Big News


Big News was the first ever newscast on Philippine television. It was the primetime news broadcast of ABC 5 in the Philippines. Aired from 1962 to 1972, and again from 1992 to 2008, it was last anchored by Cherie Mercado.

History

The Big News, first era (1962–1972)

It was originally anchored by Duds Rivera and Bong Lapira with Antonio Tecson as head of the newsroom. Lapira later left the newscast in 1967 to transfer to ABS-CBN to anchor Newsbreak aired on DZXL-TV Channel 9. He was replaced by Jose Mari Velez. The show was originally first aired in 1962, and went off the air in 1972 due to martial law, and re-aired again in 1992 as a revival and also as an English language newscast.

The Big News, second era (1992–2004)

On February 21, 1992, as ABC returned to the airwaves, the program resumed its telecast, but this time, it was anchored by Eric Eloriaga and Tina Monzon-Palma. In 1993, they were joined in by Kathy Tanco-Ong. In 1997, they were replaced by Anthony Pangilinan, Thelma Dumpit-Murillo, who also anchors the network's early evening Filipino newscast Balitang Balita and Janice Pronstroller as its new anchors. Monzon-Palma went to become anchor of ABS-CBN's late night newscast The World Tonight while Eloriaga became anchor of RPN's NewsWatch, both newscast's main rivals during pre-Martial Law days.
On May 3, 1999, Amelyn Veloso and Rod Nepomuceno became the new anchors of the newscast. On June 3, 2002, Nepomuceno was replaced by Atty. Mike Toledo.

Big News (2004–2008)

On April 12, 2004, when the network reformatted most of its programs, former ABS-CBN anchor Cherie Mercado replaced Toledo and joined with Amelyn Veloso as a co-anchor and the newscast switched to Filipino in order to compete with the other networks' newscasts.
On October 2, 2006, the newscast exchanged timeslots with Sentro, the early-evening news program of the network. Mercado became the sole anchor of the program.
On August 8, 2008, the program, together with Sentro aired its final broadcast and on the next day, it rebranded as TV5.

Anchors