By IVAN EMIL LABAYNE
www.nordis.net

Before anne, karylle, billy, jugs, teddy, vice, vhong, ryan bang and company, there was willie revillame and jannelle jamer and marielle rodriguez and girls on the background, wearing nothing, holding boxes that might just signify winning one million pesos, or fifty thousand pesos, or, a generation earlier and over a different channel, isang bungkos ng kangkong.

Winning moments that were not always “wow,” marked by a stampede in Philsports arena, Willie’s perennial sexism, the suspension of same host because of his lewd remarks. Even before wowowin or wowowee or wawawaw pumapalahaw (no name-change can topple the decades-running eat bulaga with its star-studded ravishing pepsi cola cast of an expert copycat senator, joey, vic, plus ex-girlfriend pia and current wife, pauleen), there was randy john and wow (surprise), willie, samahan pa ni kuya dick, amy for good measure—in their very creative, talagang nagsa-standout na show title, magandang tanghali bayan (for a time, abscbn had magandang umaga bayan (now umagang kay ganda), and soon-to-be vice president’s magandang gabi bayan). I remember reading some sharp quip, wala pang social media nun, so I guess sa tabloid ko ‘to nabasa: jabbing at the poor job of abscbn’s creative department team. Ito baka false memory na pero someone also joked na kulang na lang palabas na “magandang hatinggabi bayan.”

A long prelude, to an otherwise mundane matter (akala lang natin), TV stations switching off permanently(?), facing legal battles spanning seemingly legitimate franchise issues and the more twisted “dual citizenship” issue. Cue David Shields’ first appearance, “the process of aggrandizement: relatively ordinary problems are overblown into larger-than-life ‘literature.’ We, too, can make a myth of our own meager circumstances.” An intervention: instead of, or just alongside “myth,” the meat of mundane matters, something profound locatable in, located in the pedestrians. In this case: watching television, TV stations shut down, digital boxes boxed for permanent disuse, millions of people with no more cardo to watch, no more ted failon to listen to.

Before there was social media multiplying like myspace and friendster, I was into hiraya manawari (educational, pinoy-made) and then slam dunk (japanese) and then mula sa puso (will selena, played by princess punzalan ever die? Or, in another teleserye universe, will they ever find this diary that has, in fairness ha, prodded the plot for years, sustaining the confusion that it was gladys, not judy ann, that was the real daughter? Tama ba’ng ganun ang istorya nun?) and then maria mercedez (mexico) and then meteor garden (taiwan) and then lovers in paris (korea) and so on, dot dot dot, period, no erase, cross my heart, swear to die.

See, this is not similar to the cutely childish games I used to engage in with my classmates or friends in high school: which is better, kapamilya, kapuso, kabarkada, kapatid? I watched shows that I like, saanmang channel sila mapapanood (channel 2’s teleseryes and meteor garden; channel 7’s animes, channel 23’s uaap games: tipong ateneo-la salle rivalry nung panahon nila tenorio, gonzales at fonacier kontra kanila ritual, cardona, yeo; channel 5’s pba games: caguioa’s rookie year to eric menk’s MVP year. This is more about the TV’s transformation as I grew from texting high school crushes to composing poems in facebook and posting them while tagging my crushes.

On the one hand, the tempting tendency to acknowledge the continuing validity of the implication in another Shields’ quote: “By 1910, the motion picture had given actors a way to reach a much wider audience, effectively linking people across time and space, synchronizing society. For the first time, not only did your neighbors read the same news you read in the morning, and know the same music and movies, but people across the country did, too.” With media like the radio and television, a mass culture has emerged: “mass” not just in the sense that cultural forms reached more people but reciprocally, these mass of people access, consume pretty much the same products. My high school classmates watched jennilyn and cristine and yasmine and rainier and mark compete in Starstruck even as, in the competing channel, hero and sandara and roxanne and joross and neri compete to be the big winner, the ultimate survivor, the star in a million in star circle quest. Then the day after in class, we gabbed about what took place last night—most of us watched these things, to stay in the loop, or maybe we really wanted to—rainier flunking the singing tasks, sandara not looking enough like barbie xu. TV was a magical box, black and affordable, where we all tuned in—and you know it is not an exaggeration, yung mga kwento sa probinsya kung sa’n dinadayo pa talaga yung bahay na may TV para manood ang mga kapitbahay—to get our daily entertainment, nightly news, teleserye doses. Adding a bleaker twist to perhaps Shields’ less value-laden delivery, Renato Constantino hinted at how a semblance of cultural sameness overshadows other social disparities: he cites the marginals in Venezuela who “think that there are, to be sure, rich and poor, but all have access to the same consumer goods they hear about on the transistor or see on the TV.” Kebs sa social inequalities; mahirap o mayaman, inaabangan si marina at dugong, si jumong at kim samsoon.

On the other hand, a need for modification: with digital media and electronic technologies outstripping TV and radio inch by inch, wave by wave, bandwidth by bandwidth, your peers “know[ing] the same music and movies” as you become less applicable. With the explosion of data and “content”—that most encompassing of all blanket terms—it is less likely that you consume the same things, watch the same videos, or listen to the same podcasts.

But the trap is to automatically hail the preponderance of the Internet as the primary medium by which Filipinos get entertained, obtain information, hear the news. Connectivity issues still plague us—alam nyo na ‘to, no need to cite statistics and data, nasa karanasan nyo na, mula pag-open nyo ng devices sa umaga hanggang ‘di-mapigilang ‘rant’/rightful complaint to the tune of (Curse word/U*is, Pa*yu) (Internet service provider) (list of complaints: unresponsive agents, embarrassing internet speed, signal fluctuations etc.) hours later. Best recent scenario: “connectivity issues” leading to the postponement of a Senate hearing with the National Telecommunication Commission on the country’s internet status.

Then a TV station was shut down, because of what looks like technically correct legalities, but possibly also because of latent political and business-related reasons. Fewer free TV channels in the romanticized “far-flung areas,” fewer options in what little is left of democracy’s unsilver platter of “free market.” Some people say Kebs lang, untouched naman ang netflix o youtube premium. Abscbn’s shows (those in free TV in general) are baduy anyway, it’s not a huge loss. Maybe true to a small segment of the population, but not to those surfing the internet at 10kb/s speed, refreshing the page again and again just to get updates on the pandemic, or learn about this viral Amalayer video, or watch angel locsin slap mocha uson in a fictional (but might as well true?) show. # nordis.net