English Entertainment
Zee Cafe not running scared of competition
MUMBAI: Zee Cafe is unfazed by the entry of newer players in the English entertainment space. The reason being that one of the pioneers in what was once a niche category follows the simple mantra of gauging viewer appetite coupled with the right marketing to stay ahead in the game.
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) senior vice president and business head – niche channels Anurag Bedi puts it as, “The year has been fantastic for Zee Café as we are the undisputed leaders of FY 2013. Zee Café has been the number one channel in the genre for an average of 28 weeks, beating competition with a share of 21 per cent. Our key strengths have always been a strong line-up of world class content and dynamic marketing campaigns.”
Zee Café stakes claim of bringing popular international shows to Indian shores at the earliest. In keeping with this tradition, it plans to air Big Bang Theory season 7 and The Vampire Diaries season 5 starting November, very close to their US premiere, as well as House of Cards from early next year. The channel is aware that viewers today want to see fresh new shows as also the latest seasons of their favourite shows without much of a time lag.
Agrees Maxus India national director – insights Priti Murthy: “Viewers don’t want to wait and usually prefer to watch the latest content online. Therefore, the whole genre has to work towards getting this audience to its kitty.”
Earlier too, AXN’s business head Sunil Punjabi had told indiatelevision.com that people want to watch shows which are airing currently closer to their airing in the US and in the last one year, the channel has been doing this consistently – adding shows closer to their telecast in the US.
Spelling out who constitutes the target group (TG) of the new channel, Star India business head Kevin Vaz had said it is the most premium audience in India, comprising the one per cent of top Sec, A+ and between the age group of 20 to 35, indiantelevison.com had reported when Star World HD was launched.
To counter competition, Bedi believes in identifying what appeals to audiences and cushioning it with effective marketing. “Our competitors have lined up some of the best shows that America produces but no point if they are not marketed to Indian audiences correctly,” he says. Fragmentation is inevitable but “We have a strong relationship with our partners so we do not see competition as a threat and will continue to bring the best of English entertainment to Indian audiences,” he adds.
Zee Cafe’s strategy is not only to bring in soaps but also movies and live and exclusive telecasts of events from across the globe. “Zee Café caters to a premium and relatively niche audience, hence, there is no fixed format and we will continue to experiment with shows that fit with our TG,” points out Bedi, adding there are plans for an HD channel.
Speaking of marketing, the channel tied up with Eco roots to adopt trees for each pledge taken by viewers for the Green Turn initiative. Digitally too, it has undertaken several successful initiatives. “Our campaigns like Team Grey, Gossip Girl, Happy hour at 3,Tweet hour with the cast of The Mentalist built an immediate connect with our fans and have received tremendous response from them,” emphasises Bedi. The channel is looking forward to more innovative campaigns for upcoming properties like Big Bang Diwali and House of Cards. “We try to do something different each time to delight the audiences and we will keep on doing that,” says Bedi.
Murthy however feels Zee Café needs to be more aggressive in its approach to marketing. “The way other channels push their content, I don’t think Zee Café does in the same manner. One must understand, in the genre, there are only a few shows for the whole channel, unlike the Hindi counterparts, which is the sad part. Therefore, aggression is needed to cash in more on the growing audience that wants to watch international shows,” she says.
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.
