TV5 narrows losses in 2018

MANILA, Philippines — TV5 Network Inc. has further narrowed its losses in 2018, but the company may still be quite far from achieving its break even target this year.

TV5 president Vincent Reyes said yesterday the network improved its bottom line last year by 30 percent from the previous year.

“We narrowed the loss by another 30 percent moving towards the eventual promise land,” Reyes said.

“I thought that was a great performance given the difficulties the others in the industry are experiencing,” he said.

TV5 has been on a mission of trimming its losses as it sets a target of breaking even by 2019.

“It’s still a target, but I will be the very first to say it’s going to be very, very difficult to achieve that by the end of the year. But I am confident in the fact that we have assembled a team that is going to be able to take advantage of any such opportunity that will allow us to achieve that target by the end of this year,” he said.

Reyes attributed the network’s improved bottom line performance last year to the continued operational efficiencies as well as its partnership with ESPN.

“The partnership with ESPN was very important because it gave us a lot of content at a cost which was not as prohibitive as it was when we used to do general entertainment because it’s not any secret that being in the general entertainment-showbiz category really entails a lot of expense to be competitive. But because we made conscious decision not to do that anymore and shift to sports, it has allowed us to greatly reduce our expenditures by a lot,” Reyes said.

TV5, however, saw a contraction in revenue in 2018, which according to Reyes, was due to lower ad spending as a result of its shift away from the general entertainment category.

“Total TV viewership is on a decline and that’s why that is directly related to the kind of revenue outlook we can expect. However, this year is election year. All of us networks should benefit from the election spending, hopefully,” he said.

TV5 expects to get a revenue boost from the upcoming rebranding of its sister channel AksyonTV into 5 Plus starting on Jan. 13.

5 Plus will serve as a secondary channel to TV5 that will serve non-mainstream sport and sport-related content geared towards a younger audience.

“It (AksyonTV) was kind of all over the place so by making it 5 Plus, then that should resolve that. I think it’s going to be a big part in our revenue target.  It will play much bigger role that it used to have. It’s going to help,” Reyes said.