English Entertainment
Star World Premiere HD to celebrate first birthday with 24 new series
MUMBAI: Catering to a super premium audience, Star World Premier HD from the Star India kitty, which was launched last year, is all set to celebrate its first birthday.
Star India English portfolio business head Kevin Vaz is proud with the way the channel has managed to help build a major premium subscriber base. “Despite being a pure a la carte HD-only offering, we are confident that additional premium consumers will begin subscribing to the channel,” he says while adding that on the occasion, the subscription-based channel will showcase 24 of the most popular international television series in genres like comedy and drama.
When quizzed, which have been the best performing markets in the last one year, Vaz informs that since it is a paid for premium channel, currently priced at Rs 60, it is mostly consumed by audiences in the metros. And hence, it is these markets where the channel has been performing well.
The channel is targeted towards those seeking exclusivity, novelty and superior viewing experience. Even though it is ad free at the moment, Vaz say that its content and popularity has drawn interest from categories like e-commerce, FMCG, automobile companies.
By airing most of the shows in India, 12 hours after their US telecast, the channel has enabled viewers to gets access to latest shows and has curbed issues like piracy and illegal downloads to an extent.
The new launches include: From Tuesday 23 September; New Girl season four at 8 pm, The Blacklist season 2 at 10 pm, Sleepy Hollow season two at 11 pm. Person of Interest season four will start from Wednesday 24 September at 11 pm. Downtown Abbey season five will begin from 25 September at 10 pm. Modern Family season six, Sons of Anarchy season seven, and The Goldbergs season two will start from Thursday 25 September at 8:30 pm, 11 pm and 8 pm respectively. The other shows include Bones season 10 from September 26 at 10 pm followed by Agents of Shield season two at 10 pm. On September 29 The Simpsons season 26 will start at 8 30 pm. How To get Away with Murder will start from September 29 at 10 pm. Revenge season four starts 30 September at 9 pm.
The October lineup includes Blackish at 8 pm, Once Upon A Time season four at 9 pm and Castle season seven at 10 pm on 1 October. On October 3, Manhattan Love Story will begin at 8 30 pm. Last Man Standing season four and Homeland season four will start from 6 October at 8pm and 9 pm respectively. Criminal Minds season 10 will start from 9 October at 9 pm. American Horror Story season four will air at 11 pm from 10 Oct. The Walking Dead season five will start on 13 at 11 pm. 2 Broke Girls season four will start from 29 at 8:30 pm and Two and A Half Men season 12 at 31October at 8 pm.
Meanwhile, White Collar season six will be aired from November 2014 to January 2015 at 10 pm, The Americans season three will start from January to May 2015 at 10 pm while Parenthood season six will start from December at 11 pm. The other shows are Agent Carter, Empire and Backstorm. The channel will continue having its out-put deals with five major studios; Fox, Disney, Universal, Sony Pictures and Marvel.
The channel, in celebration mood, will present its viewers by airing special weekend marathons of shows like Homeland, Two and a Half Men and The Blacklist giving them a chance to catch up on previous seasons before all new and latest seasons commence from 23 September 2014.
Apart from this, it has planned free previews for DTH subscribers of Airtel, Tata Sky and Videocon d2h to offer viewers a feel of the HD proposition. From 20 to 29 September Tata Sky viewers will be provided with the free sampling of the channel. The same will be offered to Airtel subscribers from 29 September to 5 October and Videocon d2h subscribers from 5 to 29 October 2014.
As part of its marketing initiatives, the first episode of Homeland season four will be premiered on Twitter as a curtain raiser. Promotions will run across the Star network channels and advertisements will be placed in editions of the Times of India on 23 September.
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.
