Two of the Philippines largest Television network, GMA-7 and ABS-CBN continued its rivalry not only in TV ratings game and Twitter trending topics but also due to some alleged signal disruptions. The rivalry of the two network heats up due to alleged signal disruptions during the airing of Eat Bulaga’s Kalyeserye featuring the country’s popular love team AlDub.
ABS-CBN or more popularly known as the Kapamilya Network denied the allegations of netizens that they were behind the signal disruptions especially with the involvement of ABS-CBN TVPlus boxes, which the Kapamilya Channel sells to those who want digital-quality images and crisper sound through digital TV.
The Kapamilya Network asked the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to require the Kapuso Network (GMA-7) to explain the intermittent transmission of its own digital TV signal in Metro Manila to help educate the public about digital TV.
ABS-CBN asked the NTC in response to five complaints filed against them for allegedly disrupting the reception of GMA-7’s digital TV signal by ABS-CBN.
Based upon the letter by ABS-CBN dated September 29, 2015, ABS-CBN mentioned five complaints, three of which mentioned signal loss of Channel during the airing of Eat Bulaga’s Kalyeserye featuring the AlDub tandem and the other complaint mentioned disruptions during the airing of Eat Bulaga as a whole.
According to ABS-CBN “it has nothing to do with the signal loss,” and explained that the ABS-CBN TVPlus box receives whatever digital TV transmission it can pick up and ABS-CBN has no control over how other channels transmit their digital TV signals.
Here’s the Letter of ABS-CBN to NTC:
In short, the complainants suffered from a mistaken notion of what a receiver is and what it cannot do, and effectively side-tracked the more telling issue and that is, the program interruption was due to GMA’s own signal loss.
Signal loss due to GMA was confirmed because, not only were signals of other broadcasters during the time in question detected and received by the TVplus box, upon careful monitoring, ABS-CBN actually recorded an episode of signal loss from GMA leading to the signal loss experienced by the TVplus box.
The box itself cannot be a culprit in the signal loss since it is nothing more but a receiver, configured to detect, receive, and broadcast all available digital signals at any given time regardless of the provider (e.g. ABS-CBN, GMA, TV5) and so long as the provider is reliably transmitting such digital signals.