Five years ago, TV5 introduced a brand new weekend lineup with the help of a familiar ally.
In late 2015, TV5’s entertainment division was dissolved by the management. Among the long list of personalities that were retrenched was then-Chief Content Officer Wilma Galvante. The Kapatid network’s workforce was drastically reduced to around 1,000 and has since abandoned producing much of its entertainment output by that month’s end.
Instead, TV5 began outsourcing the production of those shows to other companies like Galvante’s ContentCows Company, Perci Intalan’s The IdeaFirst Company, other blocktimers, and the TV5-Viva-Cignal jointly-owned Sari-Sari Network. The Kapatid network took the partnership with the lattermost a step further by appointing SSN’s Co-CEO and Viva owner Vic Del Rosario as TV5’s new chief entertainment strategist.
For additional context, Viva and TV5 have previously collaborated in the years prior to the SSN partnership through productions like Bagets and P.S. I Love You.
Before 2016, many of TV5’s contract artists have started to gradually move to Viva’s talent management arm as the network’s own talent-handling division was scrapped along with the rest of the entertainment group.
Speaking of which, the most symbolic moment to signal the partnership was the Kapatid network’s countdown to 2016, where most of non-exclusive Viva talents joined the celebrations. TV5 and Viva also used the event as a platform to list all the shows that are set to air on channel 5 in the year ahead.
Fast forward to the month of February and the Viva-TV5 deal had officially started. February 6 marked the beginning of three new shows: Born to be a Star (season 1) and Tasya Fantasya. The former was Viva’s attempt to rekindle and capaitalize on the popularity of Star for a Night and Search for a Star. Meanwhile, the latter is a TV remake of a Carlo J. Caparas novel. Viva-operated MTV Pinoy also contributed MTV Top 20 Pilipinas to the schedule. On the other hand, former TV5-produced Wattpad Presents was reformatted as a weekly anthology produced by Viva.
Sunday nights became home for The IdeaFirst’s #ParangNormal Activity and News5’s in-house production Barangay Utakan. While being on a different timeblock, Sunday variety show Happy Truck ng Bayan was also later reformatted as Happy Truck Happinas under ContentCows Company.
By the end of the month, Viva primetime teledramas Bakit Manipis ang Ulap? and Ang Panday have also begun airing.
But the hype quickly dissipated a few months into the partnership. The two primetime series faced the major problem that was the inconsistency of its airtime in the grid thanks to the PBA, among other sporting commitments of the network. Apart from that, Panday was also crippled by the repititive reruns that it had across the schedule.
By June 2016, most of the new shows have all finished or have been quietly cancelled by the management. In their place was a slate of reruns from the Kapatid network’s archives. MTV International’s programs were also eventually added by June to fill the gap on several dead slots, with primetime being filled up by other foreign imports (most notably, Supernatural and The Walking Dead).
Viva quietly returned to the schedule via the Sari Sari sa Weekend block on TV5 in 2017, only to be reduced anew once the network transitioned fully as a news and sports channel in 2018.
More than four years later, in 2020, Viva revisited their partnership with five and has since begun producing shows for TV5’s primetime slots, particularly during Saturday and Sunday nights. Archived Sari-Sari programs like Hapi House and The Red Envelope also currently air on Primetime Todo every Thursday and Friday nights.
As part of this reformed collaboration, Viva/Sari-Sari is expected to bring in Philippine versions of gameshows 1000 Heartbeats, The Wall, and popular Korean drama Encounter starring Diego Loyzaga and Cristine Reyes this March.
While in the past TV5 inconsistently scheduled Viva shows in its schedule, the pandemic that resulted to the temporary cancellation of many sporting events aired by the former had been key to a more fluid airing of the latter’s programs.
These days, the only thing that needs to be straightened out is the promotion of those shows, as many of them are considered to be undermarketed, especially by the standards set by rival networks. It’s something that had been a problem the first time around and needs to be addressed immediately to make this new partnership work. That way, the two parties could prevent the relapse of a failure that is their 2016 offerings.