Reflections on 27 years

Finding a new home is always a sentimental and – pardon the pun – moving experience. Moving house teaches you what is essential and what is not, what you’ve been keeping for misplaced or outdated sentiment, and what you really value. A new beginning also makes it easier to feel less guilt about making change and letting go. But most of all, it triggers reflection.

It has been 27 years since this writer started as a broadcast journalist, and I remember many of the touchstones and turning points of my career as clearly as if they just happened. I’ve always been addicted to firsts, and have happily been able to accomplish many firsts in Philippine broadcasting and sports as a part-time athlete. From receiving awards created for my work as a reporter, to finding ways to improve the PBA TV broadcasts over 20 years ago to being NCR delegation head at the first Philippine Sports Summit, pioneering 3-on-3, breakthrough wins in NBA tournaments, creating the world’s first all-Filipino sports website, and lately, creating the first documentary  (sports or non-sports) commissioned by an international cable network in the country, it has been very satisfying. We have also broken dozens of exclusive stories for both print and broadcast.

Where were we 27 years ago? You may not recall, but EDSA still had no flyovers, those accursed u-turn slots were still a far-off nightmare, and dance music (aka disco) was still at its peak. Filipino music was evolving through the various steadfast rock, pop and dance performers, and local hip-hop was just getting off the ground, following urban American music trends. Media started to explode after the People Power uprising, as journalists were unshackled from the fetters of Martial Law. Anything was possible.

Of course,the sudden multiplication meant more space for all kinds of news, especially sports news. Suddenly, there was more talk of basketball, boxing, athletics, swimming and so on. The faces of our heroes found new pages to be plastered on besides state-approved news outlets. The late 1980’s saw the rise of Paeng Nepomuceno, Bata Reyes, Bong Coo, Lydia de Vega, Leopoldo Serrantes, Eric Buhain and many others. Thanks to free TV, the exploits of national teams in many sports found their way into the hearts and memories of many new fams. TV was their new stage, as it was for many broadcasters who made the leap from radio to television, like future Vice-President Noli de Castro, one of the country’s most-respected broadcast journalists.

In the late 1980’s there was no cable television in the Philippines, and very little by way of live (or even taped) foreign sports entertainment. Even the Oympics had not really found its place as a television spectacle here yet. For many of us sports junkies, we got our NBA fix from grainy broadcasts picked up off the US military’s Far East Network (FEN) emanating from Clark Airbase in Pampanga. We would stay up untl early mornings, strain our eyes to watch Magic, Bird and Jordan raise the bar of the game. Many of us even clambered out our windows, walking perilously on thin galvanized iron roofs, risking causing a cave-in, just to watch our favorite NBA teams. We didn’t care if we were dizzy from lack of sleep the next day.

The PBA was then in its “tweener” years, figuratively an adolescent stretching out into young adulthood. It hit an all-time high with a bumper crop of a draft in 1989, then hit some peaks and valleys, helped greatly by the determination and pioneering vision of Bobong Velez, whose Vintage Enterprises set the standard for all sports broadcasts to follow. The league experimented with the newfangled Fil-Am trend, then found its strength in its nationalism. Rearranging its schedule to give the All-Filipino more prominence, it reasserted itself as the country’s most viable, strongest, most consistent public entertainment. It has been a joy to watch the league become the unassailable giant it is today.

Many other sports which would have been impossible to cover are routinely telecast live today. In the 1990’s, I was blessed to constanly cover world title fights for RPN 9, and even debuted as a director on a nightly primetime current affairs program there. I still remember almost every day of my first Olympic coverage in Atlanta, and how it felt to be in Centennial Park when the home-made bomb exploded, and the ensuing chaos. I remember being in General Santos City very early one morning in 1999 after covering an MBA game. On the screen was Efren Reyes, handily winning the first World 9Ball Championship in Cardiff, Wales. Now, we simply e-mail each other HD segments of documentaries we shoot.

I’ve always said I have the best job in the world, and I mean it. My proudest accomplishments include helping fledgling sports reach mainstream status. I have a front-row seat to transcendent performances. I have a regular diet of surpassing human achievement. I am surrounded by people who are simply the best at what they do and don’t make excuses when they don’t succeed. I am regularly in the company of gods, legends and superhumans, and I love it. 

I am a storyteller. Best job in the world. Period. Here’s to another 27 years.