A huge test awaits ‘Ipaglaban Mo’ tomorrow afternoon.
Enter ‘Karelasyon’, the upcoming GMA drama anthology hosted by Carla Abellana. The program will showcase a different side of love and relationships, with stories focusing on various ordeals that may affect one’s love for the other.
Throughout the show, various issues such as jealousy, infidelity, individual obsessions and vices, and family and work-related issues will be presented and discussed. As such, sweet and light-hearted moments will be deemphasized in ‘Karelasyon’, but rather, more hostile and confrontational scenes will be the norm.
With the impending debut of ‘Karelasyon’, it seems that GMA has found a more appropriate program to challenge ‘Ipaglaban Mo’. Since premiering on June 7, 2014, ‘Ipaglaban Mo’ has given opposing GMA programs fits, beating ‘Startalk’, ‘Wish Ko Lang’ and ‘Asian Horror Stories’ in the ratings.
The consistently high ratings of ‘Ipaglaban Mo’ posed some problems for ‘Startalk’, whose return to Saturday afternoons last year was met with little to no fanfare. Not even a change of timeslot with the newly-reformatted ‘Wish Ko Lang’ and a reduction in airtime helped matters.
‘Ipaglaban Mo’ also fared better than ‘Asian Horror Stories’ (and its alternate name ‘Tales of Horror’). As a result, GMA decided to do something drastic in hopes of arresting this skid.
Thus, ‘Karelasyon’ was conceived, in order to answer ‘Ipaglaban Mo’. The latter program may not be similar to ‘Ipaglaban Mo’ in terms of scope, but is nevertheless helpful in solving issues that are presented in each episode.
Now GMA must hope that ‘Karelasyon’ will deliver a more respectable performance than ‘Ipaglaban Mo”s previous opponents. The pilot episode of the show should be a measuring stick as to how ‘Karelasyon’ will perform in the long term. Good luck.
‘Karelasyon’ premieres tomorrow after ‘Eat Bulaga’ on GMA.
From the Tube 