HE FAILS TO say if he means those who watch “Pulso” don’t think. What is undeniable, however, is that in the last few years, ABS-CBN and its rival GMA Channel 7 have devoted almost all of their airtime to entertaining the middle- to lower-income segment of the population that is known in the industry as the CDE audience. Except for the Latin American telenovelas and Japanese animation features, Channels 2 and 7 are now filled all day long with locally produced dumbing and numbing variety shows, talks shows, soap operas and situation comedies or re-runs of Tagalog movies.

The late evening slots, the last bastion of the networks’ claim to “serious” programming and once the domain of news and public affairs programs, have likewise been reformatted to attract the predominantly Filipino-speaking CDE audience. Hence the shift to Filipino as the medium of reportage.

There have been other noticeable changes in news and current affairs programming in the late night hours. Anchors like Dong Puno, Cheche Lazaro, and Loren Legarda metamorphosed into colloquial Filipino-speaking hosts. In ABS-CBN’s case, English language news was relegated to its cable news division, ABS-CBN News Channel, or its UHF station Studio 23. On GMA, English language reporting has disappeared completely.

What is considered news is no longer the same as well. While news events affecting the public profoundly, such as oil price hikes, have merited no more than one-minuters on both “Pulso” and “Frontpage,” GMA’s new news program, titillating showbiz tidbits like sexpot Rosanna Roces’s revealing wardrobe or starlet Anjanette Abayari’s arrest for drug possession in Guam have been given all-out coverage. No less than Sanchez herself flew to Guam to do live reports on Abayari’s travails for “Pulso,” while Channel 7’s ace reporter Jessica Soho did the honors for her network.

“Of course when you send somebody to cover AJ in Guam, that tends to eclipse the amount of effort, resources and manpower you throw behind covering what happens in the Senate or Malacañang,” admits Mike Enriquez, president of GMA’s regional network. “But then again, there’s AC Nielsen and other studies which show that this (AJ) is what people watch.”

AC Nielsen Philippines is the media research organization that conducts the People Meter Survey, the only ratings data available in the country and the veritable bible of the broadcast industry. Released every Monday, the ratings survey tells the networks, advertising agencies and advertisers what television shows are most watched by whom. More than anything else, it is the advertisers’ road map to the rugged terrain of television: It tells them in clear numbers where to put their precious advertising budgets.

The ratings also tell the network just how big a paycheck their performers and other broadcast talents should get. Maderazo says he tells ABS-CBN news and current affairs programs’ writers, producers and hosts: “If your program rates poorly, it reflects on your performance. Your bonuses will be affected.”

If television networks have forsaken the “thinking audience,” therefore, a large part of the blame lies with ratings that indicate this segment of the population is no longer watching the free TV channels. The AB viewers are thought to be instead channel-surfing in cable, where viewing choices are almost limitless.

But it is one thing for TV news aimed at the masa to shift to Filipino, the national language—a move many say was long overdue, anyway. It’s another thing to stereotype Filipino newscasts as shrill, sensational and shocking, not to mention patronizing and overbearing.

Take “Pulso,” which from any angle cannot be seen as anything more than a token news program. Its main format and selling point is the anchors’ debate toward the end of the show, where Failon and Sanchez role-play opposing sides to the day’s hottest issue, regardless of their own personal beliefs on the subject. The clincher is the telephone poll, which Maderazo admits is “part of the entertainment format.”

The debate is actually a reprise of what Failon and Sanchez do each morning in their radio show on DZMM. While what they say on air is not scripted, both are told beforehand which side they will take, to avoid having them agreeing by accident. In other words, they act out their being adversaries.

Maderazo confesses that there is a danger in having anchors role-play a debate. “When you allow newscasters to speak their minds, you can only show two things: their ignorance or their brilliance,” he says. “At some point, you’ll see that they’re brilliant. At others, you’ll see that they’re stupid.”

Which begs the question: why make them take that risk, especially when Failon and Sanchez appear to lack the gravitas for anything they say to have a modicum of significance? While both are among ABS-CBN’s stars, with legions of fans hanging on to their every word, neither one has gone beyond being a very opinionated talking head. Maderazo calls them “heavyweights” but it is unclear in which field they would merit this description. To be sure, more than their erudition, it is their ability to reach high decibel levels that has attracted attention. Media critics have even taken Sanchez to task for using the airwaves to lash out at her enemies—including the company that loaned her money so she could purchase a Benz.

Failon, meanwhile, can hardly make claims on remaining clear-eyed on issues that directly involve the government, since week after week, he fawns over President Joseph Estrada on the program “Jeep ni Erap.” That makes Failon, says Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, “the biggest PR agent of the President at this point,” and thus someone whose presence in a news program constitutes a breach of journalistic ethics.

Some media watchers thought ABS-CBN had already gone overboard having radio listeners wake up in the morning to the voices of the dueling duo, and then having viewers see and hear them late in the afternoon as well, albeit separately, on their respective TV shows “Hoy! Gising!” and “Balitang K.” But ABS apparently believed the public could not get enough of Failon and Sanchez, and put them in “Pulso,” where they are now hounding hapless viewers late into the night.

Unfortunately, frantic clicking on the remote may bring little relief for those with no cable service, unless they start looking for news an hour or so earlier, when a couple of the smaller networks have English-language newscasts. But viewers who want news that late at night have no alternative to “Pulso.” Some 30 minutes earlier, they may even just end up with Channel 7’s “Frontpage,” which is almost “Pulso’s” clone. The GMA show’s kicker says it all: “Headlines bukas, ngayon ang broadcast (Tomorrow’s headlines broadcast today).” To its credit, it delivers what it promises—all in a whirlwind 15 minutes.