English Entertainment
Comedy Central, COLORS INFINITY, MTV Beats & Vh1 centers the spotlight on super – women this Women’s Day
MUMBAI: This International Women’s Day, the English and Music channels of Viacom18 are all set to celebrate womanhood, showcasing the contribution of some of our most favorite ladies. Indulge into feet tapping music, and back-to-back episodes of shows that feature women in their various personality shades.
This Women’s Day, know more of your favorite women celebrities, with ‘O Womaniya’, on MTV Beats
Show: O Womaniya
Date and Time: 8th March, 8 AM
This Women’s Day, MTV Beats gives you more than one reason to celebrate. Get up, close and personal with your favorite B-Town celebs as MTV Beats brings to you some lesser known trivia such as jaw-dropping secrets and funny coincidences from their lives. Not just this, get a chance to make the woman in your life feel special by dedicating songs on MTV Beats Request Box and Beats on Demand. All this and much more, as MTV Beats calls out ‘O Womaniya’ this Women’s Day.
Catch the best of music to celebrate the Womaniyas in Bollywood and in your life, with MTV Beats O Womaniya, on 8th March, 2018.
Celebrate 12 non-stop hours of Womanhood this Women’s Day, with Comedy Central’s teen comedy series, Awkward
Show: Awkward
Date and Time: 8th March, 8 AM
This Women’s Day, Comedy Central wants to celebrate the journey of becoming a woman. Women didn’t just “wake up like this”, there were more than a few growing pains before they transformed into the Fabulous creatures they are today! Celebrate the special day with 12 hours of uninterrupted laughter with teen comedy series, Awkward. An unpopular 15-year-old gains immediate, yet unwanted, popularity at her high school when the student body mistakes an accident she has for a suicide attempt, only on Comedy Central.
Catch 12 hours of non-stop comedy, this Women’s Day, with Awkward, on 8th March, 8 am onwards, only on Comedy Central~Your Happy Place!
This Women’s Day, celebrate with music from women rockstars, on Vh1 Diva Squad
Show: Vh1 Diva Squad: Women’s Day Special
Date and Time: 8th March, 12 PM
Women have been smashin’ it in the music industry. We’ve been gifted with some super rad content featuring women being incredibly beautiful, powerful, and confident. Tune in to Vh1 Diva Squad for our women-ruled playlist. From Adele’s Rolling in the Deep, to Madonna’s Like a Virgin, Vh1 has got all your favorites covered.
Let the women who rule music sweep you off your feet, this Women’s Day, with Vh1 Diva Squad, from 12 PM, on 8th March, only on Vh1!
Catch non-stop episodes of Girlfriend’s Guide To Divorce Season 3 premiere on COLORS INFINITY
Show: Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce Season 3
Date and Time : 8th March, 1 PM
Tune into COLORS INFINITY this Women’s Day, to catch the Season 3 premier of Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce. This season is all set to start with a bang with back to back 7 episodes non-stop celebrating womanhood. Catch Season 3 on Thursday, 8th March as we see Abby’s relationship roller-coaster with Coach Mike; from her trying to keep it under wraps through a cover up party to the revelation about this relationship and finally she questioning her future with Mike. From scandals, parties, relationship drama, this season has it all in store for you.
Tune into COLORS INFINITY this Women’s Day, to catch the Season 3 premier of Girlfriends’ Guide To Divorce with 7 back to back episodes non-stop celebrating womanhood.
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.
