English Entertainment
Live it up with Romedy NOW this July
MUMBAI: Here’s the best way to jumpstart July and keep the pace going without a moment’s rest. There’s the very best of love and laughter in store for you throughout the month that will keep you coming back to Romedy NOW, the exclusive English General Entertainment channel, for
more and more. Catch the handpicked series and movies lined up just for you!
With the world’s most popular series that has its fans asking for more, don’t miss your daily dose of F.R.I.E.N.D.S., Monday – Thursday at 8 -9 PM. Catch the regular antics of Skip who lives at the most influential address of the US in ‘1600 Penn’, Fridays 8 PM. Score for the highest goal in ‘Back in the Game’ Fridays 8:30 PM. Watch out for crazy experiments in ‘Better Off Ted’, Saturdays 8 PM and add to the share of the cup-cake business with ‘2 Broke Girls’, Saturdays 8:30 PM. Join the world of friends, each of whom think the other has it better in ‘Friends with Better Lives’! Watch #FWBL every Saturday at 11pm. Don’t miss the sassy lawyer in ‘Ally McBeal’ from Monday to Thursday at 11 am. This July, Romedy NOW offers another successful series adding to its existing line-up of popular series called ‘Jake in Progress’, starting July 25th, Fridays at 8pm. Experience the life of a celebrity publicist as he juggles with his clients and keeps them away from potentially scandalous and possibly career damaging situations.
Brace yourself as Romedy NOW presents an all new meaning to the words ‘Living it up’! With movies that showcase true passion for life and zest, Romedy NOW says ‘Live it Up’ starting 7th July from Monday to Thursday, 9pm. Watch the beautiful Debra Messing in The Wedding Date where she hires a complete stranger as her escort to her half-sister’s wedding. Next it’s time for Crazy Stupid Love, as we see Cal Weaver go through life as a sudden and reluctant single and all the confusion that follows with teenage crushes, heartbreaks and angry dad’s protective of
their teenage daughters. Certainly not to be missed is ‘Letters to Juliet’ which is inspired by the art of letter writing the old fashioned way. Also catch movies such as Valentine’s Day, Horrible Bosses, Love and Other Drugs, the ever favourite Marley and Me and a lot more.
Get ready for one of the most romantic stories on screen ever on ‘Romedy of the Month’. Watch The Notebook on Saturday, 26th July, 9 PM. The No. 4 at the box office and 12th highest romantic drama grosser is all about love, love and more love. Set in the 1940s, the movie is about a rich heiress Allie Hamilton (Rachel Adams) and a country boy Noah Calhoun (Ryan Gosling) who fall in love at a carnival. But the two are separated because of social class barriers after which Allie moves to New York and Noah joins the army. After waiting for Noah to write to her but in vain, Allie gets engaged to a wealthy lawyer, Lon only to discover that her mother had been hiding the letters. But before the arranged nuptials, Allie must choose between her first love and her commitment to Lon. Surrender yourself to the beauty of a canvas being painted where shades from different palettes come together and consolidate your belief in love.
“If music be the food of love, play on!” Thus spoke Shakespeare. Here’s your chance to hum the tune of love with ‘Romedy Playlist’. Starting 4th July, experience the emotions of sweet notes every Friday, 11 PM with favourites such as The Sound of Music, The Wedding Singer, Music and Lyrics and Moulin Rouge.
Feel more of love, life and laughter all this month only on Romedy NOW!
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.
