By Pola Esguerra del Monte
Assistant editor, BWorld University
The 1280×720 screen burst to life.
Little people, now smaller than ever, begin talking in front of the camera, doing all sorts of tricks that TV people usually do. There’s joking and laughing, and laughing and crying — until the scene abruptly stops.
A grey wheel spins in the middle of the shrunken landscape.
If this scene had taken place decades ago, a family sitting in front of a glowing TV set would have found that weird.
But the year is 2016, and buffering is a daily hurdle as the habit of “watching” has taken an entirely different form.
The TV, the medium called the “small screen” compared to cinema’s big screen, is being challenged by the even “smaller” screens of mobile and computing devices with video-streaming capabilities that are letting audiences watch whatever they want any time they want, and are advancing what is said to be the imminent death of TV — albeit at a glacial pace.
American tracking firm Nielsen, which has been measuring television audiences since 1950, has heralded the arrival of digital viewing. In a statement last August, it proclaimed: “There’s no doubt a digital age is upon us,” noting that the average American owns four digital devices, and are increasingly using these tools and platforms to keep them entertained.
In this era of globalization, the Philippines is not far behind, with viewers constantly looking down from the TV to their phones. And as viewership diversifies, so are big businesses betting on the changing landscape.
TRADITIONAL-TO-DIGITAL SPEND SHIFT
“Right now, I don’t see online in the Philippines becoming more profitable than TV in the next decade,” Dennis Lim, head of ABS-CBN Corp.’s Digital Media Services arm, said frankly.
ABS-CBN, the largest entertainment and media conglomerate in the Philippines, and a household name, owns and operates two national television networks and 12 cable channels.
Despite the “digital age,” ABS-CBN hasn’t shown signs of slowing down. In fact, it registered a net income of P1.89 billion for the nine-month period ending September — 22.7% up from the previous year’s P1.54 billion.
Still, the bellwether of the media industry has been looking at the potential of digital. Last year, it added to its portfolio a multi-channel network in YouTube called “Chicken Pork Adobo,” which Mr. Lim is part of. Chicken Pork Adobo has already enlisted over 90 “content creators” who write, create, and upload videos on a variety of subjects. Under the network are Lloyd Cafe Cadena, known for his hilarious videos and memes, and The Soshal Network, which stars three lawyers who make commentaries on how to be a socialite.
While Mr. Lim admits that ABS-CBN still earns more from television than its digital platforms, he cites that the case is not necessarily the same in other countries, where there are already signs of advertising budgets shifting from traditional spend to digital spend. Local TV execs are, of course, watching these developments.
In a forecast by the Interpublic Group’s Magna Global published last December, television ad sales in 2016 are expected to fall to 38% from the 38.4% of the $503 billion global ad market of 2015. This is the opposite of the forecast for digital media, which is expecting a “meteoric rise.” Digital ad spending was expected to grow 17.2% last year to nearly $160 billion, 13.5% in 2016, and should overtake television as the biggest ad category by the end of 2017.
“Of course in the Philippines, not yet,” Mr. Lim said. “I don’t see [the traditional-to-digital spend shift] happening yet in the next five to 10 years, but by that time you will see a huge change,” he foresees. “Right now, we are estimating a lot of advertising from agencies going to digital, that’s why we need to invest in a lot more digital executions, because where will they spend their advertising money? They will spend on Google, Facebook, YouTube… We have to have our own.”
ABS-CBN generated growth of 9.7% in its advertising revenues totalling P15.3 billion for the nine-month period ending September, from the previous year’s P13.94 billion.
However, the share of advertising total revenues slipped to 55% from the previous year’s 55.6%, while the contribution of consumer sales (digital box sales, for example) increased.
Similarly, ABS-CBN’s main rival GMA Network, Inc. recorded a growth in revenues from airtime sales from television and radio: P9.37 billion for the same period, which is 18% higher than the previous year’s P7.93 billion. Channel 7, the network’s flagship station, contributed more than three fourths of total revenues.
GMA’s revenues were boosted by major advertisers who want to soak up the channel’s “ratings supremacy.” Its most recent quarterly report particularly noted the noontime show Eat Bulaga and the “record-breaking success” of the “Kalyeserye” segment featuring the love team of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza. The noontime show recorded an average household share of 48.9% in the third quarter, or 21.1 points higher than the 27.8% of ABS-CBN’s It’s Showtime.
The report also particularly made mention of the “AlDub phenomenon” and noted its Twitter “milestone” of 41 million tweets for the hashtag #AlDubEBTamangPanahon, according to data from Twitter Singapore.
TV AND TWITTER
The onscreen love team’s viral effect is a nod to its online beginnings.
The career of newcomer Maine Mendoza (who recently bagged the Best Supporting Actress trophy in the Metro Manila Film Festival Awards) took off after she posted a Dubsmash compilation on Facebook (Dubsmash is a video messaging phone app that lets users add soundtracks to videos recorded on their phones, often of them lipsynching to a song or film scene). Her Kris Aquino Dubsmash compilation garnered one million views overnight, earning her the title “Queen of Dubsmash” in the Philippines.
GMA quickly took notice, deciding to cast her as Yaya Dub in its noontime show. The rest, as the say, is history.
With the success of the AlDub phenomenon breaking records on both TV and online, ABS-CBN’s It’s Showtime countered Yaya Dub with “Pastillas Girl” Angelica Yap — another online sensation who was catapulted to online fame because of an ironic video of her describing how to create a sweet delicacy using bitter undertones about her ex-boyfriend.
“This is really the future,” Mr. Lim said of the YouTube to the boob tube crossover. “There are a lot of platforms like YouTube and Dubsmash that democratizes it for everyone. Anyone can be a star without going to TV right now. The challenge is for TV to adapt to how things are done.”
MAKING SHORTS
The local networks aren’t the only ones looking to the internet.
Jude Turcuato, senior vice-president and general manager of FOX International Channels Philippines, and, not coincidentally, a former courtside reporter who made online forum Pinoy Exchange famous by promoting it in his UAAP coverage, has begun integrating online with mainstream.
For the 24-hour Asian English language cable and satellite television channel Star World, he said “high-quality shorts,” shows as short as five minutes and featuring bloggers, have become a practical solution to fill airtime.
“It’s so expensive to produce Hollywood shows, so what we wanted to do was tap bloggers who can speak well and who look good and do short form for us, so it’s easier to manage,” he said.
The initial shows include food and lifestyle blogger Erwan Heussaff’s The Fat Kid Inside, which Mr. Turcuato revealed did well in terms of sponsorship and ratings. “In fact, if you do it cumulatively, adding up all the ratings from all the episodes,” he said, “it’s the highest-rated show in Star World.”
That was, of course, the whole point: bloggers have a following that will now watch the channel. But at the same time, the viewers of the channel will be introduced to their blogs as well, widening their community. “It’s a mutual endeavor for both of us,” Mr. Turcuato explained.
He believes that the small screen and the smaller screens should co-exist. “As far as behavior is concerned, for the most part, the small screen is a very complimentary thing,” he said. He cited live events that are simulcast such as the Miss Universe. When Ms. Philippines made the Top 10, and then the Top 5, everybody started tweeting and rushing to watch Star World: an online phenomenon fuelling television ratings.
“Viewers watch, and then they become part of a discussion group on Facebook or Twitter, who converse with each other while watching, and we’ve been tracking that also. When topics trend, the ratings also have a congruent jump and spike.”
THE NEW AUDIENCE
At the forefront of this phenomenon are the people who make the content: both writers and personalities who are keeping up with viewers whose expectations have changed dramatically.
Roy C. Iglesias, who has been writing for the big screen since 1976 when he penned the award-winning classic Ganito Kami Noon… Paano Kayo Ngayon? and is the creative director for drama for the GMA Network, calls the new audience “a collaborator, a co-maker of the shows.”
“We’ve always called the audience our master, our boss, but it’s only in this decade that we are seeing how true this really is,” he said. He describes the new audiences as “tech-savvy, more sophisticated, more demanding, and fickle,” who all take their opinions to Twitter and Facebook and are all potential bashers. “We in television pay attention to this form of interactivity,” he said.
Behind the scenes, writers are now studying every tweet and bash, and if they “make sense,” these become a guide in the development of succeeding episodes. While TV fans have grown too familiar with story conventions, “that doesn’t mean we’ll be throwing away all the tropes and conventions and come up with something entirely new and unclassifiable.”
But the format may change: 15-minute drama series, or teleseryes in short instalments that can be viewed while one is stuck in traffic, are one possibility. The format of the future may have less disruptive advertising, and more of product intrusions, where commercial products are integrated in the narrative and hit the audience subliminally. Ratings may also be adjusted to reflect viewers on mobile.
Yet the standard handsome amo and mestiza maid will still be around.
“Viewers still want and expect the familiar genre tropes when navigating a story,” said Mr. Iglesias. “The challenge in making a story fresh is in coming up with characters that are memorable, fascinating, believable and relatable. After all, it’s the emotional experience that matters to the audience, and it’s the characters who create that experience,” he said. “Not the plot points or narrative tricks.”
But there is more at stake in building an “appealing” character on screen, which, especially for Philippine TV, is almost interchangeable with a celebrity’s personality.
“I was noticed for being myself, but as soon as TV got its claws in me, I had to appeal to the masses to be marketable,” said one of the earlier crossovers, a YouTube sensation who later on became a TV host, who asked not be identified.
After winning a one-year contract for a top network’s online channel that would be launching on TV, “everything changed overnight.” From creating her own videos, she found herself taping episodes and hosting alongside other people.
The platforms, she discovered, were “entirely different.” If on YouTube, she didn’t care if her videos would elicit one or 1,000 views, on TV, all her moves were calculated. She was under the mercy of a publicist who instructed her on what she would tweet, or have her make an appearance somewhere to stay relevant.
“On TV, if you’re comfortable speaking in English, that’s a negative because you’re not relatable,” she said. “If you speak your mind on controversial issues or simply poke fun at something, you’re mean and you’re an attention whore. If you show anything beyond skin-deep and half-assed dancing and singing on ASAP, you get flack for having a personality.
“I mean, really, can anyone tell me how Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo are in real life? No. They’re blank canvases. People think they’re their TV roles,” she said. “You don’t see people thinking Jennifer Lawrence is super serious Katniss or super crazy Silver Linings Playbook girl in real life. In the Philippines, the celebrities are so fixated on being marketable to the masses because one, it’s easy, and two, it makes good money.”
When she transferred to TV, the liberty she enjoyed on YouTube was lost.
“I value my individuality so much that I always felt detached from the person I was told to be on TV,” she said. “You lose yourself in the process. I almost did, and that’s why I wrapped it up after my one-year contract. The fulfilment just wasn’t there for me.”
She, however, is only one of the hundreds of online stars who are being tapped by television, and who are continuously drawn into an all-new industry, which is seen to be the world’s next big thing.
Viewers, meanwhile, don’t seem to mind moving between the two media, and riding on the ongoing development of their convergence, which is happening right in front of their eyes.
Five-year-olds, for example, are comfortable watching one thing on TV while watching something else on a tablet.
Isn’t that confusing?
In a chat box that had to be maximized on top of other busy windows, one mom simply replied: “LOL.”
