Streak Shooter

Miss France was named Miss Universe ALTHOUGH I'm here in California, I was able to update myself on the last Miss Universe pageant held back in Manila. As everyone knows by now, Miss France walked home with the crown while Miss Philippines Maxine Medina only reached the Top 6. Maxine Medina Although the event was broadcast live all over the world, here in California, the show was aired three hours late so I already knew the results even before it was aired on Fox Channel 2. Unlike last year's event where Pia Wurtzbach won, this year's show went on without a hitch and even host Steve Harvey redeemed himself with his witty humor that made up for his mistake last year when he erroneously announced that Miss Colombia won the title, only to say that Pia did win in the end. But I felt that the Miss Universe would have attracted more attention had it been held on a weekend so that more people could watch. And since it was held on a Monday, naturally ther...

Benjie Paras and Ronnie Magsanoc covering NBA Games for Philippine televiewers (Photo courtesy of ABS-CBN) Here in the US, there are lots of channels where basketball fans can watch the NBA games. There's ESPN, ABC, TNT and NBA TV for nationally televised games and CSN here in our California area for Golden State Warriors games. And there is also NBA League Pass but it entails additional money for subscription. The NBA has become so popular that other countries also air the league's games live. And the Philippines is no exception. In the 70s, 80s and 90s, NBA games were shown on Philippine free TV delayed by a week, All that changed when Solar Entertainment acquired the NBA TV rights in 2006 then put up the cable channels Basketball TV and NBA Premium TV that show 24 hours of NBA programming everyday. ESPN Asia also aired NBA games before the channel sold its Asian stocks to Fox Sports which continues broadcasting NBA games on Thursdays and Saturdays. On fr...

Rolly Manlapaz Even though I have been living in the US for the past 10 months, I still get updated about the PBA through my social media accounts and the internet that we have at home. There have been a lot of problems the PBA has been facing ever since I left, from the poor attendance to the officiating, the TV coverage and the leadership of commissioner Chito Narvasa. But more than those that I mentioned, one thing that the PBA lacks these days is the way the coliseum announcers have been performing. Many PBA fans have been missing the booming voice of Rolly Manlapaz, who served as PBA barker from 2003 until 2014 and has since been plying his trade in the college leagues. One time, Rolly told me that the main reason why he left the PBA was that the league discourages barkers like him to adlib, meaning the barkers should follow the instructions set by the PBA technical committee. When Narvasa was tapped to replace Chito Salud as PBA Commissioner, I expected him to br...

FINALLY, the Super Bowl has a Philippine TV carrier. ABS-CBN has acquired the Philippine TV rights to the world's most-watched football game which will be played on Sunday, February 5 (Monday, February 6 in Manila). The match will be shown over ABS-CBN's sports channel Sports+Action Channel 23 starting at 7:30 am followed by a delayed broadcast of the NBA games at 11:30 am. ABS-CBN's move of airing the Super Bowl comes at a time when the channel has been receiving a lot of praise for airing a lot of sports events like the NBA, UAAP, NCAA, ASEAN Basketball League, Shakey's V League, Top Rank Boxing and Philippine Azkals football. It is also a big step for the network in its battle for sports ratings supremacy in the Philippines against TV5, which holds the rights to the PBA, Olympics, FIBA, Philippine Super Liga and UFC. TV5 aired three of the last four Super Bowls but the Manny Pangilinan-owned network bypassed this year because its head Chot Reyes obviousl...

Next Sunday, February 5, Americans will be hooked on their television sets to catch the 51st edition of the championship game of the National Football League, popularly known as the Super Bowl. The Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots will clash for the Vince Lombardi Trophy starting at 3:30 pm, California time, in Houston, Texas. The Super Bowl not only features good football, but plenty of commercials which are being shown on American television for the first time. And the halftime show promises to be a big extravaganza with Lady Gaga as the sole performer. Lady Gaga is best known to NFL fans for her passionate singing of the US national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, during last year's Super Bowl in San Francisco where the Denver Broncos defeated the Carolina Panthers. The game will be televised on all Fox networks throughout the US and naturally, Fox will use its NFL theme music which, incidentally, was used by Fox Sports Philippines for the pre-game introduct...

Keanu Reeves in John Wick In Philippine television, one thing that viewers notice is how a lot of American movies are always dubbed in Tagalog. GMA-7 and TV5 have pioneered in this Tagalized dubbing while ABS-CBN does this occasionally. Last New Year's Day, rival networks GMA and ABS aired separate Keanu Reeves movies with the former airing 47 Ronin and the latter showing John Wick (see photo). Even TV5 has jumped into the dubbed bandwagon with the airing of American TV shows like The Walking Dead also in Tagalog dub. And this new year, more shows like Quantico, Supergirl and House of Cards are also going to be aired on TV5 in dubbed Tagalog. Airing dubbed movies on Philippine TV is nothing new. In the United States, there are TV channels like Telemundo that air Hollywood films dubbed in Spanish. Even other countries have channels that dub their movies in their native languages. I have been receiving mixed reactions regarding these Tagalized movies, with some saying t...