Tag Archives: MTRCB ratings system

Philippines, Sports, television

Philippines-Australia FIBA Basketball Game Earns an SPG Rating

Call it the ‘BasketBrawl in Bocaue’.

The FIBA Asia qualifying game between the Philippines and Australia at the Philippine Arena Monday night was marred by a bench-clearing brawl. The following posts should summarize the series of events that took place.

At the moment, FIBA is still taking a closer look at the incident, with the possibility of sanctions and suspensions to be announced in the coming days. Meanwhile, Basketball Australia and the Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas issued an official statement with regards to the brawl, while players expressed remorse on social media over their involvement.

This incident became the talk of the sporting world for all the wrong reasons. And as expected many netizens on social media were not happy about a competitive basketball game turning into a wrestling match.

The Philippines-Australia match was aired live on T5N last night and like all live sporting events on Philippine free TV it earned a Parental Guidance (PG) rating from the MTRCB. However, in subsequent rebroadcasts of the match on T5N and AksyonTV, MTRCB gave it a Strong Parental Guidance (SPG) rating for language and violence in light of the incident.

Never before in Philippine television history has a non-combat sporting event earn an SPG rating due to circumstances beyond its control. While live sports is usually attended and watched to by people of all ages, such incidents are sometimes unavoidable and can also be traumatizing.

Still, such untoward incidents would have been prevented had the referees lay down the law and play the peacemaker role between two sides. Unfortunately for the referees in Bocaue, it’s either they are not competent or strict enough to do their job.

That said, this incident between the Philippines and Australia will forever live on in Philippine television infamy, both for its impact and its consequences in the game of basketball. It will be interesting to see what new narratives will come out of this, so stay tuned for further details.

Advertisement
Standard
culture, entertainment, MTRCB, news, paid programming, Philippines, politics, public affairs, religion, television

IBC-13: Repeat Offenders of the MTRCB Ratings System

IBC-13’s disregard of the MTRCB’s current ratings guidelines only adds to the network’s ongoing misery. (Logo courtesy of the Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation)

The Intercontinental Broadcasting Corporation (IBC-13), already dubbed as the ‘sick network’, has another problem to deal with.

The said network has become infamous for their inability to completely implement the current television ratings system that the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) mandated in 2011. While all other networks have taken advantage of the new approach, IBC-13 has not taken the MTRCB’s ruling seriously.

As of today, September 1, the following current IBC-13 programs have not adopted the MTRCB ratings system:

  • The Gospel of the Kingdom (of Sonshine Media Networks International)
  • Cooltura
  • Tipong Pinoy
  • Retro TV
  • Tagamend
  • Home Shopping Network (9TV’s airing of HSN is currently rated PG)
  • EZ Shop

Recently, IBC-13’s rebroadcasts of Ninoy Aquino documentaries also failed to follow the current MTRCB ratings system, when in fact they should have implemented it considering the sensitive subject matter of these documentaries.

Making it worse is the fact that the MTRCB has not reacted in any kind to IBC-13’s defiance of their ratings system. Rather than giving the network numerous warnings with regards to their guidelines, they simply stayed quiet.

It is always the duty of the MTRCB to strictly enforce these classification ratings. All networks must take this current ruling seriously in order to provide a more responsible viewing experience.

But in the case of IBC-13, it is clear that they are not enacting some sort of responsibility to their so-called ‘viewers’ , if there is any, simply because their programming is mediocre.

IBC-13’s blatant disregard of the MTRCB television ratings only adds to the network’s recent reputation as an unreliable, incompetent and disorganized broadcast group. While the addition of the Asian Television Content Corporation (ATC) as a blocktimer saved IBC-13 from further embarrassment, it is still not enough to make the network relevant to viewers.

In the end, more problems than solutions await the embattled management of IBC-13. And once the MTRCB finally decides to act on this matter, things will only get worse for the staff inside Capitol Hills, Diliman.

Standard