DAY 53: ECQ

Almost two weeks have passed since I last made a blog entry.

Yes, I am still watching my Koreanovelas at night.  Yes, my work has now been diminished into endless zoom meetings with colleagues from both the entertainment industry and educational institutions.  Yes, I am writing screenplays which I am not sure if they will ever get produced and ... if so, when?  

Yes, I am still hopeful yet doubtful that after the 15th of May the Enhanced Community Quarantine implemented in the National Capitol Region will be diminished to General Community Quarantine.  This will allow greater mobility, permit the opening of certain businesses but retain safeguards for social distancing and human traffic and at least give a semblance of a push to set the economy rolling.

But still.  These are not assurances enough.  As I write this, there is doubt that the ECQ will be brought down to the GCQ ( now called the new normal ).  Even if there have been so many plans laid out, I am still afraid and not convinced that we are ready to step out and work on the road to the designed norm.  For one thing, the curve has not flattened. A whole lot of people are still getting sick --- and where the mass testing that was promised last April?  I will not even go into that.  The point is that people are still not convinced that it is safe to go out but there are some of us who have no choice but to do so because we need to work to earn our daily bread.

So with such a situation and after fifty-three days, you sort of cozy in on the normal that has been your life since the lockdown.  You see no clear solution in sight, you cannot make any definite plans ... and you go along each Groundhog day pretending that the day after tomorrow you shall be able to go about the life you once had ... which you know you would not.  But still the regularity prepares you for the pretense.

Then it happened.

After a day of zoom meetings, somebody sent a text message stating that ABS-CBN was closing down after its prime time newscast.

Of course everyone heard about the Cease and Desist Order of the National Telecommunications Commission directed to the Lopez network demanding that they stop operations because of the expiration of their franchise last 04 May.  For a while I thought that was "transitionally settled. "  I knew that the franchise had not passed Congress because ... uh, they never even brought it to the floor since the Speaker of the House said that there were more important matters to discuss rather than to nitpick the renewal of the franchise of the biggest TV network in the country.  Oo nga naman, Sir Allan Peter. You are a busy man and the Lower House is a Busy house ... and the country's economy will not be affected even if you put an ungodly end to the life of Cardo Dalisay.

I thought there were assurances that because of the sudden lock down ... a catastrophe not exclusively occurring in our beautiful republic of an archipelago but all over the world ... the unresolved issues of franchises were given extensions until ... was that May of 2022?  I mean, really can we focus on the renewal of a network's presence in the scheme of things when there is this virus without a cure, affecting more than ten thousand Filipinos and killing nearly seven hundred plaguing the country?

If there was a time we needed television most to access information, then now is that particular moment.

We want to be kept aware of what is not only happening here but all over the world as far as the pandemic is concerned.  We want to know how the plans for the mass testing are taking place, whatever happened to the isolation wards built in Rizal Memorial Coliseum, the World Trade Center and the PICC or even who are the local and national government officials who are deserving of our admiration simply because they are doing their jobs.

OK, I will admit.  I am not much of a commercial TV watcher for the past so many years.  But then, it took me self-imposed house arrest to complete a Koreanovela, right?  But any which way, ABS-CBN and GMA7 were still the staple dishes in my TV menu especially in updating myself with local and national news.

There was no warning whatsoever when the NTC demanded that ABS-CBN shut down their commercial broadcasting.  That included free tv as well as their radio broadcasts all over the country.  (The shut down did not include their cable channel because the operation of cable and digital platforms are outside the area of contention leading to this controversy. So when certain people go completely rabid when they see ANC still working ... or even iWant still streaming, uh ... cable and digital streaming platforms po yon.  Chill lang muna bago magpaka-high blood. Unawain ang situation.)

Then last night somebody told me that ABS-CBN was shutting down.  It was to comply with the demands of the NTC.   

For a while I was shocked.  Then I took in a deep breath and let it all seep in.  I was not sure if this was for real because I knew that despite the months of controversy, of all that argumentation in social media about the guilt of a network with allegations of malpractice, I never imagined that in my lifetime I will see ABS-CBN shut down again.

The first time that happened was when I was in first year college.

I remember that moment because it was that bleak and violent September that Martial Law was declared and the Lopez network was shut down and ceased.

But even more than that, I was shaken because ... man, I was there.  I was right there at that moment in 1986 when we gave back the studios in Mother Ignacia Avenue to the Lopezes after it was converted as the People's TV Network during the Marcos Regime.  What really hit me was that I and my best friend, Manny Castaneda,  were on our way to EDSA but was asked by Johnny and Tats Manahan to proceed to PTV4.  This was because the rebel soldiers already ceased the TV network and they needed people to help man the tv station and monitor the turn of events in those fateful days of February.

Manny and I would reminisce about this again and again.  We spent the entire People Power revolution inside a studio of ABS-CBN with towels hanging from our necks (in case they threw tear gas inside the premises go flush us out) and having the time of our lives knowing we were living through a point in history which will be told and retold in the understanding of our nation.  Together with Joanna Santos-Gomez, Mariole Alberto, Leo Katigbak ... and so many others ... we were together at that precise moment when we got word that the Marcoses have already left via helicopter from Malacanang and that the station will be returned to its rightful owners after fourteen years.

We were at the extended rooftop of the main entrance of the studio facing Mother Ignacia singing Bayan Ko led by Jim, Boboy and Danny when we announced to the crowds aside that we were finally free.

We were at ABS-CBN.

I also remember the years that followed as there was an effort to rebuild the station into what it was before Martial Law came in.

I do not know his name but he was one of the Lopezes: I was with the late Patsy Monzon about two days after the Marcos departure and she pointed out a man in a white short sleeved shirt, tucked in conservative pants and leather shoes sweeping the floor of the studio,  "He is one of the Lopezes, " Patsy told me.  I may have forgotten the name she mentioned but I looked at this weary middle-aged man with a dilapidated broom, cleaning the floor of the studio ... as if he were the owner who has finally returned home and wanted to bring some semblance of order in the chaos that remained.

I was with ABS-CBN for twenty-seven years.

When the Lopezes reclaimed the network, the audience had changed.  This was not the same television viewers who were the diehard fans of the shows of the early 1970s.  More than a decade had come to pass and a completely different generation of televiewers were now glued to Iskul Bukol,  Chika Chika Chicks, Bad Bananas, Eh, Kasi Babae.  With Johnny Manahan, the late Douglas Quijano, Boyong Bayteon and so many others, we all marched in and put up the first shows of what was then branded as The Star Network.

That is why any reference to ABS-CBN would bring me not to the shows they have now --- but to those we built from scratch to help give life and yes, resurrect the network.

Our first shows were Let's Get Crazy (with Maricel Soriano and Joey de Leon), Tonight with Dick and Carmi ( with Roderick Paulate and Carmi Martin). Then came the first of the signature shows of ABS-CBN, Palibhasa Lalake (with Richard Gomez, the newcomer Joey Marquez --- and the late Miguel Rodriguez with a shy little girl named Carmina Villarroel fresh from her hamburger commercial, the ever insane Cynthia Patag, this reserved beautiful lass from the Padilla clan named Amy Perez and the icon Gloria Romero as the booze crazy Minerva Chavez).

About two years later, Freddie Garcia wanted a show to the tradition of Kuwentong Barbero. I remember that show clear in my senior citizen's memory as clear as it was when I was Grade Six when Ferdinand Marcos was about to be elected as the president of our country. A hard hitting satire starring the comedians Casmot and Matimtiman Cruz, written by Narciso Pimentel was one of the best television shows in that Golden Age.  And I was doing somersaults when Johnny and Mr. Garcia asked me to write this show.  This became Abangan ang Susunod na Kabanata.

I practically spent a substantial number of years of my prime in ABS-CBN.

The Production Assistants I worked with when we were picking up the pieces became associate producers, executive producers and soon business unit heads, managers, vice-presidents.

Some became head writers, creative managers, tv directors ... climbing up that corporate ladder, watching them start with Converse rubber shoes and eventually wearing pricey Jimmy Choos or carrying authentic Longchamp totes or LV or Prada backpacks.  I was there to see them grow:  from nervous interns to accomplished producers calling the shots and making productions work in the most cost-efficient manner possible.

I was given a gold bracelet to celebrate my twenty-seven years in ABS-CBN.

But the years were not perfect.  There is no such thing as a perfect work place. It has got nothing to do and yet everything to do with the personal investment you give to the people you work with day in and day out.  There will always be arguments.  There will always be disagreements.  Yet you savor the experience because you work with people like Mr. M ... or you make wonderful friends with P.A. named Laurenti Dyogi who worked in Tatak Pilipino and who you knew would one day be somebody in this set-up.  You develop bonds of friendship with those who become so much a part of your life that outside the studio is where they become friends or even family.

I have not worked with ABS-CBN for more than ... what? Five, six, seven years?  I would pass by and see how the network has grown from that single long corridor where Charo, Cory Valenzuela (not yet Vidanes), Joanna Gomez (not yet Santos), Leng Raymundo ... where they all had their offices in front of three giant studios where we taped all the shows. 

Now I would need a Visitor's ID to enter the studio where once we spent hours on end formulating and mounting the shows. But that is the way it is.  Or was.  I only kept telling myself that even if the younger generation did not know me ... or the work I have done for the network ... or that they have never heard of Abangan or Palibhasa, I was assured of being part of the history of the network.

So last night when ABS-CBN shut down because of the demands of the NTC due to the non-renewal of franchise, I was immobilized for a few seconds.  Hearing news anchors say goodbye gave me a painful flashback to that day when I was in first year college when ABS-CBN became a dark screen cut off from its audience.

I found myself crying quietly.

I never thought I would see the day when ABS-CBN would be ripped from the airwaves again.

We fought to bring it back to the people but circumstances have led to its closure once again. It was painful because there are too many memories embedded in that network I deliberately distanced for all these years because there was pain the last time I walked out of the studios.  

But it is not just about the network ... it is about the people in there.  And the memories.  Those things can never be erased, purchased or exchanged.  It is about all these creative partners who challenged you to do work, push yourself to the best and help shape the vision of your nation.  It is about ABS-CBN carrying the narrative of the Filipinos --- inasmuch as GMA7 also carries its own stories and put together define who we are at any given point in our history.

Some know-it-all in social media said, "Stop being overdramatic.  There are so many news channels to get your info. There is GMA7.  Nobody is above the law."

I am not in a position to assess the guilt or innocence of the network.  I will not even go into the territory of politicizing this event.  I am just trying to figure out what happened ... and speculating on what can become. 

What people may not realize is that it is not to the advantage of GMA7 that ABS-CBN has been pulled off the air.  I can imagine the pressure left on the shoulders of people working in that equally stressful situation at the height of a pandemic.  Without the rivalry, the rules of the game are redefined and a lot of rethinking will be needed.

In these days of uncertainty, this had to happen.  Suddenly the regularity of days have been violated and the need to adapt to change is there again.

It will be hard to imagine Philippine popular culture without ABS-CBN.

It is/was not a perfect company ... but it carried the narrative that defined us as Filipinos.  Maybe one day we will see those tri-color concentric circles again.  But who knows?

In days such as these where certainty is elusive ... who knows?