Yesterday’s massive campaigning missed target

The present sources of news and entertainment are dramatically different from those operating half a century ago. I am particularly referring to the television. In the years bridging the late ‘60’s and early ‘70’s, there were five television stations here in Cebu City. They were mostly operating about 12 hours a day signing on at noon and signing off at midnight. For most part, they were entertainment media as their newscasts, aired early evenings, only lasted for about 30 minutes.

Those stations were simply known as Channels 3, 5, 7, 9, and 13. Often, their corporate names Alto Broadcasting System-Chronicle Broadcasting Network (ABS-CBN) for Channel 3, Associated Broadcasting Corporation Radio Television (ABC-R/TV) for Channel 5, Republic Broadcasting System (RBS) for Channel 7, Radio Philippines Network (RPN) for Channel 9, and International Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) for Channel 13, were less known to most viewers.

I am trying to recall these easily forgettable data because tomorrow, Mr. Raymond “Bunny” Arville, will visit Cebu City. Mr. Arville, was the manager of Channel 5 then. This will be his first visit since he left our city following the closure Channel 5 upon orders of martial law that was declared by the late president Ferdinand Edralin Marcos. He left the Philippines for USA in 1984 and has since become an American citizen residing in Portland, Oregon.

It is my plan to show Sir Bunny (that was how we addressed him) how news is now spread, at least in my context as a Cebuano news recipient. Content, form, and presentation are different from his Channel 5 days. Most significantly, the modern means of blinding electronic and digital communication was unheard of in his time. While we still watch television for prime news still at specific hours of the day, (oh I prefer TV Patrol and 24 Oras), hundreds of other events pop up in thousands of cellular phones all the time. Take for instance the TV news that became the lead stories of TV Patrol --a building that collapsed in Thailand, young boys who attacked a jeepney passenger, and a theft victimizing a sari-sari store somewhere while 24 Oras reported the joint US, Japan, and Philippine navy ships patrolling the West Philippine Sea, a motor vehicle that continued to run with its driver asleep, and a spokesman of the International Criminal Court declaring that social media and march rallies will not affect the functions of the ICC. I saw six initial disjointed stories compared to hundreds coming from social media.

From my cellphone yesterday, I came upon posts of political campaigns held throughout the country in numbers that were unimaginable five decades ago. I shall point out to Sir Bunny that the social media accounts showed the capacity of modern technological advances in gathering and collating simultaneously events taking place in distant places. Channel 5 could not then beam simultaneously three different incidents. Yet, I will not fail to alert Mr. Arville that while we are supposed to hear and see videos taken from the two major contending political groups, namely the party of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and that of former president Rodrigo Duterte, expressing their political battle cries, the numerical equation was lopsidedly in favor of the latter.

What struck me most was that the FB posts of the PDP, the recently-declared opposition were, to use the title of this column, off-tangent, politically speaking. My Filipino-American visitor might claim that the Trump campaign in his adopted country was of likely genre. They did not contain much elocution of their programs of government. Little was mentioned, if at all, what kind of governance we can expect of the senatoriables lined up by PDP. Most of those who bit the microphone, if not all, spoke of their wish for Duterte to come home. While it really was an emotional issue, they forgot that in May, we will not elect a president. Duterte is not a presidential candidate. Lamentably, they were not hitting the bullseye and so the chance that we voters are not well informed is arguably high.