In the Philippines, ABS-CBN network shut by Duterte faces uncertain future
- Eugenio Lopez has walked away from the station and the family business empire, seemingly relenting in his battle with the country’s president
- Lopez was the latest in a line of tycoons in the Philippines to run afoul of Duterte, who made bringing down ‘oligarchs’ one of his campaign promises
ABS-CBN’s 25-year broadcast licence lapsed in May, and two months later pro-Duterte lawmakers blocked the issuance of a new one – fulfilling a threat the president had made two years ago.
At the end of last year, the network had a 42 per cent share of viewers nationwide – outstripping the 30 per cent share of its closest rival, GMA Network – according to ratings firm Kantar Media Philippines. Kantar managing director Jay Bautista estimated that ABS-CBN’s received the lion’s share of the industry’s advertising revenue at the time, which was upwards of 500 billion pesos (US$10.3 billion).
By the end of August, the network was a shell of its former self. It had started slashing its workforce of 11,000 and had also closed all of its radio and television outlets, leaving only a skeleton crew for news and migrating content to the internet, said Jing Reyes, head of ABS-CBN’s integrated news and current affairs division. More lay-offs could still follow, she added.
Duterte has had the knives out for ABS-CBN since his presidential campaign in 2016. He has said he paid for a campaign advertisement that year, but the network never ran the material and sparked the president’s ire by being slow to pay back the fee. It did, however, broadcast an advertisement by an opposition senator that stressed Duterte’s penchant for expletives, and ran stories about the president’s alleged secret bank accounts.
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Philippines’ ABS-CBN closes regional stations that served remote communities for decades
In March 2017, he publicly railed against the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the country’s largest newspaper, and ABS-CBN for “rude”, “unfair” and “trash” reporting, especially concerning his war on drugs. He also warned the Prieto and Lopez families, the respective owners of the Inquirer and ABS-CBN, of payback by way of “karma”. The Prieto family sold their stake in the Inquirer in November 2017.