From 1987 to 1995, TV Patrol lorded over competing programs in its time slot.  The word DOMINANT is an understatement to describe the extent at which  the newscast’s leadership position in the early evening block. On an average day, it captured sixty to seventy percent of  TV viewers, higher if there was a big news story. It anchored ABS-CBN’s primetime ratings with the bulk of ABS-CBN’s primetime audience comprised of viewers of the news program.

ABS-CBN’s Counter-Attack 

To be sure, ABS-CBN was not caught flat-footed with the developments.   ABS-CBN Research and Business Analysis, which I headed then,  had been providing top management with a regular monitoring and analysis of the shifts in audience preferences and of  the week on week viewership of various programs. In various memos and personal briefings we pointed out the threat faced by our early evening  slot. We also discussed extensively the development in various management and programming meetings.  As head of research I had very long discussions and strategy sessions with the chief programmer of the network, Freddie Garcia.

There were reasons, internal to the network, why it  failed to react quickly to the threat(maybe in future blogs, I will write about these). Nevertheless, we agreed on the following principles as a working bases for the subsequent network moves:

1. Evening soaps is now a reality. We need to have one evening soap to counter Marimar.
2. We have to stop TV Patrol’s predictability. It should not be tied up to airing pre-set segments day-in and day out.
3. We have to buy all the other Thalia properties and similar telenovelas.

And the programming moves were as follows:

1. Freddie Garcia negotiated with P&G and got the rights for Thalia properties.Predictably, P&G  bundled these with several other telenovelas of Televisa. The price was exorbitant  but it was a paltry price to pay versus what would have happened if another network will have gotten hold of these properties and programmed them versus ABS-CBN’s primetime slot.
2. Then, he instructed the production group headed by  Charo Santos to prepare Mara Clara for its transfer to primetime pitting it against Marimar.  Mara Clara started airing in 1992 and was a Monday to Friday afternoon series about two girls who, by a twist of fate, each lead the life that should have been the other’s, and only a diary can put an end to the mess.  It was daytime’s most popular program, rating even higher than the top evening programs at that time. It also has strong following among women – mostly housewives, who were not about to give up the television to anybody specially if they were watching their favorite shows.  I told Freddie these core audiences will follow Mara Clara to primetime.  And if we will make its pace faster  and not overload the program with commercials it will beat Marimar! (which it did)
3. The third move is to cut TV Patrol to 30 minutes. The strategy was to initially do away with segment sponsorships to make the newscast more fluid and less predictable. It will also use only one anchor. Most of the guys at the news department did not agree with the changes. I attended that meeting with the anchors, reporters, producers and other key staff of the program and I almost fell off my chair when after hearing the objections of most of the people in the room, FMG said something to the effect of  “pagbigyan nyo ako sa decision ko na ito. If this will not work, I will resign!” .  The changes was scheduled to start April 1, 1996.      And so it came to pass that on  April Fools Day,  April 1, 1996, Noli de Castro became the sole anchor of the newscast, and  TV Patrol’s airing time was cut to 30 minutes. (I told some of my staff then that there is a built in justification for the the move: If it  will not work, we can easily claim that it was just an April Fools Day joke).

Fortunately for ABS-CBN,  the counter programming strategy worked.  We had the other Thalia telenovelas in our inventory so there was nothing the other channels can offer viewers. After Mara Clara,  ABS-CBN TV production started producing a lot fo 30-minute primetime soaps, the first of which were the back to back tandem of Mula sa Puso and Esperanza. TV Patrol retained its leadership, but we can longer say with certainty that it anchored ABS-CBN’s primetime..

But the TV landscape has already changed.  Daily series has become a new feature of early evening programming. A typical weekday evening primetime programming would have three distinct blocks: an early evening newscast; a daily telenovela or drama block; and, a once a week program or movies.    Today,  the once a week program block has been replaced by even more daily dramas, telenovelas or koreanovelas.