NARROWCASTING (CABLE TV)

BROSAS, Jelisa
HELENA, Patricia
LAGDAMEO, Marian

A. SOCIO-POLITICAL-ECONOMIC-CULTURAL CONDITIONS OF THE PHILIPPINES

 The growth of early cable television was introduced in 1969 during Marcos Regime. They
were granted a decree of exclusive franchise to a business ally of Marcos to install and
operate cable TV nationwide

 In 1987, small independent cable TV operators organized themselves to promote and

protect their interests and to officially put the cable tv industry in the Philippine Business

 The same year, former President Corazon Aquino made the cable TV a non-exclusive
industry and abolished the decree given by the former President Ferdinand Marcos in
Executive Order No. 205

 Number of TV channels went down from 1998-2005

 Provincial Community Antenna Television (CATV) systems have been set up to receive
broadcast signals from stations in Manila

 Manila is the one of the most advanced urban centers in Asia with respect to cable TV in
2007

 Its two major cable systems are SKY CABLE and HOME CABLE that offers 60 channels
or more

 The increase of cable TV subscribers nationwide diminish the size of the regular TV
competing in an advertising pie

B. DEVELOPMENT AND EVOLUTION OF CABNLE TV IN THE PHILIPPINES

 Nuvue is the first cable TV system set up in Baguio City in 1969 by Russel Swartley

 It started in the Marcos regime and was given the decree by the former president
to exclusive franchise. It helped Marcos’s allies and business partners in the
Martial Law in his time

 ABS-CBN and GMA 7 can reach Filipino Communities in San Francisco Bay Area, USA
through cable television system. South-east Asia, Hawaii, Guam, Saipan, Canada and
USA can also tune in to these channels with the help of satellite or cable TV

 The Filipinos in these countries can watch and be updated to what is happening
in the Philippines through the cable TV. It also helped in the country’s economic
status during that time through exporting
  In 1991, ABS-CBN and GMA 7 introduced the satellite programming that sparks interest
in cable television

 Many had an idea of putting up a cable TV business when it started to boom in

the industry. Today, there are 360 regular members in the PCTA and 32 affiliated
members

 The first issue of cable line is released in 1995 by the PCTA

 Cable TV affects the regular free TV in terms of audience and advertising revenue

 This has something to do with the economy in this industry. The demand of
regular free TV lowered compare to its status before the cable TV arrived in the
90’s

 In 2001, Home Cable and Sky Cable merged into one company

 The new company controls at least 70% of total cable subscribers in the country
but there is no monopoly in its industry when it happened 18 years ago. They
merged to improve their shortcomings as cable companies

 The merging of Dream Satellite TV and Beyond Cable Holdings Inc. got complicated in
2007

 “Reasons [for the collapse of talks] are likely about issues on what will be the
surviving entity, valuation and what roles the owners and managers of Dream will
have in the new company” an analyst said in an interview with the GMA News

 Sky Cable bought Destiny Cable in 2012

 The merging of the two companies benefited the consumers with clearer signal
receptions, more channel offering and access to technologies

C. CHALLENGE AND MAJOR PROBLEMS OF CABLE TV IN THE PHILIPPINES

 The major problem with this system of television transmission was that the signals grew
weaker as they travelled farther from the towers

 TV networks tended to concentrate their operations in heavily populated urban

areas, where their signals would reach the largest number of viewers. As a
result, millions of Filipinos living in rural areas found themselves with either poor
TV reception or no access to broadcast television signals at all. One of the
examples is the TV Plus. TV Plus is a Philippine encrypted digital terrestrial
television provider owned and operated by ABS-CBN. It was only available in
Metro Manila, Luzon (Rizal, Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, Pampanga, Nueva Ecija,
Tarlac, Pangasinan, Benguet), Metro Cebu, Bacolod, Iloilo, Davao City and
Cagayan de Oro. This is the only places with availability of signal from TV Plus
 There is a recent challenge for the cable TV companies in the Philippines, the coming of
streaming services.

 Netflix, HOOQ, iFlix and other streaming media threatened the cable TV
companies.

 “Pay TV, which mostly serves mostly linear channels, really serves a different
need compared to the SVoDs,” said Guido Zaballero, first vice-president and
head of marketing at Cignal TV, Inc.