World’s Junkiest TV Programs? Philippines May Have Them

Billy Esposa, a top Philippine media analyst and former publicity director for President Corazon Aquino, pondered the question for just a few seconds last week.

“Who has the junkiest television programming in the world?” Esposa repeated. “It could very well be us.”

One peek at the tube in Manila, and few would doubt Esposa’s self-effacing analysis.

Wrestling, Rock Videos

On a typical Saturday, Filipino viewers have a choice among the Dynamite Kid pinning the Diabolical Doctor with a swan splash and elbow smash in American professional wrestling; Bible-thumping sermons by American evangelist Gospel Bill; hour after hour of decade-old American cartoon shows; half a dozen hourlong disco contests; American rock videos, and such feature-length American box-office bombs as “The House of Exorcism” and “The Secret of the Pond.”

In a nation where the average income is $625 per year and where most farmers still use wooden plows pulled by buffaloes, the top three shows are the action-adventure series “Knight Rider,” “The A-Team” and “Airwolf.”

It is, according to Esposa and other top information specialists in Manila, a tradition of mind-numbing television brought to the Filipino people by then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos. In the early 1970s, Marcos, by presidential decree, seized control of the airwaves and enforced a doctrine that one of his former information ministers called “the idiotization program.”

Little Change Seen

Not only is Marcos accused of robbing his nation’s treasury of billions of dollars, ordering the torture and murder of scores of political opponents and rigging elections, but, the analysts contend, he trashed the minds of millions of Filipinos by using junk TV fare to divert their attention from the real problems of the country.

“But the real pity is, it does not look like it’s going to change under President Aquino,” said Esposa, who left the Aquino administration a few weeks after it came to power with a military-civilian coup Feb. 25. “It was a golden opportunity to revamp the whole thing, to make Philippine television a development tool for the nation. But all they (Aquino and her advisers) seem to care about is market forces.”

So, Esposa added, when he and half a dozen other Philippine television executives arrive in Los Angeles later this week for the annual U.S. television screenings by American show distributors, “it looks like we’ll be forced to go the same route--junk and worse than junk.”

The annual screenings by 20th Century-Fox, Paramount and other top distributors of American television shows are crucial for developing countries such as the Philippines. The programs they buy during the annual event help set the tone for what hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide are exposed to in the coming year.

“That’s the saddest part for us,” said Esposa, whose private company, Media Builders Inc., purchases rights to the shows and then resells them to the five Manila-based television stations.

“This was a time when we could have made a new start and bought quality television that would help our country develop,” Esposa said. “But the new government’s policy for television is one of status quo, and we can only buy what we can sell.”

Coming from Esposa, such criticism is especially severe. During Aquino’s campaign for president early this year, Esposa was one of her top “secret advisers”--so named because Aquino wanted to protect them from Marcos’ revenge in the event she lost.

Creating an Image

With a budget of only $150,000, Esposa went up against Marcos’ multibillion-dollar campaign war chest and was widely credited with creating Aquino’s political image as a devout, dedicated housewife who is also capable of running a country of 54 million people.

At the turning point of the 72-hour February coup that drove Marcos from power, when opposition forces took control of the government television station, it was Esposa who set up the initial rebel programming that became a formidable weapon against Marcos’ forces.

Esposa joined the Aquino government after the coup, but he said that within weeks he began to disagree with the direction that her Information Ministry was taking.

‘Rare Opportunity’

“I submitted a paper to the president explaining that the revolution gave us a rare opportunity to start from scratch--to limit the number of stations permitted to the number of stations the market would bear,” Esposa said.

“With fewer stations, profits would be higher, and the networks could afford to buy and put on educational and documentary programs that would help our people in the areas where they most need it.”

Ultimately, Aquino rejected the plan. Rather than use direct government interference in an industry that began as a private-sector enterprise, Esposa said, “the president decided to leave it all to market forces.”

Aquino nonetheless already has interfered directly in the operations of the nation’s television industry.

Once Owned by Marcos

When she took power, all five television stations were owned either secretly or publicly by Marcos or his friends and relatives. The stations had been seized or purchased one by one in the years after Marcos declared martial law in 1972.

There was a concerted effort, recalled several members of Marcos’ Cabinet at the time, to take complete control of the flow of information and ideas during the nine years that Marcos kept the country under his strict and direct authority.

“Marcos and his cronies forced the voluntary closure of one station, the forced closure of another, secretly purchased a third, and then sequestered two others. Eventually, one of those stations was expanded into three, and before anyone knew it, Marcos controlled all five television stations,” Esposa said.

‘Idiotization Program’

It was then that Marcos embarked on what former Information Minister Francisco Tatad called “the idiotization program.”

Tatad, who resigned from the Marcos administration and joined the opposition during the waning years of martial law, said Marcos deliberately filled the airwaves with foreign-made cartoons, adventure films, comedies and inane Filipino situation comedies to distract the Filipino people from the harshness of his regime and the problems and criticism that grew out of his dictatorship.

Stage Management

And when it came to the news, Marcos personally stage-managed all of it.

“Marcos always knew the vital components of his power base, and he knew broadcast media were at the heart of it,” Esposa said. “Before Marcos fell, people always said ‘who is there to replace Marcos’ because every night in every house with a TV set, here was this father figure sitting there telling you all the good news, none of the bad news.

TV ‘Trashed’ by Marcos

“Television was progressing very well until Marcos declared martial law. Then he trashed it. But the real question now is, what next? And the initial signs are not encouraging.”

Consistent with her purge of Marcos forces in political and military institutions, one of Aquino’s first acts was to order the government seizure of three of the country’s five television stations.

The government-owned station was taken over during the coup, so the Aquino administration now has control over all but one station. Government sources say Aquino may soon sequester the fifth station as well.

Aquino has said her ultimate goal is to put four of the five stations into the private sector, and she has announced that all but the government station are for sale.

In the meantime, though, every station has, more often than not, been toeing the government line during news programs. They frequently show five-minute patriotic replays of highlights of the February coup--nuns facing tanks, soldiers with flowers in their rifle barrels and Aquino supporters storming the presidential palace and smashing photographs of former First Lady Imelda Marcos--all of it against a background of nationalist music.

Refusal to Regulate

Even if the Aquino government does sell off the sequestered stations, however, analysts such as Esposa say that Aquino’s refusal to regulate the industry will prevent television from becoming an educational or developmental tool in the country.

Five stations, they say, are too many for a country where less than a third of the 10 million households have access to a television set.

“Basically, the problem with Philippine television is it’s overcrowded,” Esposa said. “And with so many stations competing for the same, small pie, nobody is going to take risks in documentaries; no one is going to put on shows like “Sesame Street” or even more educational shows. They’re just not viable.

“So, what you’ve got is a situation where I’m going to Los Angeles to buy more junk, more ‘Incredible Hulk,’ more ‘Airwolf’ and more entertainment.”

To the upper- and middle-class Filipinos, such a dilemma will matter little if a current trend keeps up. Frustrated with the choices on their networks, tens of thousands of TV owners have installed special antennas capable of receiving the U.S. Armed Forces Television network broadcast from America’s Clark Air Base north of Manila.

“Why should we watch Philippine television?” asked one Filipino banker who asked not to be named. “All we get is ancient, recycled American junk. With the antenna, we can get the state-of-the-art junk.”