Despite what he said was ABS-CBN’s frequently opposing the Marcoses in various matters, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he would not oppose the Lopez family-owned network from applying for a new franchise to operate if all the legal requirements are fulfilled.
This statement came after a recent survey found that only 10 percent of Filipinos opposed granting the network a new franchise. The non-commissioned survey by WR Numero found that the overwhelming majority of Filipinos – four out of five – want the network to go back on the air soonest.
The House of Representatives denied ABS-CBN’s bid to renew its franchise back in 2020, citing a variety of issues. This was during the Duterte administration and after then President Rodrigo Duterte himself said he would not allow the network to renew its franchise because it refused to air his ads during his presidential campaign, despite the ads being fully paid.
At that time, ABS-CBN was the country’s biggest broadcast network.
At the time of its closure, ABS-CBN directly or indirectly employed an estimated 10,000 workers and was earning billions of pesos on annual revenues.
Aside from its radio-TV network, the company also had US operations that distributed its shows, which not only included news and entertainment shows but also movies under its Star Magic brand.
The network had earned a reputation for being among the first to cover the biggest news, including natural as well as man-made calamities such as fires.
Among its biggest talents was ‘Kabayan’ Noli de Castro, who became so popular that he even became vice-president of the Philippines under President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
While surveys showed him to be a winnable presidential bet, De Castro opted to return to ABS-CBN doing news and features.
The closure of the network on July 10, 2020 came as a shock to the public, which had considered the station too big to fail.
And while the closure hurt the employees, ABS-CBN proved to be more resilient than expected. It continued to produce shows, both online and paid-TV.
More recently, it started to produce content for erstwhile competitors GMA-7 and AllTV. Thus, the loss of its free TV frequencies did not hurt as much as expected.
Much of the success of the network with no free TV channels is credited to its president and CEO Carlo Katigbak, who was aware that online and pay-per-view stations was the way to go, along with content production.
As of March this year, the network has a net worth of PHP4.07 billion. Its annual revenues for the past few years has been in the vicinity of $2 billion, or about PHP110 billion.
Despite Marcos’s claim that the station had adopted an unfriendly attitude against his family, there is a lot of history between the Marcoses and the Lopezes.
When his father and namesake first won the Philippine presidency in 1961, his vice- presidential running mate was Fernando Lopez, brother of ABS-CBN president Eugenio Lopez Sr.
As vice-president, Fernando Lopez also assumed the role of Agriculture secretary.
Fast forward to the EDSA Revolution of 1986. By then ABS-CBN no longer supported the Marcos regime, which had in fact incarcerated one of the Lopez clan.
The family had been forced to turn over its assets to Marcos crony Roberto Benedicto, whose daughter Kitchie effectively became the network’s general manager.
ABS-CBN was a prime media target when the military assumed control of most media organizations in the EDSA People’s Power revolution. ABS-CBN was among the first to go back on the air in support of the Cory Aquino administration.
Marcos’s talk of “allowing” ABS-CBN to win back its franchise has received sufficient support for the House to consider taking up bills that would provide ABS-CBN with a fresh 25-year franchise. It would mean that ABS-CBN would literally and figuratively return from the dead for a second time if their franchise is revived.
