English Entertainment
Comedy Central sets pace for ultimate celebration with over 100 hours of non-stop FRIENDS ultra marathon for its 6th birthday
MUMBAI: Birthdays and New Years are great occasions to make resolutions for participating in marathons. However, this is one marathon which calls for hanging up your running shoes and grabbing the best spot in front of the telly with a bowl of munchies to keep you going because, for the first time ever in the world, Comedy Central is presenting a 5 day long, F.R.I.E.N.D.S Ultra Marathon from January 19 to 23, 11 AM onwards!
Aiming for a totally different kind of world record where marathons are concerned, Comedy Central ensures over 100 hours of non-stop entertainment, as it gets ready to celebrate its birthday with the world’s best friends ever Joey, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Phoebe and Ross.
Bringing in its 6th birthday, the brand is doing a variety of fun activities like hosting the biggest F.R.I.E.N.D.S parties Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata, Watch & Win contest with official F.R.I.E.N.D.S Merchandise rewarding the longest binge sessions through 5 days. Comedy Central, in partnership with Airbnb, is hosting the Longest Slumber Party and many more engaging activities on their social media pages. After all, what’s a birthday without F.R.I.E.N.D.S.?
Commenting on this one of a kind campaign, Viacom18, Head- Youth, Music and English Entertainment, Ferzad Palia shared, “When we launched Comedy Central 6 years ago, our goal was simple – we wanted to give India a place for quality English Comedy Entertainment. And within months of its launch, we realized that the audience and the advertisers were not only lapping our content up but wanted more of it. Over the years, Comedy Central has been loved for showcasing the best in quality entertainment such as The Mindy Project, The Graham Norton Show, SNL, Suits and Young Sheldon. But F.R.I.E.N.D.S. is the one show that refuses to lose its hold over the audience no matter what. It’s a show that holds the same appeal that an old friend does – it’s comforting, it’s relatable, and it makes you feel good. Thus, today, when we are celebrating our 6th Birthday, it was but natural for us to celebrate it with F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Also, this is just the beginning. The never been done before, 100-hour binge for F.R.I.E.N.D.S is just a small peek of the disruptive programming that we have planned for our viewers in 2018.”
Launched in India on January 23, 2012, Comedy Central enjoys a viewership share of 30% and has remained a steady/consecutive No.1 in viewership last year. With 4.5+mn social media followers, that is growing each week, the brand has persistently worked towards engaging content for consumers with specially curated show categories, consumer products and pro-socio campaigns. Source (BARC: 15-40 Mega cities AB)
Comedy Central has created its distinct place in consumers’ hearts with special offers across multiple platforms such as Watch With The World – bringing to India world class shows such as Suits, Young Sheldon, Will & Grace, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and more, in real time; Spread The Cheer – pro-socio campaign offering joy and happiness; Comedy Central LOL Club Cards – gifting specially curated offers for it fans. The unique initiatives undertaken by the brand has also won 40+ awards over the past 6 years across India, Asia and the World, making it the number 1 in English Entertainment industry.
Comedy Central boasts of partnerships with marquee brands like Café Coffee Day, Mad Over Donuts, Gold’s Gym, Kidzania, Radio One to maximize reach amongst its consumers across age groups and personalities. The brand also strives to bring on more smiles through its annual CSR initiative – Spread The Cheer. The latest edition, in association with several NGOs such as Give India, Bhumi, Deepalaya to name a few, has spread the cheer amongst many deserving but less fortunate children. With such innovative initiatives, Comedy Central will strive to remain India’s Happiest Place.
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.
