Batibot up for new challenges

MANILA, Philippines - It is with a mixture of the old and the new that the iconic Filipino children’s television show Batibot returns to television through TV5 after a decade facing brand-new challenges unknown in its past 18 years of uninterrupted broadcasting. These include a lower level of Pilipino, the continuous predominance of foreign children’s shows dubbed in Tagalog, working students as story tellers Kuya Fidel (Abner Delina) and Ate Maya (Kakki Teodoro) replacing Kuya Bodjie (Bodjie Pascua) and Ate Sienna (Sienna Olaso), and a landscape vastly different than that of their moms and the Sesame Street-Batibot generation.

How then is the new Batibot to solve this gap since the last airing? Feny Bautista, executive producer with Philippine Children’s Television Foundation (PCTVF) muses, “When we went off the air, 30 percent of children’s shows on television was Pilipino, 70 percent imported. Today, 90 percent is imported, 10 percent locally produced.” Bautista known as Teacher Feny goes on to talk about animation, of its being attractive and compelling for children to watch and enjoy, and proceeds to reveal the existence of a Batang Batibot team of animators belonging to a very different orientation, working with some of the oldtimers.

“Batibot will offer something refreshing. It is possibly the only program now that will relate to (kids) day-to-day issues that will mirror their life but at the same time will take them places that they can’t go to through stories. We have to meet the child of today where he is. The language level of Batibot today is not as sophisticated as before, I have to be honest, but we shall not resort to Taglish.”

Koko Kwik Kwak with the new Batibot kids

These are only some of the challenges the new Batibot team will meet head-on. While still addressing its three to seven-year-olds, and remaining curriculum-based, the current show will need to bridge the 10-year gap between the Batibot then and the Batibot now; between Batibot fans who grew up with the show and are now parents of kids in that same three-to-seven target age group. It will be these parents who will sit down with their kids to watch and introduce to them the new Batibot, its values and what it stands for.

In his brief appearance in the new Batibot, even Kuya Bodjie felt strange on the virtual location having been used to a real set in the past. I hope it works, he told us, happy that the children’s show that took over his whole being completely in the past is now back. With the experience of Kuya Bodjie, Teacher Feny decided that Ate Maya and Kuya Fidel would be given other names “to give them another life outside of Batibot” that Kuya Bodjie never completely enjoyed.

The Muppets Manang Bola as the forgetful fortune teller this time with a router augmenting her crystal ball, sisters Ningning and Gingging, and superhero Kapitan Basa of the past are likewise being updated although new muppets are expected to be born.

Batibot’s beginnings started in 1984 in Sesame! co-produced by the US-based Sesame Workshop Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) and the Philippine PCTVF that originally used both English and Tagalog. It was during this period that Sesame’s Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch were retired as per co-prod contract and replaced by PCTVF’s created Pong Pagong and Kiko Matsing which technically belonged to CTW. When many factors ended the relationship between the two, PCTVF decided to continue with an all-Pilipino show called Batibot and Teacher Feny asked their friends at CTW if they could borrow Pong and Kiko which was readily given. Later, however, not so-friendly heads took over CTW so that Batibot had to pay rent for three years until the show couldn’t sustain the expense and took out Pong and Kiko. A new muppet Koko Kwik Kwak was introduced. In the new TV5 version, however, Koko will be fully animated.

Teacher Feny Bautista with new Manang Bola

Teacher Feny acknowledges the assistance of Bobby Barreiro, TV5 EVP and COO (formerly with GMA 7 during Batibot’s run) in pushing for the show. Dwight Gaston, one of the oldtime production designers again with the show, along with director Kokoy Jimenez, is also happy that Batibot is back once again and that Unitel with its technical expertise is also on board to help in the new requirements of the show.

What’s now in store? From Teacher Feny in her passionate ratatat non-stop fashion, “Addressing the changes children face today… Role modeling that show that even students can help out. More than the ABCs, the 123s, it is the life skills that the new Batibot is emphasizing. We need to give the kids a sense of community, friends, adults from the past like Kuya Bodjie to visit a sense of time and space. Hopefully, Batibot will be a bridge to improve the level of Pilipino. With the focus on the environment, our challenge is how to make children understand this in terms relevant to their current lives.”

She reiterates her dreams for a community outreach bandwagon, going into daycare centers, public pre-schools, a mobile Batibot to penetrate the furthest communities. The new Batibot starts airing Nov. 27, 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. weekly with five minute daily shorts from 9 a.m. to 9:05 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 4:35 p.m. as reminder.

(E-mail me at bibsyfotos @yahoo.com.)