English Entertainment
Star Movies celebrates Children’s Day on November 14th
Mumbai, November 10, 2005: It’s the only day when children get all the freedom to freak out and have fun because it’s their day. And Star Movies gives them a good reason to stay at home and tune-in to some of their all time favorite Hollywood movies like Home Alone, Three Men and a Baby, X2- X Men United, Good Boy, 3 Ninjas, Shrek 2, Sindbad: Legend of Seven Seas, this ‘Children’s day‘, on November 14th 2005 from 11 am onwards.
The schedule is as follows
| Movie | Time |
| Home Alone | 7:15 am |
| Three Men & A Baby | 9 am |
| X2: X Men United | 11 am |
| Good Boy | 1:35 pm |
| 3 Ninjas | 3:20 pm |
| Sinbad: Legend of Seven Seas | 5:15 pm |
| Shrek 2 | 7 pm |
At 5.15 pm, watch ‘Sinbad: Legend of Seven Seas’, the most daring and notorious rogue ever to sail the seven seas, has spent his life asking for trouble, and trouble has finally answered in a big way. Framed for stealing one of the worlds most priceless and powerful treasures, the Book of Peace, Sinbad has one chance to find and return the precious book, or his best friend Proteus will die. Sinbad decides not to take that chance and instead sets a course for the fun and sun of the Fiji Islands. However, Proteus’ beautiful betrothed, Marina, has stowed away on Sinbad’s ship, determined to make sure that Sinbad fulfills his mission and saves Proteus’ life. Now the man who put the “bad” in Sinbad is about to find out how bad bad can be.
Meet Samuel, Jeffrey and Michael Douglas in the most adorable movie 3 Ninjas at 3.20 pm! Their grandfather, Mori Tanaka, is highly skilled in the fields of Martial Arts and Ninjitsu. And for years he’s been training these boys this technique. But one day, an old “friend” of Grandpa’s, Hugo Snyder, reappears. He’s being hassled by the FBI, and the boys’ father happens to be an FBI officer. So Snyder figures if he kidnaps the father’s kids, it will ease the tension, none of his own men are suitable for the task, so he hires three dim and incredibly incompetent surfers to do the deed.
So make sure this Children’s Day, all you kids grab the TV remote, get your popcorn ready and make your space on the couch for an entire day of hilarious, adventurous, swashbuckling blockbusters only on Star Movies from 11:00 am onwards.
Star, a wholly-owned subsidiary of News Corporation, is Asia’s leading multi-platform content and service provider. Star’s over 40 distributed services in seven languages reach more than 300 million viewers across 53 Asian countries. Star television channels include Star Chinese Channel, Star Plus, Star World, Xing Kong, Vijay, Phoenix Chinese Channel, Channel [V], ESPN, Star Sports, Star Chinese Movies, Star Gold, Star Mandarin Movies, Star Movies, Phoenix Movies Channel, Star News, Phoenix InfoNews Channel, in addition to distributed channels National Geographic Channel, A1, The History Channel, Fox News and Sky News. Star has interests in cable systems in India and Taiwan. It also powers the launch of Total TV in Taiwan, Asia’s first interactive digital cable TV services. In addition, it provides advertising sales and marketing services and is a key source of programming expertise for Radio City, the first FM radio network to launch in India.
For further information please contact:
In Mumbai
Zeenat Khan
Communications Department
STAR (India) Ltd
Tel No. 91-22-56305555
Shiraz Bhavnani / Nivedita Kamat
Vaishnavi Corporate Communications
Tel: 91-22-5656 8787
Fax: 91-22-5656 8788
Email: sbhavnani@vccpl.com / nkamat@vccpl.com
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.
