BROADCASTING: Critique and Research
Short essays that examine the artistic value and socio-political implications of broadcast texts pertaining to programs, genres, personalities, audiences, production aspects and processes, distribution or circulation, ownership, industry structures, mediation platforms, technologies, and various socio-cultural contexts that inform the mediation process are referred to as criticism. Broad studies, which are usually about history, put broadcasting in a certain time period, in the context of larger networks of capital and government, or in the context of building a nation.
Criticism should be broadcast. Early broadcast criticism articles focused on the state of the industry and featured characters in the entertainment sections of newspapers and magazines. These articles were published in Kislap, Tagumpay, The Philippines Herald, Mirror, The Manila Chronicle, The Chronicle Magazine, The Manila Times, and Pitak ng mga Artista sa Pelikula, Radyo, Tanghalan, and Telebisyon from the 1950s to the 1960s (Features of Artists in Cinema, Radio, Stage, and Television). From 1969 until martial law was established in 1972, Pilipino Magazine published a series about the lives of radio and television artists. From the 1960s to the 1990s, The Fookien Times published an annual review of the sector. Several issues of the Philippine Daily Express, Weekend, Expressweek, and Who Magazine featured assessments of broadcast programs and issues during the martial law period. During the early years of the post-EDSA revolution period and until the 2000s, this sort of writing would be the mainstay of televised criticism in the form of articles in magazines and daily newspapers.
Outstanding works of this type appeared in regular writer columns in various journals.In the late 1960s, Edmund Sicam’s “On Radio” column in The Manila Chronicle and Nestor Torre Jr.’s “On Television” column presented critical critiques of broadcast programs as well as in-depth assessments of the industry. Torre’s column “Boob-Tube Booboos,” which first appeared in The Philippine Daily Express in the 1970s and now sometimes appears in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, where he also writes regular reviews of TV shows, was where he wrote about the mistakes that TV stars made.
Literary and cinema critics were among the first to examine broadcasting as popular culture in articles published in anthologies of critique. Clodualdo del Mundo Sr. evaluates radio broadcasts in general as lacking the merits to be deemed art forms in “Ang Radio: Aliwan o Propaganda?” (Radio: Entertainment or Propaganda?) in his book Mula sa Parolang Ginto (From the Golden Lighthouse), 1969. Bienvendio Lumbera, in brief remarks about radio in the essay “Popular Culture as Politics,” first published in the first issue of International Popular Culture in 1980 and later in Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Cinema, and Popular Culture, 1984; and selected critical reviews of television programs in his collection of essays on culture and Philippine society, Abot-Tanaw: Sulyap at Suri sa Nagbabagong Kultura at Lipunan.
Among the publications published during the martial law period, Sagisag (Emblem), 1975-1979, edited by Lumbera, best shows the dramatic shift in the evaluation of broadcasting through the lens of cultural studies. While compared to film reviews, groundbreaking essays that examined the form and narrative of television drama soaps, variety shows, and advertisements were “Mga Salamangka sa Patalastas sa Telebisyon” (Magic in Television Advertisements), 1976, and “Bentanilyang Kikisap-kisap, Buhay na Aandap-andap: Mga Luha at Pag-ibig sa Dulang Pantelebisyon Essays on the artistic appraisal of broadcast works in this tradition may still be found in selected magazine and book reviews dating back to the 1980s. In “Naghihingalo nga ba ang mga radio dramas?” (Are radio dramas dying?) In Artista Magazine, 1981, Fundador Soriano bemoaned the status of radio drama writing, notably its lack of literary elements in the tradition of the classics. Nofuente wrote “Portrayals of Life and Reality in Radio and Television Drama,” which was published in the 1986 issue of Philippine World-view, edited by Virgilio G. Enriquez. Midweek Magazine, edited by Pete Lacaba from 1985 to 1991, featured regular columns by critics Patrick Flores, Mike Feria, Juaniyo Arcellana, Luis Teodoro, and Marra PL. Lanot, who produced incisive analyses of television programs and broadcast industry practices in addition to their opinion pieces that reflect their keen observation of several cultural issues during the Aquino administration. Flores compiled his broadcast program and film critiques in his 1996 book Sites of Review: Critical Practice in Media. In “Talking Politics: Political Commentaries on Cebuano Radio” in Reading Popular Culture (1991) and “Talking Politics” in “Waiting for Mariang Makiling: Essays in Philippine Cultural History” (2002), Resil B. Mojares looked at some aspects of political talk on the radio in the context of cultural politics and the formation of the nation.
There arose a new perspective in the critical analysis of broadcast media in the Philippines during the last years of the Marcos dictatorship and up to the early years of the Aquino administration. A new set of writings began to shed light on the political economy of Philippine broadcasting, its global networks, owners’ interlocking interests in transnational corporations, and infrastructures that integrated the nation into the globalized world system, departing from formalist analysis of media texts. Pioneering works and essays that used this approach in the study of broadcasting in the Philippines include Gerald Sussman’s Telecommunications Transfers: Transnational Corporations, the Philippines, and Structures of Domination, 1981; and “The World Bank and Philippines Telecommunications,” which appeared in a 1987 issue of the journal Philippine Studies.
Recent works that employ these paradigms, but with a close examination of kinship ties, economic rent-seeking strategies of acquiring wealth and power, the formation of the state, and the growth of civil society groups in specific historico-political contexts, include Alfred McCoy’s “Rent-seeking Families and the Philippine State: A History of the Lopez Family” in his book Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines, 1994; and Josefina C. Santo’s News for Sale: The Corruption of the Philippine Media, 1998, by Chay Florentino Hofilea; and From Loren to Marimar: The Philippine Media in the 1990s, 1999, edited by Sheila Coronel, are two major books by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism that provided trenchant critiques of the capitalist nature of the Philippine broadcast industry and the impact of politics and economics on contemporary broadcast journalism. From 2001 to 2006, Charlson Ong, Jaileen Jimeno, Gemma Bagayaua, and Jo-Ann Maglipon, among others, wrote short pieces for the journal Newsbreak, which was run by Marites Daguilan-Vitug.
Broadcast Research Studies on the history of Philippine broadcasting come from many perspectives and move in different directions. In her piece “Radio in the Philippines,” published in The Sunday Times in September 1947, Ramona Bautista documented the evolution of the radio industry. The Chronicle Magazine published “The Role of Radio in Philippine Entertainment” by Luis Ma. Trinidad on November 24, 1964. The Marcos administration issued the monograph series Presidential Policy Statement in 1968, which included transcripts of audio recordings of President Ferdinand Marcos aired on Pakinggan ang Pangulo: Radio-Television Chat (Listen to the President: Radio-Television Chat) that contained the government’s policy issues, including those concerning broadcast. During the height of the martial law period in the mid-1970s, the government published The Broadcaster, a journal that highlighted the Marcos government’s radio and television initiatives, as well as other difficulties confronting the sector. A few observations on broadcast history can be found in the books John A. Lent’s Philippine Mass Communications: 1811-1966, 1973; Charles Moses and Crispin Maslog’s Mass Communication in Asia: A Brief History, 1978; and Maslog’s Philippine Mass Communication: A Mini-History, 1990. Keep an eye out: The Golden Years of Philippine Radio: A Historical Perspective of Philippine Radio, by Benjamin Aniceto, published in 2007, is a collection of information about early radio personalities and events. Florangel Rosario-Braid and Ramon Tuazon recognized historical trends and developments in “Post-EDSA Communication Media,” a 2000 issue of the journal Philippine Studies. The Cultural Center of the Philippines published two key monographs on the history of radio in 2003: Elizabeth L. Enriquez’s Radyo: An Essay on Philippine Radio and Clodualdo del Mundo Jr.’s Telebisyon: An Essay on Philippine Television Rey Rosales’ “Shooting the Messenger: Why Radio Broadcasting is a Deadly Profession in the Philippines,” published in the Journal of Radio Studies in 2009, and Melba Estonilo’s “The Development of News as a Viable Format in Philippine Radio, 1960s to Present: A Study of DZRH and DZBB,” published in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media in 2011.Appropriation of Colonial Broadcasting: A History of Early Radio in the Philippines, 1922–1946, by Elizabeth Enriquez, is a groundbreaking study that interprets broadcast history through the prism of postcolonialism and political economy.
Pinoy Television: The Story of ABS-CBN, edited by Thelma Sioson-San Juan, 1999; GMA Gold: Fifty Years of Broadcast History, edited by Chelo Banal-Formoso, 2001; Kapitan: Geny Lopez and the Making of ABS-CBN, 2006, by Raul Rodrigo; and Passing the Torch: The Lopez Group at Eighty, 1928-1947, edited by Raul Rodrigo, 2006.
Refereed local publications of worldwide renown publish essays on all elements of Philippine broadcasting on a regular basis. Ateneo de Manila University’s Philippine Studies and Kritika Kultura, and the University of the Philippines’ Humanities Diliman, Social Science Diliman, Philippine Humanities Review, and Third World Studies (UP). Plaridel, published by the UP College of Mass Communication, is a journal dedicated to media studies. Scholars such as Fernando Austria Jr., Jose Duke Bagulaya, Christine Bellen, Elizabeth Enriquez, Rosa Maria Feliciano, JPaul Manzanilla, Jema Pamintuan, Maria Portia O. Placino, Johnathan Rondina, Aleli Quirante, Elyrah Salanga, Joseph Salazar, Victorio Sugbo, and Alvin Yapan produced outstanding works on a wide range of contemporary issues in broadcast examined through