The pay television unit of the PLDT Group is set to air the country’s first 24-hour business news channel in June this year.
Cignal TV Inc. and Bloomberg Television on Wednesday announced a partnership to create Bloomberg Television Philippines, which is scheduled to launch in June this year.
“This partnership with Bloomberg Television heralds a new era in Philippine television, in which business information is set to be in the front and center of a rising Philippine economy,” PLDT chairman Manuel Pangilinan said.
“This also comes at the time when we are expecting to become the country’s biggest pay-TV service provider with more than one million subscribers by the end of this year,” he said.
Cignal TV chief operating officer Oscar Reyes Jr. said the partnership with Bloomberg would help the company increase its subscribers.
“We are targeting over one million users by end of the year,” he said.
The country’s direct-to-home pay TV provider had 844,000 subscribers as of end-2014, or 13 percent more than 630,000 in 2013.
The end-2014 subscriber count surpassed Skycable’s 800,000.
“We are very excited to be partnering with Bloomberg and believe their global experience will be invaluable in taking business television programming to the next level,” said Noel Lorenzana, president and chief executive of MediaQuest, the media arm of PLDT.
“Our financial markets are rapidly growing in size and sophistication and we saw room for a premier business channel that can inform, educate and showcase the best of business and finance in the Philippines,” Lorenzana said.