English Entertainment
SonyLIV’s amplified focus on English content portfolio
MUMBAI: Sony Network India’s (SPNI) OTT platform Sony Liv recently extended its English content portfolio in the premium offering. It also has plans to add originals in regional languages.
On the back of SPNI’s FIFA World Cup 2018 broadcasting right in India, SonyLIV attracted thousands of football fans across the country. The month-long sports event gave a major boost to the platform. Soon after it ended, it expanded the English content library to retain viewers. Three critically acclaimed and admired shows from Hollywood- Damages, Unforgettable and Timeless have also been added.
“Understanding the need for quality international content, we have consistently focused on bringing shows that promise intrigue and entertainment. Post a successful tournament like FIFA 2018 that set new benchmarks in consumer engagement with over 70 million views, we wanted to add onto this momentum further. We expanded our English content portfolio to offer world’s most fascinating stories to our audience and keep them glued onto out platform,” SPNI digital business head Uday Sodhi said in an interaction with Indiantelevision.com.
Sodhi, happy with the initial response, says other shows from the genre such as Underground, Outsiders and Line of Duty continue to garner good traction. However, the new shows which have been added recently span across genres to ensure they appeal to a wide section of the audience. Continuing the development, the platform is about to announce a string of 8-10 new launches.
Meanwhile, the English entertainment channels AXN, Sony PIX, and Sony LePLEX HD from the network have recently made their digital debut. For traditional TV broadcasters, promoting catch-up TV through existing content catalogue is a common formula though.
“Live TV continues to be a potential driver for us as its viewership is significantly large. There has been a natural on-boarding of viewers who like the content offered by these three channels,” Sodhi commented.
Primarily, viewers aged between 18 to 24 is the target audience of the platform, while the 25-34 age group is targeted next. To create awareness of new content, SonyLIV is making the most use of social media and digital platforms. It is also optimising TV ads and outdoor marketing given the great reach of these two mediums among the audience.
While sci-fi and crime thriller shows are trending in Hollywood right now, SonyLIV’s newly added English content bouquet includes both the genres being a definite option for making an engaging watch. “We have ensured that our current and upcoming shows have gripping content. Indians have a huge appetite for content that keeps them at the edge of their seat and I do not see a reason for these genres to not work in the Indian market. We are positive about the response these shows are going to get,” said Sodhi.
The media veteran gave a witty answer to the question of competitors in this category. He said that as they operate across all three business models and various segregating buckets, every player in the market is a healthy competitor. The digital right of Game of Thrones gave a major boost to the subscriber base of Star India’s digital arm Hotstar. International players like Amazon Prime and Netflix already offer a huge chunk of popular international shows. Thus to woo the young urban audience, SonyLIV definitely has to add several other titles to make the library more lucrative.
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.
