English Entertainment
AXN leads the game with highest women viewership in its genre
MUMBAI: AXN has already smitten the ladies with the best of programming. Taking further its brand promise of being home to iconic shows and characters, AXN takes a unique approach and dedicates the month of November to wow the ladies with its special program line-up.
For the first time ever, AXN will air movies with edgy and strong female leads like the feisty Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay 2, the indomitable Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, the gorgeous Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train and the resilient Charlize Theron in The Huntsman: Winter War. Catch these irresistible women who are Academy and Golden Globe nominees, take over AXN every Saturday at 11 AM and every Sunday at 6 PM.
Next up is the most powerful and inspirational women character on TV – Elizabeth McCord aka Tea Leoni – with the new season of ‘Madam Secretary’ (Season 4). Airing every Sundayat 10 PM, the show truly makes one believe that a woman with strength can have it all.
Adding to the fun, the channel brings a host of drool-worthy men under the property ‘AXN Hunkathon’. The sophisticated Hollywood fixer – Ray Donovan leads the way followed by all-time favourite Matt LeBlanc in the thrilling show ‘Top Gear’. Next comes the high functioning sociopath ‘Sherlock’ and lastly the rebellious Ragnar Lothbrok in ‘Vikings’.
AXN also brings back the hottest brothers on screen, Sam Winchester and Dean Winchester with the new season of Supernatural (Season 13) every Saturday at 10 PM. The popularity of these brothers is ever rising especially with the women viewers.
Lastly to add excitement, AXN offers the Emmy award winning singing reality show, The Voice Season 13, every Saturday and Sunday, 8 PM onwards featuring the gorgeous and talented duo Miley Cyrus and Jennifer Hudson along with the dashing heart throbs, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton.
Sony Pictures Networks India EVP and business head Tushar Shah siad, “SPN’s English Cluster has very strong content offering for all its viewers. This is reflected by the BARC numbers of this fiscal year where AXN has emerged as the top channel in the English GEC category with 27% market share*. We also have the highest number of female viewership amongst all GEC channels with 29% market share**. So, we have dedicated the month of November to the female audience. We are confident that our edgy and appealing content line-up will reinforce AXN’s leadership position with our TG”
*NCCS 15-40 AB, AI 1 mn+ (wk 14 – Wk 42’17)
** NCCS 15-40 AB Females, AI 1 mn+ (wk 14 – Wk 42’17)
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.
