English Entertainment
Romedy Now launches #FurrentinesDay film, garners 1.5 mn views
MUMBAI: This year, celebrate Valentine Day with a furry twist on Romedy Now. The channel has launched a unique property- #FurrentinesDay, to celebrate Valentine’s with animals – pets and abandoned stray friends. This property has been launched in association with Cat Café Studio and People for Animals with an aim to help animals get a merrier and furrier future.
The on-ground event for this unique initiative took place at Cat Cafe Studio in Andheri. The event dazzled in the presence of famous celebrities, Richa Chadda, Zareen Khan, culinary chef and well known author Maria Goretti and famous wrestler Sangram Singh.
The integrated campaign on TV and social media started from 1 February 2017 with a series of videos, celebrity bytes, animal profiles and trivia on social media. The campaign received support and tremendous response on social media with the #FurrentinesDay launch film garnering 1.5 million views on Facebook within 48 hours.
Romedy Now will pay its ultimate tribute to animals by launching a beautiful #FurrentinesDay film starring singer and actor Meiyang Chang. The film will be launched on 14 February across all Romedy Now platforms – on air, digital and social media.
Additionally, well known faces like John Abraham, Meneka Gandhi, Singer Shaan, Jackky Bhagnani, Ali Fazal, Sunny Leone, Sophie Chaudary, Tara Sharma and many more shared the video to their followers and put out their video bytes in support of the initiative.
Chadda said, “It’s great that Romedy Now has taken this responsibility of spreading awareness about animal welfare because channels like these can reach a wider target audience. I personally love cats and I am happy to be associated with #FurrentinesDay as I feel everyone deserves love on Valentines – humans and animals alike! One of the aims of the initiative is to find loving homes for these homeless indigenous species of cats.”
Khan added, “It’s every individual’s responsibility to make sure that no living being is ill-treated, be it humans or animals. I love cats and I feel deeply for them as they can’t ask for what they need and as human I feel we should be sensitive towards them. I’m glad to be here and associating with Romedy Now for this cause has been really worthwhile. I want to tell everyone that please support this initiative of #Furrentine’sDay and show some love to these animals.”
Goretti said, “Animals are our best companions and it is our responsibility to take care of them. My children love animals and they feel happy around them and therefore I am happy that I could support #FurrentinesDay – a unique initiative by Romedy Now that goes beyond just loving humans. Animals are dependent on us and I want to take this platform to tell people that we need to look beyond our own interests and help these little creatures live a healthy life.”
Singh, who was brand ambassador of People For Animals said, “I want to thank Romedy Now for taking up this initiative. We must care for animals just like we care for our children because they are also like children. They are one of us and we need to treat them well. They are more loyal than humans and give us unconditional love! I come from a small town where we take special care of animals. I would like to take this opportunity to support this initiative and spread awareness.”
Viewers and fans, as a part of the digital campaign, can tweet about their love for animals by using the hashtag #FurrentinesDay! For every tweet received, Romedy Now will make a contribution to Cat Café Studio and People For Animals to help the cause of animal welfare. The campaign has received over 2500 tweets so far and is still counting.
On 14 February 2017, Romedy Now will go on a Valentine’s Day date with its furry friends at Cat Café Studio. The channel’s Facebook page will live stream the V Day party and celebrations from there.
On television, Romedy Now has lined up special movies on 12 February to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Films like Marmaduke, 101 Dalmatians, 102 Dalmatians, Cats and Dogs, Beverly Hills Chihuahua & Princess Diary will be aired all day.
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.
