Mediaquest expects huge losses in TV business

MANILA, Philippines - Mediaquest Holdings Inc., the multimedia arm of dominant carrier Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT), expects to incur losses in its television business as it continues to pursue cost cutting measures through reformating.

PLDT chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said in an interviewbwith reporters that the group sees the operations of TV5 struggling over the next few years.

“The investments in print and radio is ok. It’s really TV5 that will continue to struggle. It will take longer than expected to become profitable,” Pangilinan stressed.

TV5 losses more than doubled to P4.14 billion last year from P2.16 billion in 2010.

He pointed out that TV5 is in the midst of a major reformatting with the game show of Willie Revillame moving to the noon time slot to free up the prime time for more shows.

“We still have to finalize our program grid. Key variable there is Willing Willie. He agreed to move to noontime so that frees up primetime. So we have to program how to replace those primetime hours,” he added.

The PLDT chief TV5 needed Revillame to boost the broadcast firm’s ratings and compete with ABS-CBN and GMA.

“We needed someone like him to give the first boost for TV5 so he was needed to anchor the primetime,” Pangilinan explained.

MediaQuest is a media conglomerate owned by the Beneficial Trust Fund of PLDT. It owns most of the media establishments such as Associated Broadcasting Company (TV5), Nation Broadcasting Corp. (NBC), Cignal Digital TV (Cignal), a 30 percent interest in BusinessWorld, 20 percent in The Philippine STAR, 12 percent in the Philipine Daily Inquirer, and a 30 percent stake in the Unitel Group.

MediaQuest was established in the 1990s and First launched with Home Cable, a direct-to-home cable TV subscription service and second largest cable TV company through Unilink Communications.

In 1998, MediaQuest acquired Nation Broadcasting Corp. from the consortium of the Yabut family and then House Speaker Manny Villar.

On July 2001, Home Cable merged its CATV operation to Sky Cable Corp. and created Beyond Cable Holdings Inc. with an enterprise value of P14.5 billion. Beyond Cable Inc. controls 66.5 percent through Benpres Holdings and 33.5 percent through MediaQuest Holdings Inc. Home Cable ceased its operations on June 30, 2005. PLDT sold its stake in SkyCable to the Lopez Group of Companies in 2008.

In 2007, MediaQuest acquired GV Broadcasting Systems, a direct-to-home satellite provider and radio network from Satventures Inc. of the Galang family. At the same year, it launched myTV as a mobile TV service.

One of the biggest acquisitions was in 2010 when they bought 75 percent stake in Associated Broadcasting Company and blocktimer Primedia Inc. from businessman Antonio Cojuangco.

As talks for a possible controlling stake in GMA Network Inc. bogged down, the PLDT Group is beefing up its investments in TV5 and Cignal.

PLDT president Napoleon Nazareno said Mediaquest would focus on the build strategy of existing assets particularly TV5 and Cignal.

The PLDT Group has committed to invest P6 billion in Mediaquest. Of the total amount, P4.8 billion would go to TV5 while P1.2 billion would be used by Cignal.