English Entertainment
Sony Picture Networks India rebrands AXN
MUMBAI: Sony Pictures Networks (SPN) India’s english entertainment channel AXN, known for its action heavy shows, has been re-branded to give it a more edgier look.
The changes include a new logo, packaging and tag line. Playing on their original palate of red, the channel urges viewers to live ‘R.E.D,’ which stands for Reality, Entertainment and Drama.
The channel, which is home to some of the most iconic characters, hopes to increase its viewership with this re-branding exercise.
The change will come into effect from 24 January, 2016 with the premiere of the drama series Billions, which will be aired at 11 pm every Sunday.
The re-branding was undertaken by Leo Burnett India.
“With the new logo, we want to cater to the young evolving mindsets. It’s time the brand goes to the next level with a more contemporary positioning and a fresh, new look, to appeal to the discerning audience segments, who seek intelligent action. More than just an adrenaline rush, they seek a mind rush while watching their favourite shows and characters. To cater to this mind-set, we have re-calibrated our positioning, brought alive through LIVE R.E.D. for the entire brand universe in a seamless manner,” says SPN India executive vice president and business head – English entertainment cluster Saurabh Yagnik.
With this transformation, AXN seeks to diversify its portfolio away from its action genre by airing ‘intelligent’ action shows with more intense, smart and unexpected characters.
The channel has retained its trademark representation with the colour red. He further adds, “Red because it leverages to bring alive what AXN as a brand stands for. The channel’s new look and feel showcases the content diversity of the channel, builds association with shows and characters and articulates what consumer gratification is. It is the channel, product and consumers’ truth that we have brought alive.”
The new logo is accentuated by a 3-D pyramid with elements of mystery and convergence and will bring alive the channel’s diverse content offering Reality, Entertainment, Drama, and the consumer gratification of Rush, Excitement, Dream through its characters and shows.
AXN’s content offering includes a mixture of reality shows like The Voice, Top Gear, Fear Factor, entertainment shows like Minute to Win, and dramatic shows like Sherlock, Hannibal, Ray Donovan, Billions, Elementary and Dexter, amongst others.
As of now, the channel has no plans to change or tweak its content strategy, though it will keep bringing new American shows. The channel will continue to cater to the premium target audience in India.
AXN seeks to cater to both types of consumers that exist in society: the influencer as well as the adopter. While the former includes tech-savvy people who want to watch shows with the US, the latter are not very active in the space and seek help from the influencer about which shows to watch. “The adopters are adopting and soaking into the genre. We want to bridge this gap between both the viewers’ cluster. We bring shows, which serves both of them,” asserts Yagnik.
The channel claims to have a market share of 28 per cent in the entire English entertainment genre and has set a task to build shows and characters associations with the channel.
AXN’s new look will roll out across the channel’s on-air and online platforms as well on various social media platforms.
Speaking about the imminent competition from the American OTT platform Netflix’s entry into India, Yagnik says, “It is good to have global competition in the space. It’s a good opportunity. The fact remains that all the networks have many hours of content – local as well as international. Everything that enters the market has its own plusses and minuses when it comes to content consumption. Ultimately it’s going to benefit the consumers.”
This new push towards evoking emotions as well as gaining viewers through gripping and diverse content strategy is what the edgy channel plans to do in 2016. The aim will also be to retain its position in the market by coming up with more credible and buzzy shows.
“With the rise in the Hollywood shows consumption in India, AXN will continue to get up to date shows for our fresh from the US slot,” concludes Yagnik.
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.
