Braganza's Aggressive and Adversarial TV Ads

Braganza: Go for  broke at GMA-7 and
ABS-CBN TVs.

BY MORTZ C. ORTIGOZA

 In my conversation before with former governor Victor Agbayani and Vice Governor Ferdinand Calimlim they told me that a candidate for governorship and vice governorship could not barnstorm the 1,333 villages Pangasinan even in a year’s campaign.
 Agbayani said when he challenged Governor Amado T. Espino in 2010 he was only able to cover 500 barangays. Here’s what the take of Vice Governor Calimlim when I hobnobbed with him two months ago: “Kahit sa isang termino hindi mo kayang ikotin, even in three years. Lahat ng bayan, okay. Lahat ng barangay ikot mo medyo (okay). But think of it, there are 365 days in a year while there are 1,333 barangays. And some of those barangays are so remote aabutin ng ilang oras bago ka makakarating from the town proper. So kung iyon lang ang gagawin mo araw-araw puede mong maikot ng three years”.
 ***

 Thus the gubernatorial contest between Governor Espino and his challenger Alaminos City Mayor Hernani Braganza (who started to make public his intention to run for governor late last year only) can be effectively fought on TV and not so much on talk-radio (FM and AM), newspaper, and loudspeaker equipped vehicles.
The last three modes could not substitute the all encompassing power reached by the boobtube on the seas, on the oceans, in the air, on the beaches, on the grounds, on the fields, and on the hills, on the prairie, and so on – to paraphrase the great speech “Never Surrender” by the rabble rouser non-pareil former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill – the idol of Speaker Joe de Venecia.
 ***

 A 30 second ads slot aired at GMA-7 and ABS CBN’s popular soap opera, and their prime time news in the morning and the evening, where families gather in a living room to watch the latest shows, is potent.
 In case Braganza loses in this election, he could review how his TV message effectively influenced the mindset of the masses to vote for him instead of Espino.
Probably his pro people advocacy cum TV ads were not enough to persuade the voters to go for him.
 Or perhaps he needs the adversarial U.S political style TV ads that showed the bad sides of the opponent on TV (I saw him doing this on his TV ads at ABS-CBN last May 3 and days later at GMA-7).
 In case Nani wins despite the 78.5% of Espino and 21.1% of Nani at the polls conducted last April 19-25 by Data Advisors, Inc.), it means his present aggressive and combative more than half-a-million pesos TV ads a day, although late, are more than enough to become a game changer just like the U.S Stinger anti-helicopter missiles used by the Talibans in Afghanistan versus the horrified Russians in the 1980s.
***
I can still remember how a scathing TV advertisement brought to public office Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu (the younger brother of a hero Colonel Yoni Netanyahu who was killed at the Operation Entebe in Uganda) of Israel.
To quote what former U.S President Bill Clinton said  on his 957 pages hard bound book "My Life" my brother from California gave to me years ago: "On May 29 (1996), I stayed up until well past midnight watching the election returns in Israel. It was a real cliffhanger, as Bibi Netanyahu defeated Shimon Peres by less than 1 percent of the vote. Peres won the Arab vote by a large majority, but Netanyahu beat him badly enough among Jewish voters, who made up more than 90 percent of the electorate, to win. He did it by promising to be tougher on terrorism and slower with the peace process, and by using American-style television ads, including some attacking Peres that were made with the help of a Republican media advisor from New York. Peres resisted the pleas of his supporters to answer the ads until the very end of the campaign, and by then it was too late".
***
With few days more to go before the candidates are barred by law to campaign, the spin-minsters of Amado T. Espino should answer with their own TV ads on the same TV stations the damaging TV ads of Braganza on Espino's alleged involvement of the latter on black sand, murder of Infanta Mayor Ruperto Martinez, and the plunder case filled by Bugallon Mayor Ric Orduna.
They should remember what Nazi propagandist Herr Joseph Goebells had famously said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
***
 Oh by the way, don’t you know that a 30 second slot, just like what  Braganza and Espino have been zealously doing lately, for the prime time ads in a local GMA-7 in Northern Luzon cost a candidate Php90,000. If Nani and Espino got six of them each everyday, geez that’s already an arm and leg of fortune for a lower middle class family.
But son of a gun, politics is a game for the moneyed. That’s why the Yanks have this expression: “Show me the money!”
 Here’s another one: A 30 second advertisement for national viewership for a senatorial candidate cost him/her half a million pesos according to Attorney Felipe Gozon, Chief Executive of GMA Network, Inc. In a news report senatorial bet Teddy Casino said that a 30 second slot ads in ABS-CBN for national viewership cost Php 500,000. A reporter of Bombo Radyo reacted to my earlier column “Block Time War Rages”. He said it was not true that the 30 minute block time in the morning prime time program availed by Espino and Braganza cost each of them Php18,000. “Our one hour discounted rate is Php 52,000. Each of these candidates availed everyday except Sunday of the block time to promote themselves and demolish their rivals”.
 Geez, that’s a lot of money!
(Send comments to totomortz@yahoo.com)