TV franchise issue bugs PBA

Commissioner Chito Salud was scheduled to meet with TV5 chief operating officer Bobby Barreiro over lunch Thursday, with the PBA trying to negotiate its way out of a potentially embarrassing situation where the only entity that bid to cover the pro league games will also pull out.

ABS-CBN, which had submitted a letter of intent to bid for the TV franchise over the next five years, decided to pull out at the last minute, leaving TV5 as the sole bidding party. Whether the PBA board of governors is prepared to admit it or not, the undeniable fact is that TV5 effectively saved the day for the league.

Could you imagine the implications of what was once the country’s No. 1 sports spectacle having no takers? That’s almost as bad as the board’s decision to even entertain the government network NBN 4 in what seems like a desperate effort to find a co-producer and, we suspect, to send a subtle message to TV5 and its owner, the esteemed businessman-sportsman Manny Pangilinan, that his network is not the only game in town.

Having gotten a sense of the ABS-CBN attitude after Gabby Lopez was burned and let down by the PBA more than once, we seriously doubt that he will do the league any favors.

Besides, ABS-CBN has the exciting collegiate leagues such as the UAAP and the NCAA, the NBA, which turned in amazing ratings,  and a host of other basketball and sports programs including boxing, football and mixed martial arts, which are enough to crowd Studio 23’s programming hours.

With all due respect, NBN is nowhere near the network it was in the years it telecast the PBA games in partnership with Vintage Enterprises of Carlos “Bobong” Velez.  Talking to NBN is in itself an admission of near hopelessness.

But we can’t blame Salud for the situation the PBA is in right now. The board must—regrettably, we might add—bear the brunt of responsibility for its current predicament.

When it had a chance for ABS-CBN to telecast the games with a commitment for a “Game of the Week” and the best-of-seven championship series to be aired on its preeminent Channel 2, the board scuttled the plan at the last minute to settle for a bigger franchise fee from Solar Sports. We gathered from chairman Rene Pardo that the difference was about P60 million over three years. That meant P20 million a year or a mere P2 million per team.

To think that these gentlemen sacrificed the added value of airing the games on ABS-CBN for what seems like a pittance provides an insight into the board’s thinking. With the telecast of games by Solar Sports on RPN 9, the PBA lost out.

The ratings of the PBA telecast on Studio 23 compared to RPN 9 underscores the difference,  with the ratings showing a decided improvement over the UHF Channel, which the board felt was not at par with a free TV channel like RPN 9.

The ratings showed what they obviously refused to appreciate and that is that UHF is also free TV and not cable as some of them erroneously imagined.

The average ratings for the season, minus the finals between Talk ‘N Text and Ginebra, registered 2.67 on RPN 9 with an audience share of 5.12 while on Studio 23 the average rating was 3.88 with an audience share of 7.54.

The finals on Studio 23 averaged a respectable 7.35 percent and an audience share of 13.0 percent.

What was even more dramatic was the ratings of the recently concluded NBA Finals on Channel 2 which showed the pull of ABS-CBN. The lowest rating was 15.1 percent with an audience share of 49.7 percent in Game 3 while the highest was 21.8 percent and an audience share of 54.4 percent in Game 5. Game 1 rated 18.2 percent, Game 2 19.4 percent, Game 4 20.6 percent and Game 6, 19.1 percent.

The PBA missed the boat because of its failure to be realistic and because it only considered what it could get in terms of money. If the board follows the same narrow thinking this time and stubbornly refuses to face reality, it will be courting disaster. That would be a crying shame as the PBA, at one time or another, was an integral part of the everyday lives of millions of Filipinos.