The Philippines has for a long time been the third largest foreign market for the US motion picture industry, a not surprising fact considering that this country is the third largest English-speaking country in the world.
In more recent times the Philippines has become the world’s No. 1 country for BPO (business process outsourcing). Not unrelated to that, this country is recognized as being the SMS (short message system) capital of the world.
Despite these manifestations of market significance and technological savvy, the giants of the world television industry regarded the Philippines as a market of less than prime status. That appears to be changing.
The first indication of the world TV industry’s attitudinal change vis-à-vis the Philippines was the entry into the Philippine market, two years ago, of the redoubtable, Atlanta-based CNN. Said by many observers to be the industry’s No. 1—a claim that BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) News hotly disputes—CNN entered into a market tie-up with, first, Solar TV of the Tieng group and, later, with the business group headed by Antonio Cabangon Chua.
CNN was followed, two months ago, by Bloomberg Television, a member of the trio of American TV industry giants (the third being Fox News). The TV network controlled by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has entered the Philippine market via a tie-up with News 5 and Cignal TV, two leading media companies affiliated with the conglomerate headed by Manuel V. Pangilinan. News 5 is the country’s third-ranking TV company (after ABS-CBN and GMA), while Cignal TV is the nation’s No. 1 pay-TV service provider.
Another component of the Pangilinan-led group of media companied is MediaQuest, which is the mother company of News 5 and Cignal TV.
Given their business-TV orientation, there can be no doubt that CNN Philippines and Bloomberg TV Philippines discern a bright future in this country for the business-news side of the TV industry. At the time that they made their decisions to enter the Philippine market, they doubtless were aware that ABS-CBN already had an arrangement with CNBC, the business-news service of the American broadcast giant NBC.
The tie-up will provide Cignal TV’s over 1 million subscribers and News 5’s viewers access to the business and economic news generated by Bloomberg’s 2,400 news professionals reporting from 150 bureaus in 73 countries. News 5 is recognized as being rather weak on the business side of the news.
Observers within and outside the TV industry have been heard to wonder whether it was deliberate on the part of industry leaders ABS-CBN and GMA to not seek tie-ups with foreign TV networks for business-news content. If it wasn’t, it would appear that News 5 and the Cabangon-Chua organization have beaten them to the punch.
One can only hope that the Cignal-News 5-Bloomberg tie-up will bring first-rate news—especially business news—to Cignal and News 5 audiences. The material that the mother CNN currently allows CNN Philippines to air leaves much to be desired. With the exception of two or three news shows, the locally generated component of CNN Philippines’ programming likewise falls short of the mark.
With CNN and Bloomberg now in the Philippine market, can BBC and Fox News be far behind?
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