Big Media outlets conspicuously mum on the Willie Revillame flap

At the centre of the flap around the alleged criminal abuse and humiliation of a six-year-old boy on national television by Filipino star entertainer Willie Revillame is the fledgling (but rapidly rising) challenger to Philippine Big Media, TV-5. TV-5 is the broadcasting arm of Mediaquest, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PLDT Beneficial Trust Fund. It airs the top-rated (in terms of popularity) program Willing Willie where the alleged crime was committed.

As an up-and-coming media outfit, TV-5 is in the middle of a growth spurt fuelled by a go-get-'em spirit in its management team who are salivating over the size of the prize...

Company officials said that last year, their ad revenues grew by 300 percent compared to 2009. “We expect the same growth rate this year,” they added.

TV5 president Ray Espinosa said that they are also hoping to grab 10 percent of the P30 billion total ad spend in the country in a few years’ time. Ad spend has been growing by five percent every year.

The monumental struggle between goliathine ABS-CBN Network and TV-5 over Revillame made headline news on the Wall Street Journal on the 3rd of March 2011 owing to the sheer size of the Philippine television advertising market, considered to be one of the biggest in the emerging markets of Asia...

With nearly $4 billion in spending last year, the Philippines TV ad market is bigger than India's and on par with Indonesia's, according to Nielsen Co. That's partly because television is the name of the game in this sprawling archipelago of some 7,100 islands. While newspapers take up the bulk of advertising in India, TV eats up about 75% of ad spending in the Philippines and draws buyers from around the world.

Evidently, Willie Revillame is bigger than Jesus Christ Himself in this island nation populated predominantly by Roman Catholics. And whilst Jesus Christ and His "church" do not pay taxes to the Philippine Government, Revillame certainly does -- to the tune of six million pesos quarterly. As such, Willie Revillame is the brightest jewel on Mediaquest's crown...

[...] he is a one-man economic powerhouse. Not only is he capable of single-handedly turning the TV network that was, at best, the distant third among the three largest networks in the Philippines into a force to be reckoned with, this is a guy that pays upwards of six million pesos quarterly in income tax -- and actually did so on live TV once. A person who wishes to voice their displeasure with his latest affront by boycotting the products advertised during his show, something which has been suggested by more than a few netizens, might find himself starving and unwashed for all the commodities honor would dictate that he forswear.

Indeed, for an issue that had set the Philippine blogosphere on fire, the two Mainstream Media big guns are conspicuously silent.

The Inquirer.net mentions Willie Revillame only as reference to some kind of plug for a different bunch of TV shows...



...and The Borg is conspicuously mum on the matter...



Why the deafening silence? That's anybody's guess. As they say, That's Entertainment -- gone bad, that is.