Care for some freshly squeezed juice?

It’s fresh. It’s refreshing. It’s fat-free, guilt-free and very healthy. It’s real cool and juicy! And it promises to be the talk of TV town. But of course, we’re talking about Juice, the hottest new concept to hit Philippine cable TV. (A division of CCI Asia, producer of Lakbay TV, it started airing last Feb. 14 on Channel 47 of Destiny Cable, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m., in Metro Manila. It’s also available nationwide in Cebu, Davao, Cagayan de Oro, Naga, Zamboanga and Puerto Princesa. It will soon be available to Home and Sky Cable subscribers on another channel.)

"It captures the overflowing spirit of our target audience, people aged 20 to 29, or what the fresh Ateneo graduates call the yumies (young upwardly mobile individuals," says top guy Jake de Guzman, 32, a Philosophy graduate of Ateneo, flashing a juicy smile. "It means many things. When you squeeze your experiences, insights, memories, dreams and schemes, that’s the juice. It means adrenaline rush, your creative juices – it can come from sports, graduating from college, getting a promotion, closing a deal. So what’s the juice in your life?"

"It’s a slice of life, all-natural, it’s what gets you going," gushes programming and production manager Grace M. Leung, formerly with Probe Productions. "And we have a roster of 10 shows, based on the top 10 interests of twentysomethings."

And the top 10 interests of yumies, based on research, according to Jake, are: health and fitness, personal grooming, style, fashion, Internet-technology, travel, sports, career-finances, interior design (and fixing up the home), cooking. "This age group is intelligent and sophisticated, they know what they want, they know what’s real and what’s not. They’re more cosmopolitan, some of these people have taken their masters in the States. Some have left their parents’ homes to live on their own. So they cook if not for themselves, for their significant others or their barkada. Actually, the barkada is the second family, which is something we’re also trying to capture."

Fact is, the Juice team is one big, happy barkada. A lot of them met at Probe. Thirsting for a new avenue for their creative juices, they all found themselves at Juice one day. "We like working with people we like, or that’s the press release," they chorus with roaring laughter. "We were not pirated, we’re anti-piracy. We were all freelancing before, doing our own thing."

"A lot of us are best friends and the relationship has stayed," swears Jake. "We work as a team, we make decisions together."

With their collective consummate passion for work, they share this dream: To uplift the quality of local TV.

But if all else palls, at least they agree they’re having fun working together. "You’ve only got one life to live so you should work in a place that’s fun," Jake rationalizes. "We want to be a fun show, a fun channel, an inspiring channel, something that can make you think, something that will give you information to live your life. We want to be the benchmark for the life and style of the 20-29 age group. The entire channel is for them."

It’s a channel for real people by real people. Jake elaborates, "Our people are not stars, they’re not your idols or icons. They’re real people doing real shows. We want our hosts to be like your best friend. He or she can be the prettiest or the most handsome, most intelligent in your barkada, but he/she is not a star, is reachable, not someone you idolize but someone you actually know. We also want the natural personality of our hosts to match the personality of the show."

Thus, Juice couldn’t have picked a better host for its Side Stitch show, a health and fitness program, than Mel Lozano, 23-year-old UP graduate, who stoutly asserts, "I really work out at a gym three times a week and play a lot of sports. I also jog. I totally endorse a healthy lifestyle. I just want people to get off their butts and start working out. Instead of going to the malls, go outdoors for a change. Do something active."

However, we can’t say the same about Mel’s partner on the show, Peejo Pilar, 28, an Ateneo Communications graduate, whose only form of exercise is probably stretching his imagination. Peejo confesses, "I’m not healthy at all. I used to be a mountaineer in college but when I joined the working class, I gained almost 55 pounds. Now, I weigh 175 lbs. at 5’9". I don’t regularly exercise except for climbing the stairs at the MRT. I’m the epitome of fat and lazy bums all over the world. I’m proud to be the Derek Zoolander of fat and unfit people."

Don’t you see yourself in Peejo? For its initial offering, Side Stitch raided the home (and refrigerator) of a yumi to find out what’s inside his ref. Are you a junkie like this yumi?

So who owns the perfect tight bod, according to Mel and Peejo?

Mel: "I think Brad Pitt has the body that lots of guys covet."

Peejo: "For me, Bruce Lee. You don’t have to be bulky to have a nice body – just slim and fit. And hard."

And the best fitness advice they can give?

Mel: "Always lift two pounds heavier than the guy beside you."

Peejo: "Give us a break, man. Be happy. Don’t hurt yourself and don’t hurt anyone. Mel might be healthier than I am, but I might actually outlive her. So just be happy."

And here’s happy news for all the kikays out there. Twenty-two-year-old beauty-and-brains model Rissa Samson, a consistent dean’s lister at Ateneo where she finished BS Management, hosts The Kikay Machine, the yumies’ ultimate guide to looking good and more importantly, feeling good. With The Kikay Machine, Rissa, with her signature fashion-beauty-style savvy, hopes to reach out to Pinays to come to terms with their own beauty. She shares, "It’s important that women learn to love themselves no matter how they look."

A complete "thinking" lifestyle channel, there’s also Space, a home improvement show hosted by Reema Chanco, 24, a De La Salle graduate who was formerly in banking and entrepreneurship and starred in a reality TV show. Though she claims to be no Martha Stewart or Katie Brown, Reema says that everyone should redesign their own personal space to be meaningful, comfortable and functional, but most of all, budget-friendly. "Interior design doesn’t have to be expensive and elitist," she points out. "Don’t be afraid to experiment. Making a little investment to design your own space is the best gift you can give yourself."

Says houseband Paolo Abrera: "We try to make a more focused effort to Filipinize, for instance, our interior design show. They may talk about certain materials or certain places, but when it comes down to walking out your door and going to pick up these things, you have no idea where to go. So now, it’s very specific because you’re more realistically thinking about how to refurbish your room or your own house."

From Grace comes more fresh news, "In the future, we’ll have a show on gizmos and gadgets, cars and everything big boys play with or are interested in. We’ll have sort of a travel show called Practical Pilgrims, a practical guide for traveling because we realize that twentysomethings think of a budget when they travel. We’ll have a reality show, sort of like war games."

To add juice to the TV experience, Juice is putting up its own interactive broadband website (www.juice.ph) which will contain a number of unique features to allow users to access additional information about the stories featured on the various programs. Through the website, users can also share their lifestyle tips with other surfers. "Our objective is not only to supplement the info we feed on Juice but also to have a constructive form of feedback from our viewers," says Auey Santos, web manager.

"We want to hear what people in our target audience say, we don’t want to say it for them," says Jake. "We want to know what interests them, what gets their juice."

Here, have some freshly squeezed Juice.