English Entertainment
Third season of ‘The Apprentice’ ends on 19 May
MUMBAI: US broadcaster NBC has announced that the finale of the third season of its business-based reality show The Apprentice will take place on 19 May.
Unlike the second season’s much bemoaned three-hour finale and reunion last December, this swan song will only last an hour.
The finale will feature the culmination of the final two tasks and the eagerly anticipated live boardroom hiring. NBC’s Thursday night also will be highlighted by the season finale of the hospital drama ER including the emotional departure of original cast member Noah Wyle as a series regular. In India, The Apprentice airs on Star World.
The host of the show, real estate magnate Donald Trump who also serves as the show’s executive producer, says, “I was insistent on having a one-hour finale this season. Viewers want the live boardroom and they want to witness the excitement of the hiring. And that will be our focus this season-the completion of the task and the final live boardroom showdown.”
Making the announcement from the atrium of Trump Tower in New York City, Trump revealed today that Bill Rancic, the original Apprentice winner whose one-year contract expires on 15 April, would receive a one-year contract extension with The Trump Organisation. In addition to Rancic’s existing responsibilities overseeing the construction of Trump Tower in Chicago, his expanded duties will include strategic development of other Trump properties across the country and in Mexico.
Trump also confirmed that Rancic would return to the boardroom during season four of The Apprentice filling in for George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher when they are on business trips. Trump added, “Bill has done an incredible job in the past year working for me. He is so talented that I thought he might want to go out on his own and make millions. We’re lucky to have him back for another year and I can rest assured that my Chicago project is in the best of hands.”
An elated Rancic said, “I am so grateful for the opportunity that Mr Trump has afforded me in the past year. He has truly taken me under his wing and exposed me to his distinct and incredibly successful way of doing business. It will be a privilege to spend another year with him.”
Meanwhile, Trump says that he feels very badly for Chris Shelton, the 22-year-old Apprentice candidate who was recently arrested for disorderly conduct at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa, Florida. Trump has even offered to be there for Shelton.
Trump says, “He has got a problem. An anger management problem. We talked about it on the show. He truly is an angry guy.” Real estate millionaire Shelton frequently screams during boardroom sessions. During a pizza-selling task Shelton engaged in an expletive-filled spat with teammate Alex Thomason. Trump said that Shelton’s fired-up temperament will again be on display during Thursday’s episode. “By chance, it happens to involve Chris to a large extent. He has a very interesting time on the show,” added Trump.
Shelton was arrested in Florida after causing a scene over being asked to pay a $20 cover charge to enter the hotel bar. After several attempts by staff to calm Shelton, he continued to yell and curse, a police report said. He was released after posting $250 bail. Expressing sympathy Rancic was quoted in an AP report saying, “You’ve got to cut him a little slack because he’s young. He’s just got to chill out.”
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.
