Mixed blessing, or mixed curse?“Blocktiming” in Bacolod City
Solutions?
Brillantes thinks that the shrinking of the economic pie has also led to the growth in the number of blocktimers.
With television taking away most of the advertising budget, radio stations have started to “lunge at each other’s throats” instead of “sitting down and asking ourselves why we failed to improve and innovate.”
The seeds of radio’s downfall, she added, started during Martial Law when broadcast journalists started to receive money in exchange for their allegiance to the dictatorship.
Jose Jaime Espina, national director of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, thinks that blocktiming is in itself not bad.
He pointed out that there are NGOs and people’s organizations who also purchase airtime to promote their advocacies aside from herbal medicine makers and other small businesses which promote their wares.
The problem begins when blocktimers are “paid either by politicians or by admittedly corrupted broadcasters who sell out their services.”
He urged the KBP to put riders in blocktime contracts that would commit blocktimers to ethical and legal standards and make sure that they comply. “This is not prior restraint or curtailment of free expression. It is part and parcel of the journalist’s code of ethics as well as the KBP’s own code of standards.”
“It is hard because you have visions of things that are ideal, things that should be for the broadcast industry but you also have to contend with the financial pressures,” Tano said.
With elections fast approaching, the KBP would be meeting to discuss guidelines and other measures that can be taken to make sure that blocktimers will not go overboard, Ferrer said. “Otherwise, we will be left with problems after the elections.”
With AM radio facing a lot of challenges, including the rise of new media that is seen to dislodge the traditional forms of media, some believe that AM is a dying medium.
Brillantes disagrees.
“Radio is not dying, but our credibility is.”
Julius Mariveles is a freelance journalist based in Bacolod City. He has been working in radio for 13 years. He recently served as production chief and news director of Aksyon Radyo Bacolod
Leave a Reply