by Nickie Wang
It was an intriguing week. On Monday, Kapamilya viewers were welcomed by a minor change in their afternoon viewing with Showtime and Pilipinas Win na Win moving down on the afternoon block.
The arrangement was done to give way to Kapamilya Blockbusters to help the station reclaim its position as frontrunner in noontime viewership.
On hind sight, the country’s leading network is beginning to lose its audience in the said timeslot. Based on the data released by TNS/Kantar Media on National Urban ratings, GMA programs Eat Bulaga and Kapuso Movie Festival are dominating the ratings game. Thus, Kapamilya network introduces the same program format to keep up with the competition. It is a great challenge though but better than not doing anything at all. Of course, Kapuso fanatics will claim that their favorite station’s programming strategy is being copied by its rival network, so Kapamilya aficionados would fume and say, “ now we’re quits.”
The nationwide daytime ratings has been ABS-CBN’s turf in the past months anchored by the double-digit ratings of Showtime but it seems that the dance and talent search has been losing its audience after the much talked about first season finale. Showtime and Pilipinas Win na Win joined forces to keep the Kapamilya network on top of the noontime game, only to eat the dust of Eat Bulaga, which comfortably sits as perennial leader in Mega Manila and now national ratings game.
On primetime, on the other hand, two new series premiered on both stations. Martha Cecilia’s Precious Hearts Romances Presents: Kristine featuring Cristine Reyes and Zanjoe Marudo premiered Monday on ABS-CBN and another one on GMA called East of Eden, a story of clan rivalry, like its Kapamilya local counterpart.
The Lopez-owned station can still claim leadership on primetime with Agua Bendita and Noah. Highly-publicized Ilumina that stars Aljur Abrenica and Rhian Ramos is currently suffering the same fate the Marian Rivera and Dingdong Dantes tandem experienced after a few weeks with Endless Love on the air.
As for TV 5, even though it will eventually have Willie Revillame in a show as a blocktimer, it has to accept for now that ratings game is still a two-way battle. It has been aggressively introducing intriguing shows, Face to Face, but it will take more than just publicity and audience conditioning. At least, it can assert the third position since no one will take that place from it anyway.
Time to say bye-bye
Simply KC will finally bid morning viewers goodbye. The talk show hosted by KC Concepcion will air its final episode on Aug. 27. ABS-CBN signed the program only for a single season. Big wigs at the station probably anticipated that the show will not earn a number of following therefore giving the host a single chance to prove something. Well, she did prove something—she is better off as veejay and a commercial model.
Meanwhile, KC’s mom has another project to be busy with. Like her talk show, Sharon Cuneta’s Sunday musical cum comedy bar cum talk show will also bow to its audience. The confused program will be replaced by a talent search which will be hosted by Sharon nonetheless.
Not over yet
If you think that the Charice-bottox brouhaha is already over, then revisit the web and you would find more intriguing news about the cosmetic procedures done on the naturally rounded face of the teen star.
The diminutive singer, whose face recently graced several international magazine covers, had thermage and bottox treatments to prepare for a role in US series, Glee. Her publicist in the US, however, claimed that the treatments were done to relax the petite singer’s jaw muscles.
After it gain international attention, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons released an alarming data on the number of teens opting for Bottox treatment at an early age. According to the report, a record-high of 12,000 American teenagers aged 13 to 19, have had Bottox treatment in 2008. It so happen that Charice is already a pop star that her case highlighted the staggering increase of teenagers who feel insecure about the way they look.
On the local scene, Vicki Belo’s Belo Medical Group, Flawless, and Belo products are facing national boycott spearheaded by a lawyer that felt appalled by Charice’s cosmetic procedures. The political activist even mocked the procedure as “medical quackery at its ugliest.”
VERY WANG 