Reruns of TV5’s ‘Face to Face’ have been airing the past two weeks, fueling speculation that the program is about to be cancelled.
If you were tuning in to TV5 the last two weeks, you may notice that ‘Face to Face‘, one of the network’s original programs following the rebrand from ABC 5 five years earlier, has been airing repeat episodes over the last two weeks. No apparent reason was given for the re-airing of the program’s prior episodes, but it has been rumored that ‘Face to Face’ is about to be axed from the network’s program lineup in favor of new programs aimed for a younger audience.
The last new episode of ‘Face to Face’ came on July 19, and if you were there to watch the program, the teaser for the next episode never aired as TV5’s coverage of the State of the Nation Address took place on July 22. After the SONA, I thought ‘Face to Face’ would air new episodes. Instead, they started to air reruns of prior episodes, all of which had the teasers for future episodes cut off at the end. During those two weeks either the episodes hosted by the original host Amy Perez or the ones hosted by substitute Gelli de Belen were being aired alternately.
It is clear that ‘Face to Face”s days were being numbered. As a matter of fact TV5 started its housecleaning last week by cancelling its daily showbiz program ‘Ang Latest‘, which also explains why the late night talk show ‘The Medyo Late Night Show with Jojo A.’ is being aired much earlier than usual. The cancelling of ‘Ang Latest’ was just the beginning of TV5’s cost-cutting moves that may benefit them in the future, and in the process, spare them from the intensity of the competition that was the rivalry between ABS-CBN and GMA.
While ‘Face to Face’ is about to end soon, it’s legacy and revolutionary program format will endure in the years to come. It was with this program which inspired GMA News TV to air ‘Personalan‘, a talk show featuring a similar format as ‘Face to Face’. In the near future similar programs in the vein of ‘Face to Face’ will come around soon, but for now, loyal fans of the show should be proud and happy of what the program has achieved over the years, despite constant changes in its timeslot and attempts to remain modest amid the MTRCB‘s stringent reforms on television programming.
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