BLOOMBERG Television has widened its reach in Asia through a partnership it officially forged with Cignal TV Inc. on Wednesday, which is aimed at bringing the first 24-hour business news channel in the Philippines, underscoring its economic gains as one of fastest-growing economies in the world today.
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) Chairman Manuel V. Pangilinan said in a statement that their tie-up with the world’s leader in financial and business information service ushers in “a new era in Philippine television, in which business information is set to be in the front and center of a rising Philippine economy.”
The country is an important market for Bloomberg, Media Managing Director for Asia Pacific Parry Ravindranathan told reporters after the ceremonial signing of the agreement. Hence, the creation of Bloomberg Television Philippines, he said, will enable them to bring its success story to the global audience with its local content on the current economic developments, as well as relevant features on homegrown companies that exhibit tremendous success.
“We, at Bloomberg, believe that this is going to be a start of something very, very big for us in the Philippines, as well as in the region,” he noted, while citing that the Bloomberg Television Philippines is their 11th local channel-partner globally, and the fifth in Asia after India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Mongolia. “[It enables us] to tell the story and that kind of business voice in the Philippines.”
For MediaQuest Holdings Inc. CEO and President Emmanuel C. Lorenzana, this joint venture is founded to provide Filipinos an up-to-date and accurate information on business and finance to aid in their decision-making.
He said this will help improve financial literacy, especially among the young Filipino viewers wherever they may be in the archipelago.
“Over the long term, we envision this partnership would be instrumental in realizing the goal of making the Philippines truly the next business capital of Southeast Asia.”
Set to be launched in the third quarter of this year, Bloomberg Television Philippines will be presented in English and will be exclusively distributed via Cignal Digital TV, which currently has 97 channels, including 27 high-definition channels.
“In the short period of its establishment six years ago, Cignal has emerged [as] the leader in pay-TV in the Philippines, with 844,000 subscribers, or 32-percent market share in 2014,” Cignal TV Inc. Chief Operating Officer Oscar A. Reyes Jr said.
“As the exclusive distributor of Bloomberg TV Philippines, Cignal is proud to be instrumental in expanding the reach of Bloomberg’s fast, accurate and market-moving news throughout the archipelago,” he added.
The new channel will be run by Bloomberg and TV5—MediaQuest’s free-to-air TV channel.
Leveraging on TV5’s talent and production, it will provide several hours of local daily content supplemented by Bloomberg’s programming to create a new 24/7 premium business news channel.
It will be included in Cignal Digital TV’s postpaid international channel bundle and created exclusively for its direct-to-home platform.
“This really comes at the time when we are expecting to become the country’s biggest pay-TV service provider with more than 1 million subscribers by the end of this year,” Pangilinan said.
While their strategy is to reward Cignal subscribers with quality business news coverage, Lorenzana revealed that they also plan to bring Bloomberg Television Philippines to a wider audience.
“Having said that, I’m in talks with our TV5 people to perhaps curate a free TV portion of that, not the entire coverage, but like a curated 30 to 45 minutes that we can show on free TV and allows the free TV viewers to actually [enjoy it],” he said.
Also, he bared that they will utilize the group’s resources to make Bloomberg Television Philippines available in different screens.
“What we want to do is to do a complete 360-[degree] delivery: Free TV, pay-TV, mobile and broadband. So it’s a 24-hour and 360-[degree] experience,” he stressed.