The show must not go on

It's said that fate has a weird way of making good man's oftentimes selfish wish, or avid aspiration or obsession. Making a sinful death wish on someone, for example, or even a curse in pique, could come true to the wisher's convoluted chagrin later and may hit him like a boomerang.

Two tv networks are in a frenzied rat race - as in "ang lig-on lang" - for the "ratings game". When one puts up a show, the other doesn't fail to outdo. The "Kapamilya" and the "Kapuso" are that jealous of each other. It has come to an irksome point that even their promo or sponsor plugs, say, in their news telecasts, are so timed to coincide, precluding tv viewers from changing channels during the interim ad clips. The ABS-CBN and GMA-7 local outlets with their "TV Patrol" and "Balitang Bisdak", respectively, give us this sample dose.

For showbiz intrigues and washing of dirty linen among showbiz personae, there's "The Buzz" on Sundays, battling with "The S Files" at the same time slot. ABS-CBN's "Wowowee" noontime show has been going great against GMA 7's "Eat Bulaga", also on a successful run for decades. "Wowowee" used to be "Pera or Bayong", they say.

The common denominator and the main reason that they have drawn flocks of fans is, definitely, the money and other giveaways. Except for some mundane jokes and often ribald adlibs, and the usual song and dance numbers, there's nothing of extraordinary value in terms of culture, info, education, and even entertainment. To repeat, the main "come on" is the prize galore.

Hence, fans converge like mayas to vie for that coveted "raffle ticket" or entry pass and be among the "lucky" early birds. In that Ultra debacle, the queue had started some days earlier, to be among the first lucky 300 entrants into the venue to qualify for the "minibuses, houses, and the top prize of P1 million". The proximate cause then, for the "Wowowee" catastrophe of 74 dead and some hundreds of injured victims, could be the poor "common tao" desperation for a lifetime luck, though perhaps serendipitous in odds.

The catastrophe was predictable and not a fortuitous event. Given the network's past show experiences that drew crowds like flies with the magnitude of the promised "manna", the management could have foreseen the imminence of such stampede.

Senator Gordon, the Red Cross chairman said, that the disaster was foreseeable; ergo, preventable. Incidentally, VP Kabayan Noli who's a prior victim of ABS-CBN's "programming" strategy according to Maria Ressa, was instrumental in putting order to an otherwise chaos on site.

In a most painful and conscience-strickening way, ABS-CBN's wish or obsession, that borders on monomania, to top the ratings game for the period, at least with the Ultra super-tragic aftermath, was attained. But at what gargantuan price in sufferings! And what a twisted reversal of sorts, that is, the network as news and info dispenser became the prime source and reason for the traumatic scoop!

Once again, one tends to philosophize that with 75 percent of us admittedly poor, as in mousy penury for most, people desperately cling to the "pamasin", or "panimpalad", or whatever one in a million odds. As aptly said by one Ultra survivor: "We were hoping to get a chance to win money". What a plaintive wish, not just an expression of hope.

As to lessons to be learned which ABS-CBN spokesperson Charo Santos didn't specify, one ventures these: One - Just as man does not live by bread alone, in tv business the ratings game that spells money isn't the be all or end all. Two - There's that biblical admonition not to give fish to the hungry but to teach them how to fish. Three - The showbiz mantra that the show must go on, has a "contra paregla" among oldsters, that is, "Wowowee" now a stark symbol of a catastrophic bad luck, that show must not go on.