Reflections in 29 years

2015 will mark this writer’s 50th birthday. It will also be my 30th year as a journalist. It seems like a lot to take in, considering how circuitous, tempestuous, and demanding the last three decades have been physically and emotionally. I’ve relished all the twists and turns no matter how draining, simply because they get you to where you are, and the vantage point both looking back and peering ahead can be breathtaking. I’ve been blessed to have all these memories, all in sharp color even to this day. At the end of the day, they make you who you are, regardless of what other people may think or say. I leave them to their own private embarrassment when they find out they were wrong about me or tried to put me in a box.

It started in 1986, at the life-changing, history-making People Power revolution. I had been generally apolitical. But thanks to two classmates, my best friend Vince Concio (a nephew of Ninoy Aquino), and writer Alya Honasan (youngest sibling of Sen. Gringo), my eyes were opened. I learned that, no matter how easy life seems, there will be times when you and the people you care about will be hurt by those who have a more selfish agenda, unless you do something about it. So, like many of my generation, I marched on EDSA, putting myself in harm’s way, trusting in the newfound democratic protest. It was a month before our graduation.

It was also fortuitous that ABS-CBN was returned to the Lopez family soon after, with a yawning gap between loyal pre-Martial Law pioneers and those of us who had studied their practices in college. It was a grand opportunity to change the industry, and many of us did, for better or worse. There was airtime to fill, and shorter attention spans to satisfy. The media explosion that followed EDSA soon petered out, and the strongest in television, radio and print survived.

There were many opportunities in sports, and quite a bit of news airtime to fill. A new television program called “TV Patrol” introduced tabloid journalism to television, and many pillars of the radio industry were being seen on television for the first time ever. I was looking for my niche, and tried it all. I was shot at covering the military, investigated by a sitting senator, and mistaken for every white face on television. It was - pardon the pun - a very colorful time to be a journalist. We were young, thought we knew it all (sometimes, we still do) and hurtled headfirst into every volatile situation, from coups d’etat to labor protests and crime-infested areas. The parameters had not yet been defined, and we were hammering them out.

Soon, I settled into sports, which I “had the temperament for”, whatever that meant. It was a frustrating time, because other than the PBA, other events were not being covered regularly. In the time shortly before satellites and miniaturized transmission equipment, I would drive to and from Quezon to report on the Palarong Pambansa, spread myself out between general assignments, sports and the Senate, then take off in open helicopters following military shootouts with the NPA. Not one did I bother to ask myself what the hell I was doing, not until a bullet whizzed by my head in a hot stream in Norzagaray.

I had to find the stories and fight for them to get aired. After all, the general audience didn’t understand darts, bowling, billiards, fencing, motocross and martial arts yet. It was a chicken and egg situation. People didn’t see it often enough to know the rules, and they didn’t get excited precisely because they didn’t comprehend the rules yet. So a few hardheaded idealists like myself hammered away at the ignorance which was nobody’s fault. I had some lively discussions with our news director, the late Angelo Castro Jr. And even more spicy discussions with my sports mentor Rolando Cruz, who fought tooth and nail to lay the groundwork for ABS-CBN Sports.

In a few years, I would make the big jump to the PBA’s television coverage, going from anchoring the halftime show to running the whole show in one year, thanks to the faith of our boss Bobong Velez. There was so much latitude for creativity. We were the first to use multiple replays in a sports broadcast, the first to use overhead cameras. (I dragged a nervous cameraman through the rafters of Ultra, tiptoeing among high-tension wires and cobwebs for that). It was fun to experiment, even if the experiments weren’t always successful.

Soon, other opportunities and events beckoned, and I made some lateral career moves into directing and events management. At 26, I directed the ground-breaking “Action 9”, hosted by media giants Atty. Dong Puno, Rey Langit and Mon Tulfo. That was a rollercoaster ride, as much for the vast store of knowledge and experience of the hosts as well as their diverse personalities and the rawness of our production teams. We could have been jailed for some of the things said on the air then. Luckily, perhaps the right people were looking the other way.

Soon, pioneering work in three-on-three basketball took me around this beautiful country via the Adidas Streetball Challenge and a similar tournament for adults sponsored by San Miguel Beer. It was great preparation for the birth of the Metropolitan Basketball Association a couple of years down the road. That whole decade and a half was about finding new ways to do new things, taking risks that, in the end seemed foolish but were ultimately worth it. And the memories, oh, the memories, the endless stories from elders I respected deeply like Joe Cantada, Romy Kintanar, Andy Jao, Quinito Henson, Sev Sarmenta, Ed Picson and Butch Maniego, among others. I wouldn’t trade all those early morning flights and van rides, late nights in surrounded by beer, whiskey and cigarette smoke, and tense moments which revealed all their brilliance for anything.

And that was only the first half of this constantly changing odyssey.

* * *

Follow this writer on Twitter @truebillvelasco.