What do you do if a busted pipe dries up a community�s water supply and the local water company seems helpless about the problem? What if a street remains flooded thru the rain and summer heat and local officials refuse to act? Whom do you call?
The mayor? The president? Ramon tulfo or max soliven? No, these are jobs for Hoy! Gising! Five days a week, abs-cbn�s 30-minute public affairs program provides instant action on everyday problems. Who must answer for too many potholes on the highway? Or too little water in the faucet? Hoy! Gising! Finds them, hounds them and harangues them until they act �all on nationwide television, 5-5:30pm, Monday to Friday.
Nothing typifies abs-cbn�s philosophy of public affairs programming more than Hoy! Gising! , a loud, heckling, fast-paced show that brings to Filipino living rooms the problems on manila�s streets. Since it began in 1992 , the show has flourished on an unending diet of urban woes: garbage, potholes and traffic. At Hoy! Gising! They call it blt (basura, lubak, trapik), the top-rating formula that has kept the program at the top of tv charts.
The show started as a segment on tv patrol, channel 2�s popular six o �clock news program, in 1986. six years later, Hoy! Gising! Became a full-fledged 30-minute program. But the public response was so overwhelming it was soon stretched to 45 minutes, and then a full hour.
This year, as abs-cbn reworked its current affairs programming, Hoy! Gising! Was reduced to its original length. But still enjoys an audience share of 40-50%, higher than that of its closest competitor, saksi, a public service program aired on abs-cbn archrival gma7.
Hoy! Gising! Gets most of its stories from people who walk into the studio or write or phone in their complaints. Executive producer gene orejana says that they get as many as 100 letter every day, and daily, 50 people are allowed into the station to file their complaints in person.
Rarely in the history of Philippine television has a public service program rated so well and become such a byword in households all over the country. But it�s not hard to fathom why. Metro manila and its environs are gold mine for the sort of the show deals with every day: urban blight, inadequate public services and inept officials. Hoy! Gising! Taps into the chords of urban discontent. And it often gets an official response to the problems it features.
To Filipino viewers, seeing public officials being moved to action is a spectacle in itself. And Hoy! Gising! Dresses up this spectacle with emotion and intrigue. �public service on Hoy! Gising! Has the element of drama,� says tv veteran tina monzon-palma, now chief operating officer of abc-5. �they�ll needle the complaint, lecture the person at fault, reprimand officials. In effect, the concept of public service has been reduced to soap. They even have sundan ang susnod na kabanata, where they feature what�s been done about a problem.�
abs-cbn has revolutionized the concept not only of public service programs, but of news and current affairs in general. In the 10 years since its resurrection, the company has chipped at the foundations of social responsibility and serious programming that have held up public affairs television. The traditional view that the airwaves are public property over which broadcast firms had stewardship thru their franchise. Therefore, television had to provide a public service by airing programs that informed, educated and contributed to a deeper understanding of social issues. There was a sense that tv companies were responsible to society, not only to their shareholders.
That is becoming less and less true. In less than a decade, abs-cbn has transformed public affairs shows, once the stodgiest elements of television programming, into something else: glamorous and glitzy, with the stress on attitude rather than depth or substance. Even the 10:30-11:30 pm time slots �once the domain of serious talk shows discussing the weighty issues of the day- have been filled by channel 2 with amalgam of gore, celebrity and scandal that is designed more to entertain than anything else. Before long, the other stations followed.
Apart from glitz, abs-cbn introduced attitude: an overweening arrogance and a fundamental cynicism that government is always to blame. That attitude is typified by Hoy! Gising�s anchors who hector officials, rather than probe them for answers, who heckle rather than report. True, they get things done, but they seldom help viewers understand why problems arise in the first place and what communities can do about them �apart from complaining to Hoy! Gising! Does not examine the roots of the garbage disposal problem, or the ins and outs of trash collection system. Could it be that the garbage is uncollected because there are not enough trucks? Perhaps the garbage dumps are full? Or maybe a government contractor is making money from cutting trips, so that collection is limited to once a week instead of everyday?
Hoy! Gising! Does not enlighten. Instead its anchors shout and scream, Hoy! Mayor, what are you doing about this problem? Are you deaf to the people�s woes? Is everyone in the city hall as rotten as the garbage on the streets?
In most cases, the mayor will act �more because he wants to look good on television than anything else. The street will be cleaned up and residents will be featured in the next day�s program, smiling and thankful to Hoy! Gising! In the end, as in soap opera endings, everyone is happy: the local people, the anchors, even the mayor. But before long, another street has the same problem and the services of Hoy! Gising! Will have to be restored to again.
The media as messiah �tell us your woes and we will get someone to act on them- is the ideology that Hoy! Gising! Propagates. Without doubt, the program has eased the lives of perhaps thousands of people. But it promotes a dangerous proposition, because it gives citizens the illusions that they don�t have to act on their own to solve their problems. They don�t even have to think the problems though. They only have to be seen on television.
Much is wrong with the way things are run, true. And it is also true that unless the media report,problems fester. But Hoy! Gising! Is not social commentary. It is primarily a way to titillate and hold captive a television audience. Viewers get vicarious thrill from watching the formidable korina sanchez, until revently Hoy! Gising�s main anchor, pummel an inept mayor or abusive cop with verbal abuse.
The concept of Hoy! Gising! Says ed lingao, a tv reporter who once wrote for the show is, �bombahin nang bombahin hanggang may gawin�do you think viewers want to watch other people�s problems with potholes and garbage? They want to see na binebembang mo yung boss.�
Nothing wrong with cheap thrills. There is so much disillusionment with authority that having one or two officials ground to a pulp on television everyday may actually be good for the public morale. Hoy! Gising�s glossy packaging makes this public condemnation even more seductive. The show moves fast: it has up to seven major segments in just 21 minutes (the typical 30-minute program has nine minutes of commercials). Each segment averages one minute and 30 seconds, followed by colorful commentary by the anchors. Often there is music, animation and graphics to make the segments even more entertaining. Between segments the Hoy! Gising! Song is sung to the tune of the top dance hit Macarena.
The seductive part is easy. It is the program�s content that becomes problematic, and some of the problems are inherent in the structure of the show itself. Hoy! Gising! Has five crews that are sent on assignment to follow up complaints. Each crew must do two to three stories daily, leaving little time for them to tackle any assignment in great depth. Besides, it is very difficult to do a thorough investigation of any issue, no matter if it is as trivial as a pothole, in the one-and-a-half minutes allotted each segment in the show.
�there were times when we wondered whether we were wrong,� recalls lingao, who worked as a reporter for Hoy! Gising! For two years until 1994. �say a policeman is accused of something. We air the accusation and we air his side. The mayor is asked about it and because he wants to show he�s doing something about the problem, the policeman is transferred. But what if the accusation is not true?�
�there was pressure on us to do five or six stories in one day,� lingao adds. �it was like a cookie factory. There was no time to get to the bottom of things, to see who�s responsible. All we could do was air a gripe, air a defense and then see what happens.�
A show that packages itself as the public�s dragon slayer should at least get its facts right. Orejana, the programs new exec producer realizes this. He has tried to make some changes in the program. �before, Hoy! Gising! Was the judge, jury and executioner,� he says. �we�ve changed that. In the past, officials refused to guest in our show, they were afraid. But now we try to be fair and objective.�
But Hoy! Gising! Is not fundamentally about facts or public service. It�s essentially showbiz. Says palma: �they do it for ratings. They need to bring in all those tears. Viewers tend to do channel-zapping and more people are watching different shows in the same hour, so you have to keep them glued to your program.�
�It�s television,� says lingao. �you have to get results. What�s the use of coming out with a complaint if you can�t have a resolution in the near future? Our researchers would keep on following up on an issue until it is resolved. That�s why we were told not to tackle squatters, because there�s nothing we can do about them. It�s an issue that can�t be resolved, so we shouldn�t bother with it anymore. There are problems that are easier and they get more coverage.�
Still, orejana has tried to broaden the range of issues the show tackles. Recently, Hoy! Gising! Featured defects in mitsubishi cars, forced the company to admit its mistakes and to refund car owners. �but we can�t move away from BLT. That is what people want,� says orejana. �and we only entertain complaints if the government refuses to act. If someone comes to us, we always ask him first, have you brought this to the barangay captain or to the city hall? If they say yes, and still nothing has been done, that�s the only time we put the complaint on the show.�
But in the end, how much can Hoy! Gising1 really solve? Television cannot undo urban misery. It cannot do anything about the shortage of resources or government waste and insufficiency, which are at the root of the problems it features everyday. What television �good television- can do is help the public understand: it can broaden the public�s view of social problems and offer sober, long-term solutions. Unfortunately, thought and sobriety are not Hoy! Gising�s strongest points. In a sense, the show helps perpetuate the cycle of everyday problems �and band-aid solutions- that it features. The problems will linger long after Hoy! Gising�s ratings potential is spent. And who will bother with urban woes then, when the audience wants new thrills, and garbage and traffic no longer sell?
Even the anchor�s fury is an act. Says a member of the show�s staff. �people think the anchors are crusaders. But they�re just people who saty in the studio, they never go out to do coverage, they just read the script. It just happens that they look good on tv. They really don�t care. They don�t treat people well. Do you really think they are there for public service?�
As in showbiz, the anchors are actors, they are merely playing a part. In this way Hoy! Gising! Further blurs the lines between entertainment and current affairs, a distinction that gets hazier in abs-cbn everyday.
One distinction is that actors, unless they are in public office, normally have no political influence. But not on Hoy! Gising! Korina sanchez sneezes or ted failon smirks, says one Hoy! Gising! Staffer, and mayors stumble all over themselves to make amends. Even the crew sometimes get carried away.
It can be a heady experience, says lingao, you go into a neighborhood and once people find out a Hoy! Gising! Crew is there, they crowd around, the children burst into the Hoy! Gising! Song, and everyone wants to be interviewed. �it does get to you,� he confesses. �you fight with a cop, you can have him fired. An abs-cbn staffer gets into trouble with a policeman, they tell the show�s hosts who then berate the police chief or the mayor on television, even without finding out whether the complaint has merit.� Sometimes, Hoy! Gising! Staffers say, the anchors are not beyond twisting or censoring a story to do favors for friends.
�Hoy! Gising! Was a popular way of doing a show, you know, the media crusading against the all-powerful Big Brother,� says lingao. �what we never realized, we�re also the Big Brother.�
But the story goes beyond Hoy! Gising! For the most part, what abs-cbn passes off as current affairs is more entertainment than journalism. Whether it is sarah balabagan�s arrival or the latest sensational murder, channel 2 creates spectacle more than it reports, comments, or analyzes. It can probe �and often menacingly- but only if it is a crime or a showbiz scandal. Issues that require thorough explanation that involve social forces rather than individuals are avoided like they were the plague of television. The rule simply is that issues don�t rate.
There was a time, only a decade ago, when current affairs was a matter of public service rather than ratings. �we never used to mix entertainment stories into current affairs show. We had the agenda that public affairs was about political and social issues. Never did we have a guest who came from entertainment,� says monzon-palma.
Those years seem a more innocent time, although it was martial law and an era of political upheaval says monzon-palma: �there was no pressure on us in public affairs to sell or rate at the time. It was something that we did and supported whether or not it was viable because the news programs can subsidize public affairs. There was no compulsion to rate until abs-cbn re-engineered the concept of what public affairs should be.
Whether for Hoy! Gising!, assignment or dong puno live, it seems a matter of ratings for channel2. �the normal gestation period of any program is three months for a daily or 13 episodes for a weekly show, says orejana. �if you don�t rate within that time, you�ll be axed.�
The rule is true even for the supposedly more serious programs, including the one hosted by abs-cbn vice president for news and current affairs: Ricardo �Dong� Puno who advertises himself as an award-winning journalist and harvard law graduate. Says monzon-palma: �Dong puno has trivialized politics and staged it as See-True (a former top rating show on the private lives of celebrities). He provokes goes into people�s personal lives, goes for the emotional appeal, nothing cerebral. It�s so different from viewpoint (puno�s old talk show on gma7). He switched because he has to rate. That�s the bottom line.
And because abs-cbn programs rate, all the other stations make clones of channel 2 shows. The result is homogenous programming, with all the current affairs shows packaged in the same glitzy way, with the same arrogant attitude, most weeks, the same topics that are guaranteed to rate. If it�s boxer onyok velasco who�s in the news, all the current affairs shows in abs-cbn stable �and often, also in other channels- will focus on him. The week before, it was filipina maid sarah balabagan. The week before that, it was jonathan galura, who was accused of murdering his mother and sister. From Hoy! Gising! To magandang gabi bayan to assignment, the show goes on and it is always the same show.
The result? �A citizenry that hates government, that doesn�t trust government,� says monzon-palma. �A citizenry composed of spectators who don�t really understand what�s going on.� #
source:
From Loren to Marimar
The Philippine media in the 90s
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
(first published in i magazine)
