House Makabayan bloc refiles ABS-CBN franchise bill
Three members of the leftwing Makabayan bloc have refiled the bill seeking renewal of the legislative franchise of former television giant ABS-CBN, which the House of Representatives closed in May 2020 purportedly due to several franchise violations.
Reps. Arlene Brosas of women’s group Gabriela, France Castro of ACT Teachers and Raoul Danniel Manuel of Kabataan party-list filed House Bill 1218 in the hopes of reviving the Lopez-owned broadcast network for another 25 years, or until 2047.
“This is a challenge for Congress to defy the rising tyranny, to stand for freedom and democracy,” the militant lawmakers stated in their explanatory note, after the National Telecommunications Commission shut it down following the expiration of its franchise.
The progressive lawmakers said Congress should go beyond what former president Rodrigo Duterte did to ABSCBN where he admitted using presidential powers to verify franchise violations of the network, insisting freedom of the press should still be paramount.
“That the president is personally piqued is certainly a miniscule and inappropriate reason in the face of the thousands that will be out of jobs if the network will be out of the airwaves and its dire implications on press freedom,” they argued.
“If the environment is such that media outfits are shuttered rather than allowed to be robust and independent, where truth is muted and turned off rather than broadcast then our democratic spaces are shrinking indeed,” they warned.
The frequency formerly assigned to ABS-CBN had since been given to billionaire and former Senate president Manny Villar, a close friend and political ally of Duterte, who owns Advanced Media Broadcasting System Inc.
The Lopez-led TV network used Channel 43 for its TV Plus channels under a block-time deal with Amcara, whose legislative franchise also expired in 2020.
ABS-CBN now has a sharing broadcast agreement with other TV networks, among them TV5 – the Manny Pangilinan-owned broadcast station that is a sister company of this broadsheet – and Zoe Broadcasting Corp. owned by the family of Sen. Joel Villanueva.