by Abe Olandres · July 11, 2020
Yesterday, the House Committee on Legislative Franchises has finally denied the renewal of ABS-CBN franchise. However, this does not mean that the network will no longer operate and broadcast, except on free-to-air channels.
The government would keep GMA and TV5 to serve as the sole private commercial television networks of the country.
ABS-CBN President and CEO Carlo Katigbak promised that the network will continue to find ways and means to serve its audience, despite the reduced reach.
So, what happens now?
First, all the 70+ million Filipinos on Facebook will be able to watch the livestream. The same goes for all their 9.63 million YouTube subscribers. For the past two months, the majority of viewers of ABS-CBN has been following the reports thru these two big platforms.
Second, those who are already subscribed to Sky Cable (wired) will continue to be able to watch ANC on channel 23, Knowledge Channel on channel 5, Cinemo on channel 7, Kapamilya Channel on channel 8, Jeepney TV on channel 9, O Shopping on channel 11 (although the show will end by December 2020), ABS-CBN Sports + Action on channel 17, Myx on channel 23, DZMM TeleRadyo on channel 26.
OFWs abroad will also continue to watch ABS-CBN programs via The Filipino Channel (TFC). TFC has over 2.47 million subscribers worldwide as of 2011 so it should be bigger by now.
The network has a dedicated ABS-CBN Radio App which people can download for free and listen to DZMM.
ABS-CBN also ha iWant app which has over 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store as of today. It is free to download but movies and other shows are paid.
There are other ways ABS-CBN can do to expand its digital footprint. We’ve outlined six (6) of them here in a previous article.
Other options for ABS-CBN is to buy block-time from other stations like TV5 and here’s a complete list of all online channels of the entire ABS-CBN network.
As for all of its 11,000+ employees, ABS-CBN can technically keep all of them (except perhaps for the network engineers) as long as the network has enough viewers and advertisers. The critical key here is the advertisers.
On YouTube alone, ABS-CBN makes over Php40,000,000 a month. That, plus iWant revenues, Sky Cable subscription revenues while TFC’s Premium Online streaming service is $12.99 per month.
If ABS-CBN can sustain its viewership and advertisers until 2022, they can re-apply for a new franchise under a new set of House of Representatives. However, their frequency might not be available by then.
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