Martin Andanar: TV5's Golden Boy

MANILA, Philippines - He is good-looking, articulate, talks straight and appears to know his goals in life. Yet here he was confessing to a bunch of us from media that as a young boy until age 11, he stuttered and was shy. He wore thick glasses. Someone quipped, “You were downright ugly?” to our collective amusement. But the boy was determined to solve his problem. He joined a declamation contest in English and lost, tried again in Tagalog and won, slowly gained confidence, and eventually was rid of his stutter.  

This today is Martin Andanar, 36, now known as the face of Aksyon TV, the 24-hour Tagalog News & Sports channel on UHF 41 that would integrate elements of radio on television. He has had seven years as a professional broadcaster, three spent at GMA 7, before joining ABC-5 under various owners, until the savant of a Manny Pangilinan up and changed the comfortable duology of television competition. Where there was GMA’s Kapuso and ABS-CBN’s Kapamilya, there was suddenly TV5’s Kapatid.

And now Martin is the Kapatid Network’s Golden Boy. His day starts at 4 a.m. on Radyo Singko 92.3 News FM with Andar ng mga Balita followed by Sapul sa Singko 5 to 8 a.m. on TV5 with Erwin Tulfo, Amy Perez, Chiqui Roa-Puno, Lourd de Veyra and others, plus the best ever main host in Makata Clemente from TV5’s pioneering Talentadong Pinoy.

He gets two hours shut-eye in a nearby condo, returns for studio chores, goes on for Andar ng Mga Balita on Channel 41 at 6:30 p.m., and is off after 7 p.m. There is the weekly Monday night taping for Dokumentado on TV5 aired Wednesdays, possibly some voiceovers, but the load is considerably lighter than it was in the past year.

Martin recalls when he co-anchored TV5’s late-night newscast Askyon Journalismo with Cheri Mercado and Jove Francisco that he never even got the chance to catch his two small children awake.  

He began making a name upon grabbing the Star Awards for TV Best Male Newscaster of 2004 for The Big News on ABC5 together with Julius Babao for TV Patrol on ABS-CBN. In 2010, he replaced Luchi Cruz Valdez as main host of Dokumentado when she went over to the new investigative show Journo.

However, being given the flagship news program as anchor of the new Aksyon TV channel came almost by surprise to Martin. “It’s great! Unimaginable! Unbelievable!” He asked himself, “Karapat dapat ba ako? Nahihiya ako. Maraming magtataas ng kilay. But they gave me the responsibility which I need to carry through and face the challenges,” he shared with us.

To questions if seniority shouldn’t have been the basis of assignments, Martin muses that if Erwin Tulfo is TV5, he is Erwin’s heir apparent in Aksyon TV. “He is my idol. We go a long way back. He is Batman, and I am Robin.” Erwin, then with ABS, used to give Martin, then with GMA, tips during their WPD forays. And when he got married, Erwin was his lector.

Since childhood in Cagayan de Oro, Martin appeared drawn to the broadcast media although he fancied himself a DJ. He went to UP Los Baños for college in agriculture, hated it, returned to Manila to DJ at 101.1 Kiss that played jazz, then 92.3 known as MRS (Most Requested Station), until the family migrated to Ballarat in Australia where he finished Bachelor’s of Arts in Social & Political Studies and Film & Media. Still bitten by the DJ bug, he worked for two radio stations with a multi-cultural bent, decided to be proficient in Tagalog, went back to Manila, trained under Mike Enriquez, got into GMA, then ABC5 and the renamed TV5 the Kapatid Network.

His CV shows Martin a most dedicated student. Between 2007 and 2010, he tucked in a Master’s in Entrepreneurship at AIM, a six-week grant in Social Entrepreneurship at Northern Illinois U, studies in Non-profit Management at Georgetown U. Washington DC, more studies at Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, UP for Public Administration until the demands work at TV5 told him he had to drop out for the meantime. It was this passion for learning that must have impressed TV5 bosses that they had a leader in the ranks.

As a broadcast journalist he has his opinions, ever keeping in mind fairness for both sides. In the case of the Merceditas Gutierrez impeachment, he finds the current brouhaha defeating the independence of the branches of government and the promise of PNoy’s matuwid na daan. He admits it difficult to destroy institutional corruption which PNoy’s current popularity level could help in changing things. He knows the President is having difficulty doing a balancing act.

We ask him to comment on former ABS News head Maria Ressa’s comment about the entry of the Kapatid network. Ressa had said the best scenario would result in a better product; the worst case in the networks fighting one another so hard in a race to the bottom. “I think it’s going to be a race to the bottom if the economy is bad. Advertisers won’t advertise; it will be cutthroat competition; everyone will be killing each other, it will be like a Red Ocean. But we have a strong economy now, and as long as it’s strong, we’ll be okay,” he declares confidently.

He joined the team when news head Luchi Cruz Valdez created the Convergence & Creative Division of TV5. Martin explained the concept of different platforms of distributing news through Internet, radio, tv, cellphones and matching it up with TV content, then utilizing creative imaging with on-air products that could be branded, and which could help in marketing efforts.

The first time we heard the word convergence was through our good friend Dr. Niceto Poblador, respected economist and proponent of out-of-the box technologies. In his book Changing the way we manage Change, Nick had written, “The phenomenon of convergence is alive and well, and it is happening right in our own backyard! Unlike in the US where the convergence between Information Technology, Telecommunications and Media began to take shape in the early ’90s, the convergence revolution in this country is being led not by upstart tech geeks in the mold of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Steve Case, but by a stodgy, buttoned-down type by the name of Manny Pangilinan.”

This was also my first introduction to the genius of a Manny Pangilinan. Martin Andanar would most certainly feel comfortable in his company. 

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