English Entertainment
&flix to air World TV Premiere of ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ on December 8
MUMBAI: &flix recently announced World Television Premieres of Hollywood movies. This time, the destination for the biggest Hollywood hits, is set to launch a new offering that is sure to delight viewers. The channel will offer movie enthusiasts a chance to leap forth into limitless possibilities as they witness World Television Premieres of Hollywood blockbusters now in native Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, along with English.
Available as part of the Zee Prime English Pack, &flix, in association with Sony Pictures Television, offers fans from across the country a chance to watch their favourite superheroes on television, before the world, just months after the worldwide movie release. Making it even exciting is the latest offering that will see Hollywood A-listers speak the Indian languages.
Come December 8, 2019, Spidey is all set to say Hello, Vanakkam, Namaste and Namaskaram with the World Television Premiere of Spider-Man: Far From Home on December 8, 2019, at 1PM, 7PM and 9PM in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. The channel has garnered support from premium brands such as Ray-Ban and Bose as Co-Powered By sponsors and Adidas as the Associate sponsor. With this, viewers will now be able to enjoy an unparalleled movie viewing experience and watch the biggest titles like Jumanji: The Next Level, Charlie’s Angels and many more that will soon be available on &flix.
To keep the momentum going, &flix also brings to its viewers a new programming block “Flix For All” now in your own language, weekdays at 9PM. The block includes a specially curated line-up of high-octane movies, which will not only be aired in English, but also in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi. The library includes hits such as Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Bad Boys II, Venom, Brightburn, MIB: International, Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse and many more.
To launch this offering, the channel has taken an all-inclusive communication approach with multiple content innovations and marketing initiatives. These initiatives include associations with YouTube content creators, new age and print media platforms and even the Mumbai Metro. Additionally, &flix has also collaborated with its trade partners to introduce and create conversations around the offering.
Sharing his views, ZEEL Premium Channel Cluster Business Head Kartik Mahadev said, “The English movies category has always been metro focussed. However, NTO has homogenized the market, in the sense that viewers in the mega-cities and viewers in a remote Indian small town are both paying the same price to subscribe to an English movie channel. This makes for a compelling case for channel brands to broaden their approach.”
“Market studies and domestic box office collections reveal that the appetite for Hollywood movies has seen an upward trend. Language has brought in greater access to Hollywood movies. Viewers today increasingly look at watching movies in their native language to derive greater joy. This reflects in the reach for dubbed Hollywood movies on television as well. Offering viewers the flexibility to watch movies in the language of their choice, is an effort towards serving the wider demand for Hollywood movies,” he adds.
&flix offers some of the choicest Hollywood movies with World Television Premieres showcased before the world and in the language of your choice. The channel is available as part of the Zee Prime English Pack that includes 4 premium channels – &flix, Zee Café, LF and WION at a very attractive price of Rs 15/- per month only. That’s not all! For those who appreciate nuanced cinema, &PrivéHD brings riveting and award-winning films that stimulate the minds and bring alive the other side of cinema with Zee Prime English HD Pack comprising – &PrivéHD, Zee Café HD, &flix HD, LF HD is priced at Rs 25/-. Consumers can also subscribe to the Zee All In One Pack @ Rs. 59/- per month.
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.
