English Entertainment
Zee Café brings in the festive cheer, premiering new shows and latest seasons with two new content blocks – ‘Along With The US’ and ‘Hollywood On Café’
MUMBAI: Lights, camera, action – this festive season, Zee Café has it all! It's time to sparkle-up your evenings as the fiesta begins this September on Zee Café. Join in the celebrations as the channel launches two content blocks with the biggest, freshest and award-winning shows in its long running content blocks- 'Along With The US' airing, weekends at 7 PM all through October and 'Hollywood On Café' starting October 14, weeknights at 10 PM. While ‘Along With The US’ features a mix of iconic and latest shows along with the U.S, ‘Hollywood On Café’ brings the scale and grandeur of Hollywood on television.
The stellar line-up for ‘Along With The US’ empowers entertainment enthusiasts to discover the cool, witness the new and watch it before anyone else, exclusively on TV on Zee Café. The block promises flavours from the comic universe to the medical hallways and from the fantasy world to the action-packed alleys, catering to the taste-buds of Zee Café’s diverse viewers. The line-up features latest seasons of the most iconic shows on Zee Café – Grey’s Anatomy S16 – a season of family, expansion and Supergirl S5 – touted as a ‘fight for the soul’. That’s not all! Together with an array of all new shows such as The Unicorn, Carol’s Second Act, Seal Team S3, Magnum PI S2 and Charmed S2 available exclusively on TV on Zee Café and nowhere else, the block promises to leave you hooked.
What’s more? With an unmatched cinematic experience, ‘Hollywood On Café’ features top-rated mini-dramas of Hollywood stature. Truly bringing the scale and extravagance of Hollywood on television, the block enables viewers to experience a Hollywood-level hangout only on Zee Café. The line-up features world-class shows on television including thrillers like LA’s Finest, The Son and The Counterpart S2, along with the controversial plots like The Loudest Voice and City On A Hill. Each of these world-class shows feature Academy Award-winning cast and crew from the likes of Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and the Golden Globe winner Kevin Bacon among others.
Speaking about the launch, Kartik Mahadev, Business Head, English Cluster, ZEEL, said, “Speaking about the launch, Kartik Mahadev, Business Head, English Cluster, ZEEL, said, “As content options grow and genres expand, viewers are becoming more sure than ever before about what they choose to watch. Discovery of new content brings with it a sense of achievement and delight. Our endeavour is to curate content that will delight our consumers. As part of our festive curation, Zee Café is launching two new exciting blocks – Along With The US and Hollywood On Café.”
“Over the years, we have built these content blocks to reflect the channel philosophy of All Eyes on New with the freshest shows and newest seasons. Last year, Along With The US grew the 7PM – 10PM slot viewership by 52% (BARC, NCCS AB 15-40-Megacities). Shows such as The Sinner and The Night Manager, as part of HollywoodOnCafé, saw a jump in viewership by 75% and 55%, respectively. This year we are sure the Zee Cafe subscribers will be delighted to watch returning favourites like Supergirl and Grey’s Anatomy and discover 8 new shows” he added.
Bringing some of the choicest Hollywood blockbusters, prized dramas, international news and lifestyle content for the Indian viewers, the unique bouquet – Zee Prime English Pack – comprising &flix, Zee Café, LF and Wion, is priced at an attractive Rs. 15/- per month. That’s not all! For those who appreciate nuanced cinema, &PrivéHD brings riveting and award-winning films that stimulate the minds as they show them the other side of cinema. 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.
