“TATAK PILIPINO” was a 60-minute weekly television magazine program that showcased Philippine arts and culture, produced by ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation from 1990 to 1994. It was hosted by APO Hiking Society’s Jim Paredes and ABS-CBN News Anchorwoman Gel Santos Relos, with Laurenti Dyogi as Executive Producer and Leo Katigbak as Director.
At the time when variety shows, sitcoms, drama and movies dominated the viewership of Philippine television audience post-People Power Revolution, Tatak Pilipino enjoyed a growing number of loyal followers who welcomed the show’s innovative approach to presenting information and issues about Philippine arts and culture in a very entertaining package.
Tatak Pilipino’s hooks were the fast paced, creatively produced segments presented as feature stories, factoids and bumpers, woven together by the spiels and insightful banter of Paredes and Relos. While the topics were heavy in information about history and culture, the presentation style, production design, script, and musical scoring were more hip and contemporary — attracting and sustaining the interest of even the younger generation.
Topics were dished out as smorgasbord for some episodes. Examples of subjects in the menu for feature stories were the Pinoy culture of eating dog meat; the rite of passage called “tuli” (circumcision) of pubescent boys done communally in public during the summer time; the golden years of Philippine cinema; how gay lingo has evolved through the decades and permeated mainstream culture; the tradition of lavish fiestas and Filipino hospitality, etc.
Factoids and bumpers presented short features that included topics like showcasing a popular artist in the field of music, theater, radio, television, film; or a historical landmark; or the popular reading material “komiks”.
Popular topics among the wide range of audience from elementary school students to lolos and lolas included the “Top 10” or “Top 20” lists, like the ten most popular movies of all time, or the Philippine National Artists.
Tatak Pilipino also presented some thematic episodes, whereby the show’s features, factoids, and bumpers were covered by a single theme of the week. Most memorable were the series that featured decades in Philippine cultural history: Dekada 50; Dekada 60; Dekada 70. The studio set was designed to illustrate what was popular during those decades. Jim and Gel wore the hair, make-up and outfit that were in vogue during those times.
The program also taped a few episodes out of the studio to bring certain places or time milieu to its audience — like the episode on the turn of the century (1900) which was shot in its entirety in Casa Manila in Intramuros; or one that is shot remotely in Corregidor; or the episode in Luneta that featured the youth members of the “Barkadahang Tatak Pilipino” playing traditional Filipino games like piko, patintero, shato, etc.
In the four years that Tatak Pilipino was on air, the program has earned the recognition of several award winning bodies, from Gawad CCP, Star Awards, KBP Golden Dove Awards.
Impressive as these awards may be, perhaps the more remarkable testament to the show’s legacy may be the impact it has made to its audience some twenty years ago. To date in social media and several internet discussion fora, Tatak Pilipino continues to be among the shows people they say they want to see on TV again, or among the best programs ever produced on Philippine television. Some commenters even say that they learned more about Philippine arts and culture from watching Tatak Pilipino than they did in school.
Despite these accolades from its loyal audience and award giving bodies, however, Tatak Pilipino did not get as much support from advertisers — a requirement to keep a program running on television. Variety shows, sitcoms, dramas, and movie re-runs were deemed to conform to the “winning formula” of what rates and therefore sell to advertisers.
Perhaps the Tatak Pilipino could have proven its profitability and therefore, its staying power, if it was given a longer time to build and expand its audience base. This might have been possible if it were given a slot on prime time, instead of the very late night program schedule or the weekend afternoon airing it later had before it was cancelled in 1994. Perhaps, then, more TV viewers could have acquired the taste for educational shows such as this, as a better alternative to other more popular genre like showbiz gossip shows.
Such is the dilemma of network executives and producers. In the highly competitive industry that is commercial television, how long must they wait for the broader audience to acquire such taste for more educational programming?
(Re-runs of Tatak Pilipino are now being shown on Jeepney TV, one of the channels offered by ABS-CBN’s SkyCable.)
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
