Wowowin Out for Two Weeks

Willie Revillame is on vacation, and so is ‘Wowowin’.

Both the host and the game show will take a two-week break starting today, in order to recharge and plan for ‘Wowowin”s upcoming first anniversary*. The vacated timeslot will be filled by ‘GMA Blockbusters’ until May 13.

In the meantime, ‘Wowowin”s new studio will be used temporarily by GMA News and Public Affairs for its ‘Eleksyon 2016’ coverage, which will kick off on May 9. Afterwards, a refurbished set is expected to be unveiled once ‘Wowowin’ returns on May 16.

The temporary hiatus of ‘Wowowin’ may benefit ABS-CBN in the short term. ‘We Will Survive’, in particular, has been slumping since its demotion to Kapamilya Gold, with ratings in the 10s on most days.

The brief absence of ‘Wowowin’ might put ‘We Will Survive’ back on track. Still, with the series not airing in select areas thanks to regional ‘TV Patrol’, it will not be easy for ‘We Will Survive’ to win without ‘Wowowin’ to oppose them.

The other series opposing ‘Wowowin’, ‘My Super D’, may be winning in the ratings, but the margin remained small. That said, the absence of the former may help ‘My Super D’ pull away, even if it’s only for a short moment.

As for GMA, this is an opportunity for the network to sustain the momentum in ‘Wowowin”s absence. Airing more recent hit movies on ‘GMA Blockbusters’ may do the trick, even as a few of their regional networks continue to air local news in place of the show’s first 45 minutes.

This is going to be an interesting two weeks for both GMA and ABS-CBN. Let’s see how the brief hiatus of ‘Wowowin’ will affect the fortunes of both networks from 5:00-6:30 p.m.

*‘Wowowin”s actual first episode was aired on Sunday, May 10, 2015. The show has been airing on weekdays since February 1, with the first 90-minute episode airing two weeks later.

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Naku, Boss Ko! Premieres This Monday

GMA is pushing the envelope yet again.

In the lead-up to the network’s ‘Eleksyon 2016’ coverage, they decided to create a politically-charged miniseries that challenges the voter’s critical judgment. Enter ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’, a two-week political romantic comedy that will premiere this Monday.

 

‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ marked the return of the GabRu (Gabbi Garcia and Ruru Madrid) tandem to the small screen, several months after they were first paired in ‘Let the Love Begin’. Gabbi plays Che, a political activist, while Ruru plays Jon G., a reluctant mayoralty candidate for the town of Malaya.

Both Che and Jon fell for each other, but unknown to Che, Jon’s campaign is being managed by a ‘trapo’ (traditional politician). With Che’s hatred for ‘trapos’ on the forefront, their relationship will be put to the test, and it is up to Jon to decide between two things: his relationship with Che, or his political ambitions.

Joining them in ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ are Leo Martinez (as OMG, Jon’s power-hungry father) and Tessie Tomas (as Miss F, a shrewd and extremely savvy campaign manager and spin doctor). The mini-series will be directed by Marlon Rivera.

‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ is the latest in a string of potential award-winning and critically-acclaimed series produced by the GMA News and Public Affairs team. Despite its good intentions, the biggest concern for the series now is how will they be able to reach out to millions of viewers across the country.

Given the lack of promotional treatment in all GMA teleseryes in recent weeks, it will not be easy for ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ to become relevant in GMA’s scheme of things, heavy promotional hype notwithstanding. That said, it will be very crucial for GMA to drop its restraints and let ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ do what they want to do in order to get the message straight.

This should be an interesting two weeks for GMA News and Public Affairs. As they prepare for ‘Eleksyon 2016’, they hope that ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ will help viewers understand what’s right and what’s wrong in the world of politics.

An eight-episode miniseries, ‘Naku, Boss Ko!’ airs Monday to Thursday, 10:10 p.m., from April 25 to May 5, on GMA Telebabad.

Explaining the Disappearance of GMA’s Teleserye Episode Teasers

Notice something different on GMA these past few weeks?

Anyone who tuned in to Channel 7 should take a look at the commercial breaks during every program. There are the usual episode teasers, programming trailers and advisories, product advertisements, and for election season, political advertisements for national candidates.

But there is one aspect that is missing from these commercial breaks of late, and that is the episode teasers for all GMA teleseryes. So what happened to them?

As April got underway, GMA elected to stop airing episode teasers for their teleseryes, and instead create repetitive 10-second advisories for each program. Even in the network’s official YouTube page, the said episode teasers were nowhere to be found of late; their most recent upload was that of ‘Poor Señorita’ (see above), and that was two weeks ago.

The motive of GMA, it seems, is to save money, particularly since the upcoming national elections will require a heftier budget for GMA News coverage and teleseryes take a majority of the network’s overall production cost. While GMA appeared to have increased their income by 111%, as far as they were concerned, it was still not enough.

Remember, an episode teaser’s purpose is to preview the upcoming episode that will air on that day. But since GMA decided to remove this approach for their teleseryes, this left viewers without any information on what will happen to the upcoming episode of a particular series.

That said, with the lack of any promotional effort for their teleseryes, GMA’s continued decline is once again becoming evident. And it didn’t help that they are also a non-factor in the ratings and on social media.

It will be interesting to see how this latest conservative effort will pay off for GMA. With elections drawing near, GMA needs to step up their game, otherwise they might fall even further behind ABS-CBN and TV5 as far as technological resources go.

And yes, there’s still the new ‘Encantadia’ to worry about, so this is definitely now or never for GMA. Good luck.

In 100 Words: Jun Sabayton, Michael V Promote Fair and Honest Elections

The election coverage on TV5 and GMA became even more interesting, thanks to a pair of comedians.

In August 2015, TV5 launched a series of mock campaign videos starring Jun Sabayton. Titled ‘Bayaw for President’, it is currently promoted as part of the network’s ‘Bilang Pilipino’ coverage.

A few months later, GMA responded with their own series of videos starring Michael V. The ‘Dapat Tama’ videos, where Bitoy portrayed three different characters (Mimi Hasa, Delly N. Sha & Gary Palan), are currently part of the network’s ‘Eleksyon 2016’ coverage.

While the reception between the two advocacy series may vary among netizens, they share one common belief. Both ‘Bayaw for President’ and ‘Dapat Tama’ are here to teach voters on how to vote for the right candidate.

As of today, ABS-CBN has yet to release their own advocacy videos for ‘Halalan 2016’.