ABS-CBN and TV5: Business as usual

It’s business as usual between ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation and TV5.

​The Manny V. Pangilinan empire is demanding unpaid dues from the Lopez conglomerates.

They are debts incurred during the showing of some ABS-CBN shows in TV5.

Socio-culturally, though, there are many ways to skin the cat.

Filipinos are known for “pakikisama” and this might work to solve the problem.  

Although both ABS-CBN and TV are business enterprises, competitors among themselves, there are also considerations of symbiotic relations between two major broadcast platforms by socio-cultural standards.

​In the last four years that ABS-CBN has been providing contents for TV5, the latter has benefitted through the high ratings of the former’s block timer’s programs, specifically the teleseryes produced by ABS-CBN Studios in collaboration with Dreamscape Entertainment or CCM Productions, an independent media company founded by Coco Martin.

If it were not for the disenfranchisement of ABS-CBN, these top-raters TV dramas or action capers of Star Network should have been the perennial Very High Frequency (VHF) hits but still, screening them in an outsider free TV—which has been the third force during the height of the ABS-CBN and GMA Network fiercest battle over ratings supremacy—boosted TV5 mass appeal and popularity.

​How many times have TV5 been launched and relaunched, succession after succession of ownership and touted to be the alternative choice between Channel 2 and 7?

​Sadly, it has remained a major player on the peripheral equation of ABS-CBN and GMA Network with all the marketing strategies they had to bargain for.

​Let’s face it, TV5 was no-rater (most of its shows, anyway) before 2020.

Advertisers are dependent on their media values in high survey rankings of traditional TV, still the bible of diverse demographics, presumably from classes A to D.

​The topnotch in viewership, the higher the advertising rates.

That is why ABS-CBN was on top of the heap not only because of lording it over in local productions but it also dominated the global tube programming of Filipino shows due to the gigantic technological breakthroughs of The Filipino Channel (TFC) that bolstered its visibility worldwide.

​It was wise of ABS-CBN to have shifted easily, firstly and originally to digital or online broadcasts but traditional TV still has the command of the bigger chunks of ads, the lifeline, first and foremost, of productions to sustain themselves.

​With the absence of ABS-CBN in the free TV market, it gave an impetus to TV5 and its partnership.

We don’t have the right idea of how much ABS-CBN and TV5 earn in their collaboration but it’s safe to say that both companies should reap good lucrative profits despite the Manny V. Pangilinan-run empire running after Lopez’s unpaid dues.

TV5 since its beginning doesn’t have a stable of prized possessions or stars of the biggest magnitude—chiefly in the production side—unlike ABS-CBN which has tremendously poured in support, logistically and otherwise, to its contract stars and made them the brightest this side of the Mother Ignacia firmament.

By bringing them to TV5 all of its major stars, it has somehow lent the most glamorous and appealing presence on the network.

​It’s wiser for TV5 to have invested in new stars so its “Artista Search” program is an awaited offering of cornucopia of talents although it’s indeed hard to