5 (TV channel)
The 5 Network, or simply 5, is a Philippine free-to-air television network based in Mandaluyong. It is the flagship property of TV5 Network, Inc., which is owned by MediaQuest Holdings, the multimedia arm of Philippine-based telecommunications company PLDT.
5 is also formally referred to as "The Kapatid Network", the Tagalog term for "sibling", which was introduced in 2010.
Named after its flagship station in Metro Manila, DWET-TV, which are carried in VHF Channel 5 and UHF Channel 51 with channel 18 served as a permanent assigned digital frequency. 5 is also broadcasting to 7 other owned-and-operated stations, and 19 affiliated television stations nationwide. Its programming is also available outside the Philippines through Kapatid Channel and AksyonTV International.
History
The early years (1960–1972)
, owner of the Manila Times was granted of a radio-TV franchise from Congress under Republic Act 2945 on 19 June 1960. He then founded the Associated Broadcasting Corporation with its first studios along Pasong Tamo, becoming the fourth television network established in the country. ABC operated radio and television services from 1960 until 23 September 1972 when President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared Martial Law. Both ABC and the Manila Times were forcibly shut down as a result with rivals ABS-CBN, RBS, and MBC's radio and television broadcasts also shut down by martial law that day.After the People Power Revolution in 1986, Chino Roces made a successful representation with President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino for the network's reinstatement. ABC's rival ABS-CBN reopened that year but ABC was not yet reopened until it made a test broadcast in 1991 and finally reopened in 1992. Chino Roces died in 1988, but his son Edgardo Roces would reopen the network after.
New stockholders led by broadcast veteran Edward Tan and Chino Roces's son Edgardo then began the arduous task of resuming broadcasts. The Securities and Exchange Commission granted their application for an increase in capitalization and amendments to ABC's articles of incorporation and by-laws. They were subsequently granted a permit to operate by the National Telecommunications Commission.
The return and growth (1992–2003)
ABC inaugurated its studio complex and transmitter tower in San Bartolome, Novaliches, Quezon City in 1990 and began test broadcasts by the end of 1991; officially and finally returning to the air as the Associated Broadcasting Company on 21 February 1992 with the different callsign of the flagship station, DWET-TV and the corporate name, Associated Broadcasting Company, which the Company uses C as the corporate initial instead of keeping Corporation, the name of the original ABC, along its original callsign, DZTM-TV, during the pre-martial law years as a result of the new management of the now revived network which took over its operations.ABC acquired a new 25-year franchise to operate on 9 December 1994 under Republic Act 7831 signed by President Fidel Valdez Ramos. In the same year, it went on nationwide satellite broadcasting. In a surge of phenomenal growth, ABC earned its reputation as "The Fastest Growing Network" under new network executive Tina Monzon-Palma who served as Chief Operating Officer.
In 2001, ABC began to produce local versions of The Price Is Right ; Wheel of Fortune ; and Family Feud. This was during the height of the game show frenzy within Philippine networks brought on by the success of IBC's Philippine editions of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link.
The Cojuangco era (2003–2008)
In October 2003, ABC was acquired by a group led by businessman Antonio "Tonyboy" O. Cojuangco, Jr. former Chairman of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company and owner of Dream Satellite Broadcasting and Bank of Commerce, among other assets. Cojuangco was the chairman and CEO of ABC at the time. The new management introduced many changes including a stronger news and public affairs division, modernization of its broadcast equipment, and the acquisition of broadcast rights of Philippine Basketball Association games. Additionally, the network also launched a new advertising campaign and slogan, "Iba Tayo!", which emphasized the new lineup as being more distinct and new than what was being aired by its competitors at the time, targeting the burgeoning middle- to upper-class youth market. ABC continued to support Family Rosary Crusade, and its religious pre-identification campaign "Please Pray the Rosary" was played before every program on the network until the plug gradually phased out due to the network's programming revamp.In 2005, ABC won the "Outstanding TV Station" award at the 2005 KBP Golden Dove Awards, with several other programs on the network also earning awards in their respective categories.
In early 2007, ABC implemented a series of budget cuts, primarily directed towards its news department, which laid off most of its employees. The cuts, held prior to the 2007 general elections, left ABC almost incapable of coverage.
In November 2007, ABC debuted an array of new sports programming, including NBA basketball, pro boxing, and WWE events, as part of a new five-year deal with Solar Entertainment. However, due to their high costs and poor ratings, these programs were later dropped throughout 2008, and its NBA review show "House of Hoops" was cut back as well and eventually cancelled by April 2008. However, much of these programs, along with the PBA, would be picked up by RPN, who had begun a much wider partnership with Solar earlier in 2007, which led to its privatization by the latter in 2011.
TV5 era (2008–2018)
ABC-MPB Primedia partnership (2008–2010)
In March 2008, Cojuangco announced that ABC had reached a partnership with MPB Primedia Inc., a local company backed by Media Prima Berhad of Malaysia as part of a long-term strategy to make the network more competitive. MPB Primedia, meanwhile, was formed to serve as seed asset for Media Prima's proposed private equity fund to invest in various media companies within Southeast Asia. Cojuangco said MPB Primedia Inc., in principle, would produce and source most of the entertainment programs while ABC would continue to be responsible for news programming and operation of the stations. MPB Primedia was also given exclusive right to schedule and manage sale of ABC-5's airtime. Christopher Sy was named CEO of MPB Primedia, Inc.; he served in that capacity until his resignation in January 2009 due to reported differences in management style.ABC signed off for the last time at around 22:00 PHT on 8 August 2008 with its late night newscast Sentro as the last program on air, and then aired a countdown to its re-launch for much of the next day until 19:00 PHT, when the network officially re-launched under its new name of TV5. Its programming lineup aims towards "progressive Pinoys including those young at heart", and unveiled its newly upgraded 120-kilowatt state-of-the-art stereo TV transmitter. Shall We Dance, some shows in Nick on TV5, Kerygma TV, Light Talk, and Sunday TV Mass were the only ABC programs that were carried over to the line-up of TV5.
In December 2008, a lawsuit was filed by GMA Network, Inc., Citynet Television and ZOE Broadcasting Network against ABC, MPB, and MPB Primedia, alleging that TV5's lease of airtime to Media Prima was intended to circumvent regulations restricting foreign ownership of broadcasting companies. In response, ABC's media relations head Pat Marcelo-Magbanua reiterated that the network was a Filipino company that was self-registered and Filipino-run.
Despite the lawsuit, the network's ratings were revitalized by the new management, as its audience share increased from 1.9% in July 2008 to 11.1% in September 2009.
Acquisition by PLDT, the Kapatid Network years (2010–2018)
On 20 October 2009, Media Prima announced that it would be divesting its share in MPB Primedia / TV5, along with its affiliate ABC TV stations, and selling it to the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company's broadcasting division, MediaQuest Holdings as it contributes to the company's losses during the year. The acquisition was officially announced by Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan on 2 March 2010, along with the announcement of a new lineup of programming to debut on the network, along with a new campaign branding itself as the "Kapatid" network, in par with its rivals ABS-CBN and GMA Network. Dream FM and its affiliate stations in other parts of the country was not part of the acquisition and remained under the Cojuangco management led by former ABC stockholder Anton Lagdameo; which then acquired a non-controlling share on Interactive Broadcast Media, to continue the operations of the stations, which became collectively known as the Dream FM Network, with IBMI as its licensee until its closure in June 2011, with the airtime of its flagship Manila station being sold to Ultrasonic Broadcasting System and relaunched as Energy FM.On 1 October 2010, TV5 took over the management of MediaQuest's Nation Broadcasting Corporation stations; DWFM was re-launched as a TV5-branded news radio station on 8 November 2010, Radyo5 92.3 News FM, and DWNB-TV was re-launched as AksyonTV on 21 February 2011, a news channel based on TV5's newscast Aksyon. At its peak, while retaining current position, TV5 was able to outrank GMA Network and become second most-watched network in key cities in Visayas and Mindanao, including Iloilo, Cebu, Bacolod, Davao, Cagayan de Oro; and even shared the top spot with ABS-CBN in General Santos City.
By 23 December 2013, the network began broadcasting from its new headquarters, the 6,000-square meter TV5 Media Center located in Reliance, Mandaluyong.
In 2014, ABC Development Corporation acquired Filipino broadcast rights to the 2014 Winter Olympics, 2014 Summer Youth Olympics and the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Despite financial struggles within the management, TV5 continues to be on top as one of the top three television networks in the country with male and younger viewers dominated the audience reach due to the network's broadcast of the Philippine Basketball Association via Sports5 and the strengthened TV5 Kids block, which included the Marvel Studios animation programs last October 2014. The network celebrated its fifth anniversary under the management of Manny V. Pangilinan coinciding with its trade launch of 2015 shows held at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza last 26 November 2014.
The network opened the year 2015 with the grand New Year's Eve countdown dubbed as Happy sa 2015 at the Quezon City Memorial Circle.
In 2015, the network changed its corporate name from ABC Development Corporation to TV5 Network Inc.
Ever since Pangilinan acquired TV5, the network incurred increasing losses and debts brought about by few advertisers as well as digitalization. This forced the network to implement a series of retrenchment of its employees. The biggest retrenchment happened in September 2015, when TV5's entertainment division got on the verge of dissolution and its employees were laid off, including Wilma Galvante, its Chief Entertainment Content Officer. From 4,000 employees in mid-2013, the series of retrenchment resizes TV5 to merely around 700 employees by the end of 2017.
Incapable of producing original content, TV5 appointed Viva Entertainment CEO, Vicente "Vic" Del Rosario as the network's new Chief Entertainment Strategist, implementing changes on TV5's entertainment programming. These included a formation of the Viva-TV5 joint venture Sari-Sari Channel and outsourcing Viva Television for its entertainment shows, including a revival of Ang Panday, the return of Diether Ocampo and Claudine Barretto's tandem in Bakit Manipis ang Ulap? and shows from by-then sister station MTV Pinoy such as Top 20 Pilipinas. New shows started to air between November 2015 and February 2016 but were cancelled a few months later due to lack of advertisement support and poor ratings.
Since January 2016, TV5 and Cignal via Hyper will be the official Free TV and Pay TV partner, respectively, of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the Philippines.
By July 2016, TV5 began airing selected programs from MTV and MTV International like Catfish, Ridiculousness and Ex on the Beach after inking a deal with Viacom International Media Networks that month to create the new MTV on TV5 block.
On 8 September 2016, TV5 cancelled its locally produced programs Aksyon Bisaya and Aksyon Dabaw due to cost-cutting measures. With this move, the personnel remained employed as they will continue file reports for Aksyon newscasts.
On 30 September 2016, TV5 President and CEO Emmanuel "Noel" C. Lorenzana stepped down from his position. He was replaced by basketball coach and Sports5/D5 Studio head, Vicente "Chot" Reyes the following day. Following his appointment, the network announced it would be retrenching around 200 employees as part of TV5's digitalization.
In April 2017, TV5 acquired the rights to air the WWE after Fox Philippines decision to not renew its contract with the WWE due to unknown reasons. The network previously handle the rights from 2007–08 and 2010.
On 12 October 2017, TV5 Network announced its partnership with ESPN, licensing its PBA, UFC, PSL and NFL rights and giving TV5 access to ESPN programs and content. The partnership formed the ESPN5 brand, that is airing on TV5 and AksyonTV. The said deal comes in response to the network's formal, albeit temporary shift from a general entertainment station to a sports and news channel.
The 5 Network era (2018–present)
On 17 February 2018, in line with the recent changes within the network and in celebration of its 10th anniversary, TV5 was relaunched as The 5 Network or simply 5 with a new logo and station ID entitled Get It on 5, whereas the TV on the top right quadrant of the logo has been dropped, making it more flexible for the other divisions to use it as part of their own identity. Aside from rebranding, TV5's programming grid has also divided into three blocks: ESPN5, News 5, and On 5, along with D5 Studio and Studio 5. Along with the rebrand, the Kapatid moniker was also deemphasized and is now only used by News5 and ESPN5 for some of its programs. But the more visible change was the slow quiet phraseout of Filipino-dubbed movies and foreign-acquired programming, a feature that dated back from its MPB Primedia era in 2008. Today, even more of its Disney Club on 5 programs and more of its movies are now aired in the English language.On 13 January 2019, coinciding with the reformat of AksyonTV to 5 Plus, 5 introduced a variation of its 2018 logo. It has also since included the websites of the division producing the program airing as part of their on-screen graphics.
On 3 June 2019, Chot Reyes retired as TV5 President and CEO, which was immediately replaced by Jane Basas, which leads pay-TV provider and radio company Cignal TV/Mediascape. Since her appointment, 5 has begun to outsource news and sports programming from its co-owned Cignal channels One News, One PH, One Sports, and PBA Rush; it has also phased out its daytime ESPN5 programs and relegated it to sister free-TV station 5 Plus in favor of archived entertainment programs and expanded movie blocks. Jane Basas later revealed future plans for the network; which includes retaining its existing news programs and sports content in primetime, and reintroducing original entertainment programming through outsourcing from Cignal Entertainment and other major blocktimers. The network also saw the return of former TV5 executive Perci Intalan as the station's head of programming in November.
On 22 April 2019, TV5 Network got its 25-year legislative franchise extension under Republic Act 11320 but lapsed-into-law without President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's signature.
On 4 February 2020, Robert P. Galang has been appointed as the new president and CEO of TV5 Network and Cignal TV, replacing Basas who has been appointed as the new Chief Marketing Officer of Smart Communications.
On 8 March 2020, 5's sister channel 5 Plus was relaunched as One Sports, with the ESPN5 division also being renamed and merged to the abovementioned brand. As a result, all sports programming on 5 no longer bears the ESPN5 banner. Despite the change, the ESPN5 partnership continues online, with ESPN5.com serving as the de-facto sports portal of both One Sports and ESPN in the Philippines. On the same day, TV5 Network announced that 5 would be rebranded as One TV, which was originally scheduled on 13 April 2020. However, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the network decided to quietly postpone or cancel altogether the said rebranding, its previous promotions through its social media accounts having since been deleted.
Branding of 5
Network identity
On 19 June 1960, newspaper publisher Joaquin "Chino" Roces launched its television station in the Philippines, then known as the Associated Broadcasting Corporation. Since then, the network evolved and used different brandings until it became widely known from what it is today.Logos
TV5 used several logos since it was established in 1960. In 1960, the network used a 5 Logo derived from its flagship station in Metro Manila, DZTM-TV carried in VHF channel 5 until it was shut down in 1972. When it returned to the airwaves, the network used a more-known ABC 5 logo with an iconic cyclone icon, incorporating the colors red, blue and green—colors making up a pixel shown on the television technology of 1992. The number 5 was removed to the logo in 1995 but retaining its ABC and the cyclone icon. In 2001, the logo added its slogan Come home to ABC, the same logo used in April 2004 with its new slogan Iba Tayo. The last logo as ABC in September 2004 has been enclosed with a yellow circle. The logo changed after its re-launch in 2008 having the new name of the network TV5 inside a shaking television. In 2010, the network used a red circle being shined in the northwest corner carrying the name TV5 with the letters TV in the northeastern part above the largely sized number 5. The logo adopted a 3D version in 2013 and applying it on-air, although the 2010 2D version oftentimes appear.In 2018, TV5 adopted its numerical 5 logo, which was first appeared on ESPN5 logo, which was launched in October 2017, dropping the "TV" word on the northeastern quadrant as part of their Get It on 5 campaign. They also started to display the name of the current program using the format: " on 5" as the part of the logo resulting to viewers mistakenly thought "on" was part of the title. The numerical five logo was also simultaneously adopted for TV5 sister divisions News5, Radyo 5, and D5 Studio.
A variation of the current numerical 5 logo was unveiled on 13 January 2019, similar to the newly launched network, 5 Plus.
Programming
5's program lineup includes news and current affairs programs, dubbed cartoons, movies, American drama, sports, informative, talk shows, infomercials and Japanese anime shows.On its second month since its re-launch last 9 August 2008, TV5 has been reportedly on Top 3 based on the AGB Nielsen survey. It also gained its rating on their Nick on TV5 morning cartoon block, and its popularity because of their former AniMEGA primetime anime block.
In 2013, the network's ratings improved as they launched the Weekend Do It Better and Everyday All The Way programming blocks under the helm of the former Chief Entertainment Content Officer, Wilma Galvante, however some of the programs under the block were discontinued, particularly due to low ratings.
In 2014, the network launched another set of new programs under the "Happy Ka Dito!" campaign.
In 2015, TV5 launched more than a dozen programs that are more focused to light entertainment and sports programming under its "Happy sa 2015" campaign. Also the said year, viewers sought the return of AniMEGA.
Months later, TV5's entertainment programming were produced by different content providers, including Unitel Productions, The IdeaFirst Company and Content Cows Company Inc.. By 14 October 2015, TV5 Network named Sari-Sari Network as the main production outfit of TV5. They also appointed SSN Co-CEO and Viva executive, Vicente "Vic" Del Rosario as the new Chief Entertainment Strategist of the network. He will handle all of the entertainment programs broadcast by the network. It happened a month after TV5, Cignal and Viva inked a deal to create Sari-Sari Network. New shows for 2016 were also launched by TV5 together with Viva Entertainment last 25 November 2015. However, all programs produced by Viva were phased out between July and August 2016 due to management disagreements following an attempted partnership of shows.
Just recently, Brillante Mendoza signed a contract with TV5 last December 2016 to make made-for-TV movies to be aired on the network under the Brillante Mendoza Presents umbrella. Unfortunately, the actual date of mini-series Brillante Mendoza Presents: Amo, that supposed to premiere on TV5, was cancelled due to unknown reasons.
Since 2017, NFL games began to broadcast on TV5, replacing the TV5 Kids presents Cartoon Network block
The network also started airing selected shows from the Sari-Sari Channel under the Sari-Sari sa Weekends banner.
After several months of hiatus, the local drama Brillante Mendoza Presents: Amo was premiered on 21 April 2018.
On 13 January 2019, all foreign entertainment shows broadcast on 5 started to be broadcast in the original English-language audio instead of Filipino dubbed audio.
In March 2019, the Sine Squad movie block on weekends are now aired in original English audio.
On 23 September 2019, upon 5's expansion of its movie blocks, they returned in airing the Filipino language dubbing instead of the original English audio. However, in January 2020, the primetime movie blocks returned to the original English audio as reruns of 5 programming took the place of the afternoon movies.