'Ratings gone bad' set the tone for massive ABS-CBN revamp

It's going to be a "bloody" week in ABS-CBN. The word is that close to 500 people will be given their walking papers as part of the network's massive efforts to reinvent itself in the face of rapidly falling ratings.

Aside from retrenchment, ABS-CBN will also be canceling a number of its programs and moving others to new time slots. Such mainstays as "Pipol" and "Dong Puno Live" are being cut. Boy Abunda's "Kontrobersyal" has been moved to a slot after "Insider." "Dong Puno Live" was literally eaten alive in the ratings game by GMA-7's "Debate" and ABS-CBN feels confident Kontrobersyal could take Debate head-on.

The Lopezes' network has also taken in new managers to inject new life in moribund departments. Maria Ressa, who carved out a name as a CNN correspondent and later bureau chief, is taking charge of ABS-CBN's news and public affairs department. And Emily Abrera, a respected figure in advertising, is coming aboard to boost the networks' advertising and marketing arms.

Why all these changes? I guess ABS-CBN has finally come to acknowledge that it has lost its position as industry leader to its smaller but more creative rival. For years, GMA-7 has been overshadowed in the ratings war by ABS-CBN. Things began to change when the teleserye fad came into the scene. ABS-CBN took the early lead, rolling out the highly successful "Marina." Slowly, however, GMA-7 started to catch up. It produced the blockbuster series "Mulawin." By the time it debuted "Darna" and "Encantadia," the little network had taken a clear lead.

Today, GMA-7 dominates in the reality game show category with "Extra Challenge" and in news programs with "24 Oras." It would have been foolish of ABS-CBN to just watch its rival race to the lead.

In television, ratings are everything. Advertisers will not waste time or money on second best. Let's see how the battle of the networks pan out.

* * *

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner have ended months of speculation about their relationship by getting married in a secret ceremony last week. The event has been spiced up by the fact that Jennifer is expecting a baby by end of this year.

The scene of the wedding? Idyllic Turks and Caicos Islands near the Bahamas.

The two have been quietly dating for around a year, according to reports. They first met when they co-starred in "Daredevil." At that time Ben was deeply involved with Jennifer Lopez. Ben and J Lo - christened "Bennifer" by the press - were in fact scheduled to tie the knot in September 2003. Alas it was not to be. The couple split four months before their altar date.

Lopez married Latin singer Marc Anthony last year as Affleck began his romance with raven-haired Garner.

The marriage is the first for 32-year-old Affleck, the second for 33-year-old Garner. She divorced her first husband, actor Scott Foley, in March last year.

* * *

Another Hollywood heartthrob, Tom Cruise, got a mouthful from actress Brooke Shields, whom he had criticized for taking anti-depressants to deal with postpartum depression, or the depression some women undergo after childbirth.

Cruise belongs to the Scientology church, which frowns on psychiatric medicine.

"To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general," Shields wrote in a newspaper.

"Psychiatry is a pseudo science," Cruise had said in a television interview. "She (Shields) doesn't understand the history of psychiatry."

* * *

In Hollywood as in the Philippines, celebrity parents can get entangled in a legal squabble with their children.

Take the venerable Zsa Zsa Gabor. The 87-year-old actress and her ninth husband, Prince Frederic Von Anhalt, have sued her daughter, Francesca Hilton, for allegedly stealing two million dollars and using it to buy a mansion.

Francesca Hilton is Gabor's daughter by hotel tycoon Conrad Hilton.

The former Miss Hungary accused Hilton of conspiring with others to fraudulently take out a 3.75 million dollar loan on her home and of then taking two million of it to buy herself a house.

The judge, however, refused to freeze Hilton's new property, saying there was "no evidence" to suggest she was planning to sell or encumber the property.

Hilton has denied her mother's allegations.

Gabor was chosen as Miss Hungary in 1936 before coming to Hollywood to start an acting career. She appeared in scores of films and television series dating back to the original 1951 John Huston version of "Moulin Rouge."

Who said blood is thicker than water?