Rallying Behind Bandila
ABS-CBN performs ‘act of leadership’—but who’s following?
Rallying Behind Bandila
By Hector Bryant L. Macale
It promised leadership.
When ABS-CBN announced it was reformatting its late night news, viewers sat up in attention. The network said more: it was moving the news to an earlier time slot. At 10:30 p.m., it was going to be earlier than its predecessor, Insider, by at least an hour and a half and catch the audience before they go to bed.
So how was it?
PJR Reports reviewed the first two weeks of Bandila. It also compared the news program with the last two weeks of Insider and ABS-CBN’s early evening newscast, TV Patrol World.
Context and controversy
Bandila’s strength is its willingness to take a story and explore the various issues surrounding it. Beyond the five Ws and H of the hottest issues of the day, it takes an issue to another level by adding perspective and analysis to it, thereby providing viewers a journalistic ingredient sorely lacking in many TV reports: context.
Because Bandila provides background and context in many of its reports, these are much longer than the usual one-and-a-half-minute airtime given to news stories.
Not surprisingly, Bandila began with a bang. On its premiere episode, it showed the video where Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, surrounded by other military oficers, announced his withdrawal of support from the Arroyo administration whose leader he called a “bogus president.” It was the video that the government had long been looking for and for which some officials had accused another station, ABC-5, of having in its possession.
Among media circles, the showing of the video raised eyebrows—especially with the rumor that a few media organizations, probably inclu-ding ABS-CBN, had the controversial video as far back as February when the supposed coup crumbled. If the network had the video all along, why did it wait this long to show it? Eyebrows were raised further when it was made known that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo had summoned some of her officials to sit and watch with her the premiere telecast of Bandila in Malacañang, apparently in anticipation of the video to be shown.
Bandila devoted its first 14 minutes exploring the various issues surrounding the alleged coup plotters in and outside the military. The report, which also reported the affidavit made by Lim where he stated that he was not involved in any coup plot, went for four minutes and 15 seconds.
The Lim video was followed by a report on the repercussions of the alleged coup plot on the military and the other participants. For the next few days, the plot was among Bandila’s stories. Whatever the reasons and circumstances behind the decision of ABS-CBN to show the Lim video, Bandila nevertheless scored a coup—of the journalistic kind.
What, no gossip?
Bandila also comprehensively covered other issues, such as the cheating in the recent nursing examinations and the casualties of Typhoon Florita in various parts of the country.
It reported stories that were mostly ignored or forgotten by other TV news programs. Its segment on “Sinag Ulat” tackled the proliferation of illegal masiao operations in Visayas and Mindanao; the dengue problem that stalked residents displaced by the North Rail rehabilitation project; the continuing presence of fake drugs in the market; and the return of the garbage problem in Payatas.
Veering from a usual practice of news programs, Bandila noticeably dispelled with entertainment gossip, a fare that has lately been added to the news program of government station NBN-4.
If TV Patrol World—and to a lesser extent, Insider—has become notorious for the dominance of crime and entertainment reports in its news list, Bandila has so far resisted doing so.
In place of the latest showbiz scandal or the latest chop-chop victim in the barangay, it lightened up its newscast with segments like “Astig!” which reports on outstanding Filipinos worthy of admiration and emulation, such as the Ramon Magsaysay Awardee Tony Meloto, founder of Gawad Kalinga. “Halo-halong Balita” offers human interest stories such as boxer Manny Pacquiao’s recent win against Mexican fighter Oscar Larios and a new computer game made by Filipinos.
Bandila has also turned down the volume in so far as news reading is concerned. Doing without the loud and exaggerated delivery of the news that has characterized anchoring in GMA-7’s 24 Oras, Bandila chose to depend on the sober recitation of its old reliables—Korina Sanchez, Ces Oreña Drilon, and Henry Omaga Diaz.
Also news
There are, however, some aspects of the news program that need tweaking.
While offering compre-hensive reporting on its main news, Bandila fails to provide background and context to other stories. There have been instances when Bandila merely reported on an account without providing enough background or context. Stories that viewers might have expected to be followed up were not.
One example is the July 4 report on the declining quality of elementary and secondary education in the country as indicated by the failing scores of many students in the recent National Achievement Test. The most likely culprits of the problem, the report said, are student overcrowding in classrooms and the lack of textbooks. What might have been a thorough discussion of a lingering problem with long-term implications for the country was reduced to a one-shot report.
The program should also put more focus on news happening elsewhere in the country, and not just in Manila. Undoubtedly, political events such as Charter Change and destabilization plots demand the program’s attention, but there are events taking place in the other regions as well.
The same weakness can be seen in its delivery of foreign news. While issues like terror attacks and increasing oil prices have direct impact on Filipinos, Bandila would do well to take up other developments that are not always understood by its audience, such as the complexity of the Lebanon-Israel war or even the goings-on in Asia. With its correspondents deployed abroad, Bandila can do a lot by providing a Filipino—if not Asian—perspective on global events rather than just looking at these through the prism of the United States, the latter being a result perhaps of the traditional orientation of many local journalists, including those who have worked for foreign news agencies.
While eschewing high-pitched news reading, Bandila however has noticeably made much use of colorful and flashy displays, perhaps as part of its effort to be “visually exciting.” While such visual gloss with bright infographics and smart camera shots can serve as enticement to readers, they can also deflect attention from the news itself. Some visual tricks, notably the rotating icon of the program, can be quite distracting, if not downright dizzying.
Not-so-late news
Still, Bandila deserves credit for going where its main competitor has not dared to go. It has addressed a lingering concern about news program-ming, especially the television networks’ preoccupation with ratings rather than public service.
In its report on the 2004 campaign and elections coverage, the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) wrote: “Prime time… which is usually filled with more popular entertainment has been stretched beyond previously established limits,” resulting in the airing of late night news even later at night and often after 11:30 pm.
As early as 1998, BusinessWorld columnist Dean O. de la Paz noted in his July 5 column, that late evening news scheduled for 10:30 p.m. were being delayed by as much as 40 minutes. By 2001, De la Paz wrote, the news—at least for one network—had been “moved back by as much as an hour as entertainment program-ming increasingly dominated the mass market’s conscious hours.”
By the first quarter of 2004 all the way to May 2006, he continued, “late evening news programs crossed the dateline where it would start from 11:30 p.m. to as late as 12:30 a.m. of the following day.”
“This extension,” CMFR wrote in its report, “is an abuse of media franchise that requires broadcast stations to devote a certain amount of time to news and public affairs programs; presumably at hours when most people are still awake.” CMFR said that the commercial purposes of broadcast have “taken over large segments of time which had been set aside for conducting a public forum for the affairs of the day.”
Wait and see
That is why ABS-CBN’s decision to replace its late-night newscast Insider (previously aired at around 11:30 p.m. or whenever its last entertainment program ended) with Bandila at 10:30 p.m. made the media industry sit up and, if somewhat cynically, watch.
After all, in order to accommodate Bandila, ABS-CBN had to shuffle its primetime programs consisting of adverti-sing magnets like soap operas, game contests, and reality-based programs.
To be fair, ABS-CBN was not the first to pull its late-news program to an earlier hour. Other stations, like ABC-5, have already done it and the move by the Lopez-owned network leaves GMA-7’s Saksi as the only late-night news program airing at 11:30 p.m. until midnight on free TV. So far, Saksi has not budged from its very late schedule or from its higher viewership rating.
In fact, there is every danger that ABS-CBN might be realizing it has bitten off more than it could chew. On some days, Bandila has started airing 15 minutes later than its scheduled showing.
Basing it from the ratings last July, the public still prefers Saksi when they watch late night news. According to AGB Nielsen Media Research, Bandila’s weekly ratings in July ranged from 6.7 to 7.4 percent. Saksi, meanwhile, consistently scored higher—with weekly ratings ranging from 10 to 11.7 percent on the same month. Bandila also scored lower in the ratings vis-a-vis its counterpart entertainment programs in the Kapuso network in July.
With ABS-CBN moving its late-night newscast to the more manageable time of 10:30 p.m., does this mean an end to the late late-night TV newscasts and more quality news and public affairs programs in primetime?
This we have yet to see.
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