English Entertainment
The great Indian Diwali on English GECs and movie channels
As families and friends come together to celebrate Diwali and spend personal time with loved ones at home, English movie and general entertainment channels (GEC) have put together some of the best line ups to reign in the festive period. While the genre stands fragmented, channels nonetheless are trying to woo audiences with either movie or show premieres or telecasting title’s that have repeat value.
Zee Studio which underwent a refresh recently will telecast its special Diwali movie, How To Train Your Dragon at 12 pm and 9 pm. Its festival property ‘Studio Dynamite’ will include blockbusters such as Mission Impossible, Transformers, Avengers etc. Apart from this, movies like Lincoln, Shrek Forever After and Shutter Island will complete its programming lineup.
Starting 23 October 9 am onwards, Movies Now viewers are in for a programming lineup which covers different genres. To tickle the funny bone are the hilarious trio of a sabertooth tiger, a sloth and a wooly mammoth from Ice Age. This will be followed by The Karate Kid, Kung Fu Panda, The Matrix, Olympus Has Fallen and X Men Origins: Wolverine. The finale will see good forces combine in an all out war with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II.
HBO and its two premium channels; HBO Hits and HBO Defined too are vying for a share of the viewership pie this festive season. HBO will telecast Pacific Rim on 23 October at 1:57 pm, Step Up on 24 October at 6:54 pm, Red2 on 27 October at 9 pm, followed by World War Z on 28 October at 9pm. While HBO Hits will serve Riddick, Ghost Team One and Season one of The Knick on its platter, HBO Defined will have season one of Grace, Silicon Valley and True Detective.
Another major player Star Movies has also put in place a festive lineup. Robert Downey Jr fans can watch Tony Stark’s world being torn apart by the formidable terrorist called The Mandarin on 23 October at 9 pm. This will be followed by Men In Black at 11 pm. The other movies include Unstoppable, Speed, Fast Five, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Men in Black 3, King Kong and Resident Evil: Retribution.
Sony Pix from the MSM stable along with its English GEC AXN started their Diwali celebrations with the simulcast of the legendary crime fighting cyborg Robocop on 19 October at 1 pm and 9 pm. AXN has also brought in two new shows especially for the festive season. While NCIS runs from Monday to Thursday at 10 pm, Supernatural airs every Saturday at 10 pm.
So what brings English movies and GECs come up with special programming for Diwali? Says Maxus managing partner north and east region Navin Khemka, “Currently as some of these channels are able to draw an average yield, they try building a lot of hype and aura around these shows through various campaigns to maximise the yield in an extremely fragmented space. The festive season thus is about increasing the average yield where survival is vital.”
English GEC Romedy Now through the theme of celebrating the joy of family and togetherness has launched its property ‘Diwali Sparklers,’ starting 4 October, 8pm onwards. The lineup for the slot includes Family Stone, The Notebook, Guess Who, Madagascar, Monster-in-Law and 27 Dresses among others.
Comedy Central too has announced the launch of four new shows that will be premiered from 27 October from Monday to Friday. These are Billy on The Street 9 (at 8 pm) Psych (seasons one to four at 9 pm), Penn and Teller: Fool Us (at 10 pm) and The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon at 11 pm. These four will be premiered from 27 October 2014 from Monday to Friday.
Star World Premiere HD has New Girl season four, Community season five, Revenge season four, Modern Family season six, Bones season 10, Home Land season four among others. Star World will broadcast House season five, The Simpsons season 17, Masterchef Australia season six, Big Bang Theory season five etc. Meanwhile FX has lined up The X Files season nine, Californication season seven, Sons of Anarchy season six and Alias season one among others.
According to Madison Media COO Karthik Lakshminarayan, since festive period sees a surge in advertising and these movie channels and GEC’s too are vying for a share of the pie, they come up with the special programming lineup. “The special programming for the festive season helps channels spike their advertising revenue on an average by 10-12 per cent,” he concludes.
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.
