Eat Bulaga has lost nearly half of its original viewers since its major competition– It’s Showtime left free television in 2020.
It’s no brainer that when someone, or a show, for this matter, lost its main competition, a part of what a rival owned, naturally goes to the one left standing.
That doesn’t seem to be the case for GMA Network, which despite its fiscal gains from ABS-CBN’s shutdown–failed to absorb its former main rival’s viewership.
Many of its shows, lost a fraction of their original and pre-ABS-CBN shutdown viewers.
A glaring example of such shows is GMA Network’s flagship daily noontime show, Eat Bulaga, whose current below 5% TV rating is far below what it used to get when it was still facing fierce competition with ABS-CBN’s It’s Showtime.
ABS-CBN lost its broadcast license in 2020, causing its shows to depart from free television as well. The media company has since returned to free television, albeit in limited capacity via A2Z Channel 11 and TV5, for more than a year. What’s interesting, however, is that GMA Network’s did not only fail to capture much of what ABS-CBN has lost, but it also suffered the departure of its post-ABS-CBN shutdown viewers, as reflected by its current viewership.
Before ABS-CBN’s shutdown in May 2020, Eat Bulaga used to rate an average of 7-8%. On January 14, 2020, for example, the four-decade program rated 7.6%, while its main rival, It’s Showtime, rated 6.1%. In some instances, the competition was so close, that It’s Showtime sometimes took the lead.
Based on the current data from AGB Nielsen’s National Urban TV Measurement (NUTAM), however, Eat Bulaga seems to have lost its grip over noontime show fans.
On March 11, for example, the show rated a disappointing 4.2%. That’s nearly 4 percentage points lower than its usual rating, two years ago.
It’s Showtime, on the other hand, managed a 2.0% despite airing only on free TV via A2Z Channel 11. Interestingly, and perhaps, shockingly, Dapat Alam Mo, the show which replaced Willy Revillame’s variety program, Wowowin, on GMA Network, rated 8.0% on the same day, or almost two times higher than Eat Bulaga.
Have Filipinos lost interest in noontime shows? Or is it simply a manifestation of a generally declining trend of television viewership in the country, and the increasing popularity of streaming services to which Filipino viewers have been shifting in the past two years? The answer may lie in the similarly declining viewership of other long-running Kapuso shows and the increasing number of popular locally-produced web series.
