Stars become lesser mortals

by Isah V. Red and Nickie Wang

It’s the time of the year when movie and TV stars become lesser mortals again. At least, for the next week or so. Most of them hie off to places where the populace don’t recognize them at all. Kris Aquino, whose ubiquitous face and easily recognizable voice and affected speech can’t spend a quiet vacation even in the very private Amanpulo resort, so after the Filmfest awards tomorrow night, she and BFF (best friend forever) Liz Uy whose romantic episode with President Noynoy Aquino, Kris’ brother, of course, didn’t prosper, will fly to Bali, Indonesia for what she calls “Eat, Pray, Love” vacation.

“Di ba I deserve it naman,” she told the movie press during a press conference for the movie “Dalaw” which she co-produced and starred in and is now screening in theaters across the Philippines for the annual Metro Manil Film Festival.

WITHOUT WANG²: Ratings is always a tug of war

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.”