A study showed that TV viewership was higher when ABS-CBN was still on free television compared to its absence on free TV.
According to the study, some people simply stopped watching television as they did not have access to ABS-CBN’s TV news.
The president of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) Ruperto Nicdao said that television ratings were higher when people can still watch ABS-CBN shows on free TV.
He reported that research by Nielsen and Kantar Media Philippines showed that television viewership peaked around 23% to 24% during the early months of the pandemic, but plummeted to the pre-COVID-19 level of 13.8% to 10% when ABS-CBN was forced to shut down.
“Millions of Filipinos just tuned out of TV… that’s a big drop in overall TV viewing.
“Because of the closure of ABS-CBN, most Filipinos are not getting the information that ABS-CBN should have been providing,” Nicdao said.
The difference in the TV ratings implies that ABS-CBN played a major role in people’s interest to watch television.
Yvonne Chua, a professor at the University of the Philippines and author of the Digital News Report’s Philippine page, also said that Filipinos lost a source for TV news after ABS-CBN got forced to shut down.
In July 2020, ABS-CBN’s franchise application was denied by Congress forcing the Network to shut down its free TV and radio broadcasting operations.
This forced the Kapamilya shows, including television newscast TV Patrol, to migrate to streaming online. Other shows were made available via pay-per-view television and cable channel.
On May 7, 2020, TV Patrol temporarily migrated to ANC, The Filipino Channel (TFC), Cine Mo! as well as on social media platforms like facebook, YouTube, and iWant.
However, TV Patrol recently bid adieu to facebook after more than a year of streaming.
Despite stopping its streaming on facebook, TV Patrol is still available on Kapamilya Channel, ANC, TeleRadyo, and online through iWantTFC, TFC IPTV, and Kapamilya Online Live as well as on TFC.
