More than anything else, the reported troubles of fledging ALLTV foretell the end of traditional Filipino television as we know it.
The buzz last week had it that the Villar-owned ALLTV was suspending some shows headlined by personalities with pronounced political leanings.
Executives of the seven-month-old network haven’t publicly addressed the reports. But the news provoked social media naughtiness about the station’s lack of captivating content or that its woes had something to do with political payback.
Lost in the hubbub about ALLTV’s start-up problems, however, is the larger and absorbing issue that the end of traditional Filipino television is on the horizon, requiring us to reassess the medium.
To put it bluntly, ALLTV’s woes strongly hint that legacy TV days of beaming a daily line-up of shows on a pre-ordained timetable to a large live audience are numbered.
The implications of such a prognosis are stark. But this only means that the world has changed in TV land.
Such change, sadly, is inevitable. Thanks largely to the rising broadband era, television is in transition and networks are grappling with the changed ways we consume TV.
Undoubtedly, the internet did disrupt the economics of legacy TV models, especially on its reliance on the linear model of time.
In place of linear time is the roaring success of the “post-network” television economy, characterized by its main point that you can watch whatever program or movie you want, whenever and wherever.
That’s clear as day. Nowadays, many TV viewers worldwide and hereabouts watch television via apps on mobile devices or from any web browser or a Wi-Fi-enabled, increasingly cheap, large Smart TV.
Consequently, such a wide array of viewing platforms and choices inspire new and thriving forms of television production and distribution that are largely outside the control of legacy TV’s gatekeepers.
Nothing better illustrates this than streaming.
Cheap and innovative streaming has essentially broken up broadcast and cable TV’s hold on entertainment.
It’s no industry secret worldwide that streaming and its growing subscriber base is on their way to becoming the dominant entertainment format for television — a subscriber format that relies heavily on algorithmic recommender systems. Deployed by transnational media companies, the system suggests content based on a user’s viewing history, making for personalized, curated viewing.
Streaming, in fact, is already the entertainment portal for Filipino viewers.
In its annual report on worldwide social media and digital trends released this week, Meltwater and We are Social say that Filipinos aged 16 to 24 ranked first in watching streaming, posting a 97.9-percent score. The global average is 90.9 percent.
Still, this doesn’t mean that local legacy TV is in its death throes.
Local legacy TV still has ample opportunities to reinvent itself before the inevitable internet-only distribution of TV content rules the roost.
But those options are fewer by the day as obviously shown by ALLTV’s start-up problems.
But how is legacy TV to survive?
Media industry analysts say one option is for traditional TV to shift its demographic focus, humbling though that may be to once all-mighty TV.
Instead of creating content for mass audiences, legacy TV could appeal more and more to gray-haired Filipino viewers or to those ill-equipped to deal with all things internet.
Such a shift, however, does require going beyond the conventional way of measuring success through ratings.
Another way out is for local legacy TV to redouble its efforts in covering the news and high-profile sports.
Much can be said about how free-air TV covers the news but the more noticeable failing is its lack of live sports coverage. Not one of our TV networks, for instance, has the live airing rights for the hugely popular UAAP basketball games.
As such, surviving a changed TV industry means that local TV executives must have ample guts and ambition to disrupt things. Fortune favors the bold.
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nevqjr@yahoo.com.ph