The longest-running Tagalog newscast is proving its might in its 35th year being on air, as it further improves its ranking on the country’s most watched TV shows list.
After returning to free television via A2Z Channel 11, on the first day of January this year, ABS-CBN’s longest-running Tagalog newscast, TV Patrol, has victoriously zoomed back to being one of the most-watched news programs on Philippine television.
That is although the A2Z’s nationwide reach remains limited. The Zoe Broadcasting Network-owned channel is available in Metro Manila and nearby provinces. Outside Mega Manila, however, A2Z is only largely accessible via cable TV. The only areas where the channel is available on free TV are Iloilo, Tacloban, and Cagayan de Oro. Zoe Broadcasting Network, however, is all to expand its channels’ digital coverage this year.
Last Monday, March 7, TV Patrol rated 3.5%, according to AGB Nielsen’s National Urban TV Measurement (NUTAM) data. It is already the show’s highest TV rating, so far, since the ABS-CBN shutdown.
It made the show ahead of GMA network’s Saksi and TV5’s Frontline Pilipinas on the rating chart.
Saksi rated 2.7%, while Frontline Pilipinas rated 2.3% on the same night. GMA network’s primetime newscast, 24 Oras, on the other hand, is still the country’s number one TV program.
TV Patrol’s rise in viewership coincides with the show’s 35th-anniversary celebration. It is currently the second-longest-running airing newscast on Philippine TV, after ANC’s English-language newscast, The World Tonight, which, interestingly, formerly aired on free TV via the defunct main channel–ABS-CBN. TV Patrol introduced several changes in the past few months, including new segments and new news anchors. Seasoned broadcasters and journalists like Bernadette Sembrano-Aguinaldo, Karen Davila, and Henry Omaga-Diaz also assumed the roles of main anchors.
Early this year, former ABS-CBN Sports anchor Migs Bustos is the anchor of the new segment titled Uso and Bago. A month earlier, former PAGASA meteorologist Ariel Rojas joined the resident weatherman.
