English Entertainment
Star World lines new shows beginning October
MUMBAI: Star World is gearing up to grab attention. Lined up from next month is a string of adrenaline pumping reality shows as well as ones seeking laughter .
From 3 October at 10 pm, the channel will air the weekly Dark Angel .For his much-anticipated television debut, Academy Award-winner James Cameron (Titanic, T2) created Dark Angel, a sci-fi adventure series set in the near future. It stars Jessica Alba as Max, a genetically enhanced human prototype with attitude to spare. Having escaped her military handlers, she is hunted by them through the underground street life of 21st Century Pacific Northwest. Max is aided in her quest – both to avoid capture and to reunite with her surviving “siblings” – by Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly). Cale, an idealistic cyber-journalist, battles corruption and the oppressive establishment in this futuristic landscape.
From 9 October, the channel will showacse the comedy Titus. Inspired by the real life of comedian Christopher Titus, the hour long comedy chronicles the heartbreakingly hilarious world of his dysfunctional family. Titus (Christopher Titus) owns a custom car shop, Titus High Performance, and builds hot rods. His hard-drinking, hard-living father Ken was married five times which means Christopher was raised in five broken homes. His mother, Ken’s first wife, was a manic-depressive schizophrenic, which means Christopher was raised by five broken personalities.
The channel has also lined up a slew of specials for rock fans and for those who like reality tuned programming. Bon Jovi – One Last Wild Night airs on 1 October at 9 pm. The rock star performed for his home town fans at the Giant’s Stadium, New Jersey in July 2001. He performed tracks like Wanted Dead or Alive, Bed of Roses.
How excess publicity hurts the private life of famous media celebrities is the focus of When Cameras Cross The Line. It airs 3 October at 7:30 pm, with a repeat at 11 pm. The programme will be highlighted by exclusive interviews with Michael Douglas, Julia Roberts, Woody Harrelson.
Airing 17 October at 7:30 pm, 11 pm the host Robert Ulrich presents video footage of some of the world’s most dangerous stunts ever attempted in When Stunts Go Bad. This one-hour special presentation will feature interviews with daredevils who make their living on the edge and capture the chilling results when their deadly feats come to a crashing end. When Seconds Count: How To Survive A Disaster airs on 24 October at 7:30 pm, with a repeat at 11 pm. The show looks at life-threatening situations and the steps people take to survive them. Hosted by Hector Elizondo (Chicago Hope, Pretty Woman), the one-hour reality special includes footage of actual events and interviews with survivors who provide tips that may ultimately save lives.
The channel finishes the month on a high with Survival Test Dangerous Animal Encounters, The show airs 31 October at 7:30 pm, with a repeat at 11 pm. The special combines real-life first hand accounts, of people who have faced some of life’s most challenging situations. The show provides viewers with important and practical information that teaches them how to protect themselves in the event that they cross paths with a dangerous animal. Viewers can see footage and unique recreations that set up dramatic “What If” scenarios that offer a variety of choices. The show poses intriguing questions and reveals practical solutions that could prove to be the difference between life and death.
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.
