Network chief to Duterte: Sorry
Credit to Author: Ma. Reina Leanne Tolentino, TMT| Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2020 17:15:42 +0000
ABS-CBN Corp. finally apologized to President Rodrigo Duterte for its failure to air his political ads during the 2016 campaign period.
ABS-CBN President Carlo Katigbak said Duterte’s camp paid P182 million worth of commercial spots — P117 million for national ads and P65 million for provincial spots. The ads for national spots were aired, but those for the provinces were not.
“Our policy on all our ads is first come, first served. Many of these spots were ordered on May 3 and May 7 was the last day of the campaign period. There had been many previous telecast orders that came in ahead,” Katigbak bared when he appeared at the Senate on Monday.
Since slots for local ads were limited to just two minutes per hour, he claimed there was no time to air Duterte’s ads. Katigbak added that Duterte got ab initial refund of P4 million, but the additional refund of P2.6 million was delayed.
He said the Duterte camp refused to accept the delayed refund.
“We acknowledge our shortcoming in our failure to release that refund in a timely manner.
We are sorry if we offended the President. That was not the intention of the network. We felt that we were just abiding by regulations that surround the airing of political ads,” he continued.
Duterte had lambasted the network several times for its failure to air his political ads.
On Tuesday, Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said it was up to the President on how to respond to the apology.
“That’s for him (Duterte), it’s personal to him,” Panelo told reporters. “Dapat noon pa nila ginawa (They should have apologized earlier).”
“Na kay Presidente iyan e (It’s up to the President)…how he will respond to that,” he added.