This was recently confirmed by the TV5 AniMEGA Facebook page, posting this short statement that brought some excitement to anime fans in the country. Soon after, they announced that Dreamworks’ ‘Voltron: Legendary Defender’ will be the first AniMEGA show to move to primetime effective March 20.
It can be recalled that during the Ka-Shake era from 2008-10, TV5’s AniMEGA block was aired on primetime opposite ABS-CBN and GMA’s teleseryes. While the response was enthusiastic, the block was eliminated as part of new owner Manny V. Pangilinan’s futile quest to go head-on with both ABS-CBN and GMA.
Now that wounds were mended between TV5 and its legion of anime fans, one can only hope that AniMEGA on primetime will be here to stay. It will be interesting how this experiment will turn out the second time around, so good luck.
As expected, ‘That’s My Amboy’ was a non-factor in its final episode.
The just-concluded GMA drama series ended its run Friday with a national rating of 16%. In contrast, ABS-CBN’s ‘Dolce Amore’ continued to roll, winning the night with a 33.3% rating.
Overall, the final week of ‘That’s My Amboy’ mustered only a 15% average rating, while ‘Dolce Amore’ scored 33%. The expected low ratings was a result of GMA’s unwillingness to promote ‘That’s My Amboy”s final episodes in favor of its successor ‘Once Again’.
Now that ‘That’s My Amboy’ ended with a whimper, what chances does the more serious ‘Once Again’ have? Considering the questionable tactics of the Kapuso network, expect the latter to do more of the same.
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.
Both ‘Bridges of Love’ and ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’ are down to their final two episodes.
In a rare moment in Philippine television, two rival programs will air their respective series finales at the same time and on the same day. ABS-CBN’s ‘Bridges of Love’ and GMA’s ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’ will have their final episodes aired tomorrow night at 9:15 p.m.
‘Bridges of Love’ were led by Maja Salvador, Paulo Avelino and Jericho Rosales. A story that features two brothers fighting for the love of a seductive female dancer, the series premiered on March 16 on the Primetime Bida block, and ran for 103 episodes.
On the other hand, ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’ were led by Rhian Ramos, Glaiza de Castro and Luis Alandy. A story that features a rich and influential Chinese-Filipino woman who was romantically linked to a lesbian, the series premiered on May 11 on the Telebabad block, and aired for 65 episodes.
While ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’ featured a similar storyline as ‘My Husband’s Lover’ (this time with females portrayed as lovers), it failed to equal, let alone surpass, the success of the latter. In fact, it was a mismatch from the start, with ‘Bridges of Love’ doubling its ratings total over ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’ with each episode.
The contrast of fortunes for both series continued into social media, as ‘Bridges of Love’ remained a hot topic among netizens compared to ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’. The fact that the latter went largely unnoticed on Twitter despite featuring a novel storyline involving lesbianism only caused a great deal of concern and worry within the GMA camp.
It will be interesting to see which series finale will have the last laugh. Will it be the love triangle between Maja, Paulo and Echo, or the love triangle between Rhian, Glaiza and Luis?
One thing’s for sure: a frantic finish awaits both ‘Bridges of Love’ and ‘The Rich Man’s Daughter’.
Welcome to the ‘one-year serye’ club, ‘The Half-Sisters’.
The highly popular teleserye on GMA’s Afternoon Prime block celebrated its one-year anniversary last Tuesday, June 9. As of today, June 11, ‘The Half-Sisters’ has a total of 262 episodes aired, with more to come as the series continues to progress.
With the milestone of reaching a year on the air, ‘The Half-Sisters’ joins a very exclusive club of local drama series with a run of at least a year. The most recent series to join the club was ABS-CBN’s ‘Be Careful with My Heart’, which aired for over two years.
‘The Half-Sisters’ premiered on Monday, June 9, 2014 as the lead-off program of Afternoon Prime. The series replaced the remake of ‘Villa Quintana’, which starred Janine Gutierrez and Elmo Magalona.
At the time of its premiere, ‘The Half-Sisters’ was joined by ‘Innamorata’ in the Afternoon Prime block. Since then, a total of five other teleseryes (‘Dading’, ‘Ang Lihim ni Annasandra’, ‘Yagit’, ‘Kailan Ba Tama ang Mali?’ ‘Healing Hearts’) have aired alongside ‘The Half-Sisters’, with ‘Yagit’ by far the longest-running of the five to date.
The pilot episode of ‘The Half-Sisters’ registered an 11.5% rating on AGB Nielsen, and a 7.3% on Kantar. Its opponent at the time, ‘Moon of Desire’, registered a 9.2 and 10.2%, respectively.
While ‘The Half-Sisters’ had a slow start early in its run, by the middle of the -ber months, it began a steady climb atop the afternoon ladder. The series ranked as the top-rated program in the weekday afternoons at the end of 2014.
Not even a new opponent in ‘Flordeliza’ can slow ‘The Half-Sisters’ down, even though the series’ criticism regarding its lengthy run began to grow. Today, ‘The Half-Sisters continues to rank among the top ten programs in the country in both Kantar and AGB Nielsen.
Typically the lifespan of a modern-day teleserye lasts four to eight months, depending on ratings and critical acclaim. But ‘The Half-Sisters’ are a different breed, a throwback to the teleseryes of the old days.
That said, expect more twists and turns to develop as ‘The Half-Sisters’ continues.
Starring Barbie Forteza, Thea Tolentino, Jean Garcia, Jomari Yllana, Ryan Eigenmann, Eula Valdes, Andre Paras, Mel Martinez, Vanness del Moral and Winwyn Marquez, ‘The Half-Sisters’ airs weekdays after ‘Eat Bulaga’ on GMA’s Afternoon Prime.
Notes: From the Tube will take a break tomorrow, June 12, in commemoration of Independence Day in the Philippines. Regular posts resume on Monday, June 15.
For the first time since ‘My BFF’, a local teleserye will kick off GMA Telebabad.
On Monday, May 25, ‘My Mother’s Secret’ will take over the slot that will be vacated by ‘My Love from the Star’ later tonight. This will mark the end of an eight-month lull for a lengthy local teleserye at the said slot, after GMA experimented with a pair of mini-series and a trio of Koreanovelas.
Directed by Neal del Rosario, ‘My Mother’s Secret’ will tell the story of an actress who is secretly pregnant, after which she sold her child in order to continue her showbiz career. A controversial scandal forced her to leave the industry and begin a family with her one-time boyfriend, but a liver problem threatened her husband’s life, and she was forced to find the child she once sold in order to help her husband.
Gwen Zamora, Christian Bautista and Kim Rodriguez will breathe life into the three primary characters of ‘My Mother’s Secret’. Kiko Estrada, Lotlot de Leon, Diva Montelaba, Shamaine Buencamino, Enzo Pineda, Joanna Marie Tan and Tricia Cabais will play supporting roles, while Meryll Soriano and Mark Herras will also appear in a special participation.
As mentioned earlier, ‘My Mother’s Secret’ will be the first local teleserye to kick off Telebabad since ‘My BFF’, which ran from June to October 2014 (‘Seasons of Love’ and ‘Elemento’ were only aired as a mini-series, and not as full-fledged teleseryes). Coincidentally, both series replaced ‘My Love from the Star’ on the same timeslot.
The first two weeks of ‘My Mother’s Secret’ will air against the finale week of ‘Inday Bote’ and the premiere week of ‘Pasion de Amor’. That said, the series will have its work cut out for them as they go up against two ABS-CBN teleseryes in as many weeks.
Once again, GMA goes to a local drama to begin Telebabad. But will it make a difference? Find out next week.
‘My Mother’s Secret’ premieres this Monday before ’24 Oras’ on GMA Telebabad.
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