love watching good movies. It is indeed the perfect hangout for all movie lovers,” adds Akhtar.
The channel is targeted on Hollywood loyalists which they classify to be dreamers, achievers, geeks, artists, etc and certainly don’t have any age boundaries. It is for premium audiences which are young at heart. The channel’s logo has been designed by MediaLuna while Leo Burnett is their creative agency partner.
SPN rolled out this channel in HD feed because according to them there has been significant price elasticity in country. The audiences are not used to paying for content yet. But the fact that India always works on inflection point between affordability and consumption cannot be neglected. Yagnik opines that SD is about size and scale that you have to build. Its distribution has to be wider which the market needs to support. “There are certain considerations that are to be taken before launching a SD channel. The loyalists can move to SD later on. We had to come up with a differentiator in HD,” adds Yagnik.
With this channel, Sony plans to cater to the 7 million odd HD subscribers in the country.
The channel has almost been rolled out on DTH platforms like Airtel, Tata Sky, etc and cable TV services.
As far as the marketing is concerned, the channel will be marketed extensively in the top 6 metros with various promotions on their own HD network on tv and will leverage print as well as social media to build the channel.
The channel is already in talks with few premium brands to hop on board for the channel and has a separate sales team in place for the same. “Ideally revenue generation from advertisers and subscription should be 50:50. Though, it depends on the various channels as they are bundled with different networks. But, if you talk about Sony Le Plex HD, we would like to generate revenue more from the subscription than advertisers. For now the hybrid business model is working properly for us,” adds Yagnik.
If guesstimations are to be believed, the channel will be priced high due to its unique offering at around Rs 50.
Though, Sony Pix and Sony Le Plex HD will not have same titles, there is a possibility to have simulcasts for a few movies.
With an array of Hollywood movie channels being launched by various networks, one conclusion that we can arrive at is that there is a clear-cut consumption of English content. The increasing number of schools providing English education, high box office collections, social media conversations, etc clearly shows significant potential for English in India.
SPN, with this new addition, has a total of approx 700 movie titles under their umbrella. Looking at the current consumption, the English entertainment genre is only going to grow and expand in the coming years.
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.
