For Daphne Oseña, ‘F’ stands for Family

For Daphne Oseña, who hosts F on ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp.'s Channel 2, "F" may well stand for "family."

Married to broadcast journalist Patrick Paez in May last year, Oseña is now the mother of a healthy baby girl.

She took up crocheting as a hobby and made booties and a baby blanket among her first projects. But while family life is now her top priority, Oseña continues to take pride in her broadcast work.

"In F we do stories that are considered the lighter side of the news, but they are not ‘light-weight’. Our stories directly make an impact on our viewers–the choice of their clothes, the places they go to the things they do–they see it first on F," she said.

Although work now takes up only 25 percent of her time, this comfortable state of equilibrium in her career, home and social life was not easy to achieve.

Oseña spent quite some time in the fast lane.

"Early in my career in ABS-CBN, I always thought the more shows you had, the better off you’d be. But when I hosted two shows and produced news segment at the same time, I wasn’t too happy. I was out on field everyday and felt burned out," she recalled.

The defunct Guide to Urban Living on the UHF channel Studio 23 required her to go on location at least two full days a week. This she did while doing the weekly F which also needed at least two days for her to tape continuity spells and to shoot the individual stories.

While Guide to Urban Living won twice at the Asian TV Awards in Singapore for Best in Infotainment, its cancellation actually became a blessing for Oseña, giving her the time she needed to focus on family life.

But Oseña wasn’t always in media.

A graduate of the University of Toronto with a double Bachelor of Arts degree, she is a Specialist in Fine Art History with a Major in Urban Studies.

As soon as she graduated, she was hired by the Canadian Urban Institute, a company that did research and development projects for urban areas in Canada as well as internationally.

Assigned to the international office, she worked her way up from Project Assistant to Project Officer within 18 months and became Project Manager.

The international office implemented urban planning related projects in Europe, Central and South America, and Asia. Her first foreign assignment was to manage an environmental planning project in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Then, the rehabilitation of the River Havana in Cuba. So her work actually required her to do a lot of travelling.

In 1995 she was tasked to manage a project that drew s strategic plan for the development of the province of Guimaras, where she spent a whole year.

As Project Manager of the Philippine-Canada Cooperative Program in Economic Development and Strategic Planning in Guimaras, Oseña worked with three levels of government (national, regional, provincial), presided meetings, conducted planning sessions with various stakeholders and came up with a comprehensive plan for the province.

At the end of the contract, then Gov. Emily Lopez suggested that Oseña try media as a profession. The thought had never even crossed her mind. But since the opportunity was there, Oseña believed there was no harm in trying and gave Lopez her resumé.

Within two weeks, the office of ABS-CBN president Federico Garcia called her for a meeting. She underwent a screen test and mock news reading on the spot and got a job offer the same day.

After a few months of training at the News Department, Oseña became a reporter for the first newscast of Studio 23 in October 1996, eventually covering Malacañang. In January 1997, she became the weather reporter for The World Tonight, then airing on Channel 2.

Still, she wanted to do stories that were more significant to her field of experience–urban planning, environment, arts and culture.

So she started an experiment between her and Paez, who used a handy camera for the culture and lifestyle stories she wanted to produce. They went around the city and provinces with Paez as cameraman and Oseña as host. They edited the material to music, packaged them and branded them as little segments called Video Postcards.

The experiment was a resounding success, resulting in a slot for Oseña to do network interstitials. Sponsors came in and later F and Guide to Urban Living. The latter show had a good run from March 2000 to September 2001.

With six years and going on her seventh as media person, Oseña continues to enjoy her work of "getting the story and getting it out just right."

She is very involved in the conceptualization and production of stories for F. In fact, she writes and producers a lot of her own although F does have a staff of full-time writers.

"I still agonize over how I’m going to write this or show this or what kind of music to use, what’s my treatment for this story. I don’t have to do it anymore but my job would be boring if I wasn’t involved in the process," she said.

At work, Oseña edge lies in her being very comfortable with the camera. "I came into the job of hosting by virtue of experience. I worked my way as a reporter, then producer, then host of my own show. I never really learned those on-air skills and techniques (for hosting). In fact, my work is very rough and raw. It’s unstudied. I’m just being myself," she said.

In the beginning, some of her producers were very shocked with her style. She did an unconventional, quite informal spiel, sitting on the floor in front of an old chest filled with 100-year-old fabric. It was far from the traditional stand-upper with the reporter standing formally, holding a mic and the camera getting a three shot of the reporter.

But what was initially criticized by strict, old-school producers became Oseña’s strength, her selling point, her edge among reporters and anchors.

"Eventually, they tapped me a lot for live reports. And that’s how I got my own magazine shows," she said.

Oseña also preferred to focus on little, light stories, making them a must-see. While most everyone wanted to do hard news, the headlines, getting to be main anchor, Oseña wanted to go on field and write features stories.

"I went from national news and newscasting to lifestyle reporting," she says.

In 1999, while on vacation in Canada, Oseña applied for and got two jobs in City TV, "a very progressive network." With her demo tape, she met with the head of the network’s news department and was a screen test. She was immediately offered the jobs of reporter and anchor of the business news.

But she couldn’t accept the jobs. Her heart was in the Philippines – or more precisely, with Paez.

Some called her crazy, stupid even, for rejecting the opportunities in Canada and choosing to stay in the Philippines. But anyone who has ever sacrificed anything for love and family can understand; there really are more important things in life.

"I am looking forward to a happy, healthy life with my family. I’d like it to be balanced, with pride in my work and passion for my family," Oseña ends.