Medium Rare
Jullie Y. Daza
Like a series of wakes it was, the ABS-CBN employees’ sign-off. Their network pulled the plug on Aug. 31 after its application for a franchise was trashed by 70 out of 310 congressmen.
Ted Failon has left, so have Anthony Taberna and Gerry Baja. Next, the provincial TV Patrols aired their last shows. More to come. It’s the noncelebrities behind the cameras and the glamour of television who haven’t found a new job – fear stalks them. After 10, 30 years together as a team, a family, a successful corporation with a king’s ransom worth of awards, they said their goodbyes and diligently packed up with tears in their farewell-wish-you-well smiles.
The low-key sendoff was charged with emotion just the same, exemplified by Ted’s 15-minute thank-you to his bosses, co-workers, and Kapamilya loyalists. He choked on his words, this commentator whose commentaries did not earn friends for his employers. For the Seventy and others partaking the same schadenfreude, there was reason to rejoice: 53 regional radio-TV stations muted and billions in losses later, the rectangular screen is black, dead, off the air.
Not because the workers were found out as crooks and incompetents, but because their company needed to be punished for being such a presence in broadcast news, information, entertainment, and daring to advocate saving the environment, rescuing children, even relying on its journalists to act as first responders in emergencies and disasters whether they were kilometers away from an erupting volcano or meters deep inside a bombed-out village.
The landscape will not be the same without ABS-CBN. Tell that to the Seventy. Drunk with victory, a handful of them threatened to occupy its headquarters (until a Duterte Cabinet secretary reminded them that owners of a private property have the right to shoot trespassers on sight). The rest of the Seventy were unusually shy about advertising their names and explaining their vote. What was there to lose? What did they care about 11,000 added to the unemployment statistics in the midst of a ruthless pandemic?
Those so unfairly deprived of their pride of place have received their compensation as provided by law. The law allowed a committee – not Congress – to kill an industry. Not all laws are just, but every law bears its own karmic stamp.