English Entertainment
&Privé HD celebrates the birthday of the Steven Spielberg
MUMBAI: &Privé HD, the English movie channel, presents Club Privé: Spielberg Edition – a curation of five of Spielberg’s best movies exploring different sides of human emotions. The special will air from 18 to 22 December at 11 pm only on &Privé HD.
A master of emotions and technique, Spielberg is undoubtedly one of the most influential film personalities. Winner of 3 Academy awards and 7 nominations, he is known for his signature filmmaking style with an enviable filmography. Spielberg’s films have been instrumental in revolutionizing the film industry and refining the views of its audience, as each of his movies compels the audience to delve deeper into the lives of theirprotagonists and feel the other side of cinema.
The Club Privé: Spielberg Edition is in line with the channel’s promise of presenting quality cinema to its discerning non-conformist viewers. Upholding its promise to deliver the finest films to its perceptive audience, &Privé HD celebrates the filmmaker extraordinaire with movies that highlight theintricacies of their characters.Each of the carefully curated films deliver a distinctinsight to the audience, presenting them with multiple layers that appeal to their appetite for cinema that touches the soul. The line-up of movies includes:
Bridge of Spies (18th December, 2017)
Starring Tom Hanks as a lawyer (Donovan) tasked with coordinating a prisoner exchange, the film is a Cold War tale of moral principles colliding with the imperatives of national security. It not only unfolds the story behind how Donovan bargains for the exchange, but also entices audiences to root for a soviet spy as he is returned to his country.
The Terminal (19th December, 2017)
Starring Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta Jones, the film depicts heart-warming story of an immigrant, who finds himself stranded in a busy New York airport terminal due to unseen circumstances. Nevertheless, he makes the best of his situation, essentially adopting the terminal as his home, befriending the staff and even falling in love with one of the flight attendants.
Super 8 (20th December, 2017)
The cult classic sees six teens making a zombie movie and get caught up in a military cover-up involving a mysterious beast. It projects how the unusual disappearances and inexplicable events begin to take place in town, and the local Deputy tries to uncover the truth – something more terrifying than any of them could have imagined.
Amistad (21st December, 2017)
Relating to the American cultural landscape, this courtroom drama is based on the true story of the events in 1839 aboard the slave ship La Amistad, during which Mende tribesmen abducted for the slave trade managed to gain control of their captors’ ship off the coast of Cuba, and the international legal battle that followed their capture by a U.S. revenue cutter.With the justice system and defenceattorneys all presenting a different viewpoint, the film explores the different opinions of each character, and how each is crucial to the final verdict.
Catch Me if You Can (22nd December, 2017)
Starring powerhouse performers Leonardo Di Caprio and Tom Hanks, the film illustrates the events of a successful con artist and master of deception. While the film shows Frank as a brilliant forger, whose skill at check fraud has netted him millions of dollars in stolen funds, it also highlights the story of Carl Hanratty (Tom Hanks) as a sharp cop on Frank’s tail. A deeply moving coming of age black comedy that follows the true story of Frank Abagnale, one of the most famous con-artists in history.
Since its launch, &Privé HD has presented some of the most-awaited critically-acclaimed movies for its audience. With Club Privé: Spielberg Edition, it’s time to raise a toast to Steven Spielberg and the sheer brilliance of his work.
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.
