Q is for queer, quaint, quixotic?

Carmina Villarroel teamed up with comedian Pekto? Alesssandra de Rossi an MTV VJ? Quaint, queer, quixotic, one may say, but that is precisely the advantage of QTV 11, also known as the Q Channel.

As the new kid on the TV block, it has nothing to lose. It can experiment with combinations and concepts.

While it is an accepted fact that most televiewers are either ABS-CBN or GMA 7 watchers, there is also a significant portion of the audience that is tired of the tried-and-tested formulaic programming the two stations offer.

Recognizing this, the GMA network launched QTV 11 in November 2005 with a specific market in mind. Niche marketing was already being practiced to a certain extent for identifiable blocks like sports and children’s shows. But, except for the news channel ANC, it had yet to be tested on a network-wide basis in the Philippines.

The channel from its inception aimed to address itself to the female viewer. Today, with its fast rise to become the No. 3 station on free TV in the span of six months, it has undergone certain changes, while remaining the same. "QTV will remain a channel for women but a more defined type of women — described not in demographic but in psychographic terms," says Manuel Quiogue, president and chief operating officer of GMA Marketing and Productions, Inc.

What this means is that Q will zero into the middle to upper economic bracket of women, possibly with their own share of income whether from entrepreneurial efforts based in or outside the home, with their own views and opinions on issues of the day, and less into the mass of home viewers already targeted by the mother network GMA.

Women form the biggest bulk of TV viewers in the Philippines, precisely because many of them still spend a significant number of hours in the home. Why then are the soaps and teleserye very popular? Certainly not because men like to watch them. Which is why we wonder why no one had thought of a woman’s channel before. Not only are the women the most avid of viewers, they also hold the purse strings in the family and are the key audience of advertisers.

"Based on official Philippine Monitoring Services figures, in 2006, Q sold almost 22,000 minutes accounting for more than eight percent of total TV ad loads, with a total of 146 advertisers including the biggest companies like Unilever, P&G, Colgate, Unilab, Nestlé, J&J, Lamoiyan, to name a few," continues Quiogue.

The unprecedented success meant that the station had achieved its business goal of generating incremental revenues for GMA which was already reaching full loads, and was attracting upscale advertisers with placements previously going to cable channels.

This could be both a curse and a blessing, we think. While advertising is the lifeblood of a station, it could possibly becomes its sword of Damocles threatening to dictate or withdraw support when the programming is not to its liking. We hope Q will be able to reach the happy compromise where it will still retain its individuality without necessarily kowtowing to the demands of its advertisers.

We like most the station-produced talk shows like the daily Moms with hosts Lani Mercado, Sherilyn Reyes, and Manilyn Reynes, and the newly-introduced Sweet Life hosted by Lucy Torres-Gomez with her comic foil model Wilma Doesnt; the reality cum magazine formats like Carmina and Pekto’s hilarious Day Off, Saturdays, 8 p.m. (No. 3 in Q’s local shows), where Carmina seems to be getting the short end of the bargain with difficult jobs to undertake like the recent high rise window cleaner job; the heart-tugging Sana’y Muling Makapiling, Tuesdays, 10 p.m., hosted by Jessica Soho which searches for missing persons and unites them with their families which number more than 200 happy reunions to date; the new Stars On Ice competition show hosted by Arnell Ignacio and daughter Sofia which partners a celebrity with an ice-skating veteran; and MMS, daily, 4:30 p.m., where Alessandra de Rossi’s hosting is so unstudied that it is actually so refreshing in a VJ.

Although 60 percent of the programs are canned or externally produced and only 40 percent station-produced, the bigger percentage of local shows is aired on primetime. To our mind, 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. is the super primetime slot which airs H30 Hahaha...Over on Mondays; Extreme Makeover, Tuesdays; The Ricky Lo Exclusives, Wednesdays; Here Comes the Bride, Thursdays; and Stars on Ice, Fridays.

Some of Q’s local programming involve pre-prod that is madugo in local parlance. For Ang Pinaka, Sundays, 6 p.m., hosted by Pia Guanio. Quiogue says a minimum of two weeks to over a month are allotted for research with pre-production taking a week before actual production takes place.

For its newest reality show Here Comes the Bride, hosted by Christine Jacob-Sandejas, challenges await participants with the winner taking home a P3.5-M wedding package.

For the show, research took more than three months in the behavioral sciences, marriage encounters, psychology. Research on production elements was similarly extensive like finding the right mansion, representing various religious beliefs, a background-check for every couple, etc.

When Ricky Lo’s show was moved from GMA (aired at close to midnight) to Q’s super primetime, not a few, including ourselves, were uneasy with his transfer from the mother station to little sister. We have since changed our mind.

Mekoy Quiogue explains succinctly, "Our research showed that if there’s a type of program that our audience watches regularly it would be showbiz talk show. Ricky Lo was on GMA but at a late hour so we thought it would be an opportunity for more people to watch it by putting it at an earlier time slot."

Unlike the major networks, Q welcomes co-productions and block-timers which even make the rating like the co-prod H30 Hahaha… Over! With comedians Wally and Jose, which is No. 4 in Q’s locally produced shows.

Some block-timers we watch are Gandang Ricky Reyes, 10 a.m., Sundays, where Ricky Reyes combines his beauty regimens with interesting interviews like the recent Joey de Leon episode. Another block-timer is Gabe Me A Break, 11 p.m., Fridays, with Gabe Mercado as host. We remember watching Gabe in his improvisational like comedy acts in the past and wish we could have more of this. Somehow, being the host has curtailed much of his many other talents.

We hope Q will continue welcoming talented outsiders, even if it will necessarily eat into its possible advertising take. We hope to see that delightful duo Ariel and Maverick resurfacing on Q, or The Bad Bananas once again, and perhaps even more politically risky pairings like Jun Urbano and Leo Martinez.

It has been an adventurous year and a half for the Q Channel. And at the rate it is going, there appears to be more in store for the fortunate viewers.

(E-mail the author at [email protected])