The STAR, ABS-CBN team up for ‘Halalan 2004’

ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp. links up with The Philippine STAR for a round-the-clock news and information update in the upcoming election dubbed Halalan 2004. The marathon coverage will begin on May 9, with the launch of the Sunday edition of TV Patrol and ends on May 11.

Correspondents from the network and The STAR will work side by side for a joint coverage of the candidates’ campaign trail, election day, the counting of the votes, and through the declaration of the country’s new President.

On election day itself, ABS-CBN has given The STAR the exclusive right to publish the exit poll which it has commissioned the Social Weather Stations to conduct. The exit poll, which will be seen exclusively on the network, will forecast the election outcome some 10 hours after the polls close on May 10.

Halalan 2004 is the fifth time the network will cover a national election since 1986. This time, however, ABS-CBN is not settling for a conventional electoral coverage. Halalan 2004 will present a multi-platform coverage airing simultaneously on ABS-CBN Channel 2, ANC cable channel 21, UHF channel Studio 23, and dzMM.

The multi-platform coverage is meant to fulfill the needs of a diverse and discerning audience with different points of view. Viewers can switch to Channel 2 for a blow-by-blow account of the elections on the ground, while the ABS-CBN News Channel (ANC) will present commentaries of political analysts, business leaders, and industry stalwarts.

These broadcasts will be complemented by the election coverage on Studio 23, which will tackle issues that are of interest to younger voters, and dzMM which will bring listeners round-the-clock live reports right where the action is.

Halalan 2004 can also be accessed on the Internet through the ABS-CBN Interactive website at www.abs-cbn.com. In all these platforms, ABS-CBN will field its best and brightest — the top anchors, correspondents, cameramen and production teams that are responsible for making ABS-CBN the country’s premiere news network.

The coverage will harness the manpower and resources not only of its News and Current Affairs Group, but also of its Entertainment and Engineering Divisions. Its established Regional Network Group (RNG) will coordinate election coverage in 40 live points nationwide.

The same state-of-the-art satellite, microwave, and wireless technology will also make possible live international feeds from San Francisco, the United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong, where an estimated total of 140,000 land-based overseas Filipino workers were deployed last year alone. All these stories and images of the elections will also be seen by Filipinos worldwide through The Filipino Channel (TFC).

"For the first time, we will also be airing images from three countries to cover our countrymen who are voting overseas," says Jake Maderazo, ABS-CBN’s vice president for New Production.

Speed, Accuracy, And Validity

One way the network is able to further enhance the entire election picture with clarity and accuracy is through its Election Quick Count which it first launched during the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao election.

It takes the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) an estimated 12 hours after the polls to release election results. The Commission on Elections will need anytime between two to three days to do so.

To get numbers faster than Namfrel, ABS-CBN has 30,000 field volunteers stationed in precincts all over the country.

Every 30 minutes, these volunteers read the results tallied by teachers on Manila paper which the volunteers relay to network headquarters via short messaging system (SMS) and other means. To ensure the consistency of its running totals, ABS-CBN’s research department has developed its own tally forms and software solely to facilitate the Quick Count. By the time the second shift of field volunteers are done, Namfrel’s numbers catch up.

"The purpose of our Quick Count is to fill in the first 24-hour poll vacuum so people get a sense of what’s going on around the country. We switch to Namfrel figures once they begin releasing them, which coincides with the end of our volunteers’ second shift. Our Quick Count is representative of 10-15 percent of the total voting population, which is roughly around 37 million Filipinos," explains Jing Magsaysay, ANC’s managing director and the head of ABS-CBN’s Quick Count.