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SCMP Reporter

The volatile nature of the cable TV industry has been underscored in the Philippines by the signing of new channel distribution agreements, news of a truce between two warring parties and the abrupt removal of another service from a channel roster.

 Turner International in Hong Kong has announced that Asian Cable Communications Inc (Accion) will be the exclusive distributor of its two channels, TNT & Cartoon Network and CNN International (CNNI) in the Philippines.

 The exception to the agreement is Metro Manila, where Home Cable, the country's second-largest cable company, and its affiliate operators, will take the two channels.

 The accords will give each channel 300,000 subscribers nationally.

 Peace appears to have broken out between sports channel ESPN and Philippines cable operators after it was blacked out for a week in April in protest against an attempt to raise charges.

 Since then, ESPN has announced Cable Boss as its exclusive distributor in the Philippines, and has renewed direct-delivery agreements with the nation's largest single cable operator, the Sky Cable/Sun Cable joint venture.

 ESPN Star Sport's director for international sales Adam Zecha said Home Cable also had signed up again to take the channel.

 The Philippines Cable TV Association said about 500,000 homes of the 550,000 said to have been taking ESPN in April joined the blackout, although getting accurate viewing figures from the country was difficult.

 ESPN Star Sports' communication manager Nilima Bhat said about 495,000 homes now received ESPN.

 If Turner and ESPN Star Sports are celebrating their agreements, Star TV's Tagalog-language movie channel Viva Cinema has, as expected, been dropped from Sun Cable's channel roster.

 After Sun Cable merged with Sky Cable, it decided to use its new joint-venture partner's in-house Filipino movie service.

 Viva is still watched by Home Cable customers and is seen in about 200,000 households nationally.

  'As a result of Sun Cable's merger with Sky Cable, Sun subscribers will be deprived of Viva Cinema, the most popular movie channel in the Philippines,' Star TV regional director Charles Pollard said.

 'We did our best to ensure its continued availability and hence the consumer's freedom and variety of choice.'  Although the prevalence of English in the Philippines makes it a tempting market for western programmers, cable TV operators have a reputation for dumping channels at little or no notice.

 Sky Cable in the past three years has dropped ESPN, HBO and the Discovery Channel because of disagreements over price.

 In return, the channel providers complain of widespread piracy of signals.

 They also say that Filipino operators deliberately under-report subscriber numbers in order to cut the cost of imported channels which are charged on the number of people watching.



Philippines gets CNN, TNT channels