Media
Publications for Foreigners
There are few newspapers and magazines in The Country serving foreign residents and tourists. The most important is Expat, a weekly tabloid distributed free every Saturday. It addresses expatriates in Manila, with a focus on events in Makati, and can be picked up at more than 200 hotels, restaurants, airlines offices, apartment houses, and embassies.
Expat has the widest coverage on bureaucratic affairs affecting foreigners, such as policy changes at the Commission on Immigration, even when compared to the great number of daily newspapers. Expat also carries both the American Far East Network (FEN) and local television program schedules.
Expat is a sister publication of What's On in Manila and What's On in Cebu. The former is a twice-monthly full-color magazine aimed at tourists and is distributed in many first-class hotels in Manila as well as in-flight on several airlines. It contains information about places to go and what to see as well as accurate up-to-the-minute flight schedules for domestic and international airlines. Full-color cover stories give information on popular tourist destinations convenient to Manila.
What's On in Cebu contains basically the same tourist information for The Country 's second largest city and the surrounding tourist spots, but in a tabloid newspaper format.
There is also a German weekly newspaper, the Deutsche Wochenzeitung fuer Asien. Published every Tuesday, it is sold for a price of 8 pesos. It consists mainly of clippings from newspapers in Germany which are just pasted and reproduced. It is not stated from which German newspapers the reports are taken but the publisher seems to prefer papers from southern Germany. Occasionally material from German tabloid papers is also used.
A surprisingly large number of German magazines are available in Metro Manila. They are distributed by a company named Phil-German Magazine Distributor, room 19 A, 2nd floor, Midland Plaza, Adriatico St, Tel 57-30-11 loc 208. The following magazines are available: Der Spiegel, Stern, Quick, Bunte, Neue Revue, Capital, Manager Magazin, Brigitte, Burda Moden, Neue Mode, Maenner Vogue, Playboy, Geo, Auto Motor Sport, Kicker, Die Zeit, Welt am Sonntag, Bild am Sonntag.
The German magazines are available at the German pubs Old Heidelberg, Edelweiss, Muenchen Grill Pub, Fischfang, Lili Marleen, Jodi's Place and at the newsstands of the following hotels: Peninsula, Holiday Inn, Midtown, Manila Hotel, Philippine Plaza, Hyatt, Sheraton, Intercontinental, Manila Garden, Mandarin, Sundowner, and at the domestic and international airport.
A number of newsstands at hotels sell the above mentioned magazines for much higher prices than stated above. Phil-German Magazine Distributors also delivers to residences and hotel rooms; order by telephone at the above given number is sufficient.
Radio
Most radio stations in Manila and the Philippines are privately operated by commercial, political or civic organizations. Some are run by government institutions such as universities. For financing, most radio stations depend on commercials.
The programs broadcast by the different stations sound alike. Most of them have western style pop music for three fourths or more of the programming. The rest is filled with commercials and entertainment talk, but contains very little news.
AM stations broadcast primarily in Tagalog while FM stations offer more English. Newscasts used to be mostly in English but the trend is to shift to Tagalog. Newscasts are not as up-to-date as one could expect in this electronic era. As a matter of fact, the radio news of smaller stations often sound like a direct reading of the headlines of the morning dailies. Only at times of revolutions and attempted military coups, and with typhoon information, radio is really faster than newspapers.
The station most conscious of political events is Radio Veritas (AM 846 Khz). However, as it is owned by the Catholic Church, it is suspected by critics who do not conform with the political interests of the Catholic Church, to be biased to the interests of its owner. An FM station with a comparatively good English news coverage is on 99.5 Mhz.
There are no schedules of radio programs available in print in Manila as there are too many stations and their programs are just too similar. For the listener, it is hard to distinguish one station from another because they do not use proper names but four call letters such as DYXB or DZMM or DWAN, the same as in the US.
Television
The television system also resembles the US model. Even the technical standard is the same (NTSC) so that ordinary American TV sets can be used to receive Philippine telecasts.
The TV programs are also similar to those in the States, not only because all stations show a lot of US productions but also because for their income the stations depend entirely on commercials. Actually far more commercials (up to 15 minutes per hour) are shown on TV here than in Europe and even the US. Furthermore, with a newspaper one may elect not to read an advertisement but on TV one is exposed without choice to the commercials. Over-advertising on TV may turn off not only prospective TV viewers but also prospective buyers of the products advertised. A few years ago the author decided to boycott Nescafe because news programs were constantly interrupted by their commercials.
Channel 4 (People's Television) - For a long time Channel 4 was the voice of the government. During Marcos' time, when it was called Maharlika Station, it served mainly as a means of propaganda for the late President. During the 1986 February events, Channel 4 was the first station captured by the rebellious military. Channel 4 then remained in the hands of Cory Aquino's administration until mid 1987 when it was returned to its owner before the Marcos dictatorship, the Lopez family. Compared to the other stations, this channel is quite political. It also carries a lot of local and international sports events.
Channel 7 (GMA, Greater Manila Artists) - Channel 7 is known for its many US TV series and the replay several times a day of the programs of US televangelists - Club 700, etc. The Catholic Church and US fundamentalist sects are constantly fighting over the Filipinos' souls; when it appeared to both sides that such a fight when conducted vigorously erodes the will to believe in general, a kind of truce was informally agreed on; but open hostilities resulted from competition for TV air time.
Channel 2 (ABS/CBN Alto Broadcasting System/ Chronicle Broadcasting Network) - A channel with many English programs; broadcasts nationwide via satellite. The station carries the show of The Country 's number 1 movie idol, Sharon Cuneta, one of the allegedly several dozens of children of Pasay City mayor Pablo Cuneta.
Channel 9 (RPN Radio Philippine Network) - The most widely transmitting television station in the archipelago.
Channel 13 (IBC Intercontinental Broadcasting Corp.) - Channel 13 broadcasts mainly in Tagalog and has a lot of Tagalog drama (and also "wrestling").
Channel 5 - New channel.
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