Why Debate is a joy to watch - STAR BYTES by Butch Francisco

If I may be a bit immodest, I’d like to think that doing guest appearances in talk shows are often just a walk in the park for me. However hosting a talk show is an entirely different ballgame.

As host, you are responsible for a lot of things: You need to give full attention to your guests – and at the same time be alert for instructions from your director, producer and pool of writers.

But the more difficult part of hosting a talk show is keeping your interviews interesting so that the viewers don’t switch channels. The ratings... Remember the ratings.

Appearing in a talk show as a guest is really much more fun. You only have to mind your grammar (and your manners). Basically, you’re really just answerable to yourself.

I always have a ball, for instance, everytime I appear as guest in D-Day. To begin with, Dina Bonnevie is an engaging and attentive host. And I feel very much at home in this show because its producer, director and writers are also the very same people who run Startalk.

But I do not see myself appearing in Debate with Pare and Mare on Channel 7. Actually, I’ve been asked to do a guest stint here once – two years ago but I had to politely decline the invitation. In the first place, I was told about it only hours before the show’s actual live telecast and I had already made plans for the night.

But at the back of my mind, there was this other nagging reason why I refused to appear in this show: Cold feet. I was afraid of getting trampled on in this verbal combat where the only victors are those equipped with built-in megaphones in their throats. For a person like me who often likes to keep to himself and doesn’t talk much, there was a very slim chance I’d get out of that show alive.

That’s why I really take my hat off to those people who have the courage to spill their guts out in this program. I think they all deserve to be knighted for bravery.

Watching Debate with Pare and Mare, however, is another story. It’s fun. It’s amusing. And there are episodes in this show that I wouldn’t miss for the world.

An episode of this program is really like watching a tense-filled doubles match between Venus and Serena Williams on one side and Martina Hingis and Monica Seles on the other.

But during really heated and intense verbal battles, the show may even be likened to a documented bloody encounter between the Germans and the Allied forces in Europe during the final days of World War II.

Bravely standing in the middle of the verbal crossfire week after week are Oscar Orbos and Mel Tiangco. Of course, we all know that it was Solita "Winnie" Monsod who was partly responsible for turning this show into an overnight sensation. Too bad, she had to leave the show to run for the Senate. (But if she wins – I’m telling you – it will be good for us all Filipinos.)

During all those years Professor Monsod was in Debate, she hosted it like she was just talking from behind the fence that divided her property from that of her next-door neighbor. Although she comes from the groves of academe where every step is measured, she was very informal when it came to handling the program. Looking back, she went through the show like she was just hosting a Tupperware party. And if she didn’t dress up for the show, you could have easily mistaken her for a feisty barangay chairman settling a neighborhood squabble. I guess it was her informal way of hosting that brought in the masses and eventually turned the program into one of Channel 7’s top-rated shows. And now that Monsod has moved on to another field, I’m glad that her successor, Mel Tiangco, is also doing quite well in the show.

Tiangco is wise not to ape the hosting style of her predecessor. Tiangco, to begin with, already has her own way of handling a show – having been in the broadcast profession for a good 17 or 18 years.

Pound for pound, Tiangco has the bigger mass following – compared to Monsod. Mel’s delivery of the national language, for one, is not at all fractured – unlike that of Mareng Winnie.

Tiangco may have a totally different personality from Monsod, but somehow she already fits very well into the show.

Unlike Winnie, Tiangco comes into the show with the formality of a seasoned broadcaster. Now, I’m not saying that Monsod’s approach was wrong. For how do you explain the popularity she enjoyed when she was still doing Debate? She just had her own charm and style and – luckily – it worked well for her.

On the part of Mel Tiangco, she’s good for the show because of her ability to stay calm, cool and collected even if the combatants are already ferociously screaming at each other’s throats. Somehow, it’s always good to see at least one sane person in the middle of that verbal fracas – and that’s Mel Tiangco.

Debate co-host, Pareng Oca Orbos, looked uneasy during the early days of the program. But all that has changed. He’s now a figure of authority in the show. But what I like about Orbos is his ability to remain every inch a gentleman even at the height of a verbal melee. Believe me, there are very few people like him on television these days.
In most instan-ces, Oscar Orbos, along with Mel Tiangco, stands as a reminder that what we are watching is a TV show and not a bloody battle scene in Russell Crowe’s The Gladiator.