Majority of Filipinos support license

renewal for embattled ABS-CBN: poll

Reuters12 hours ago

Philippine congress votes for shutdown of top broadcaster ABS-CBN

MANILA (Reuters) - Three out of four Filipinos wanted Philippine lawmakers to

renew a 25-year license for the country's top broadcaster, a survey by a private
pollster showed late on Saturday, a day after Congress rejected ABS-CBN
Corp's bid to have it renewed.
Critics saw the rejection as part of a political vendetta by President Rodrigo
Duterte's allies in Congress after the media conglomerate angered him for its
failure to air some of his paid 2016 election campaign commercials. The network
has apologised.
A legislative committee overwhelmingly agreed with a working group's
assessment that ABS-CBN, which employs 11,000 people and has an audience
of tens of millions of Filipinos, was "undeserving of the grant of legislative
franchise".
In a July 3-6 nationwide mobile phone survey, private pollster Social Weather
Stations (SWS) found that 75% of adult Filipinos had agreed that "Congress
should renew the franchise so that ABS-CBN can broadcast its programs again".
Of those surveyed, 10% were undecided while 13% disagreed, SWS said in a
statement.
The survey also found 56% agreed that the non-renewal of ABS-CBN's franchise
was "a major blow to press freedom", SWS said.
The government "lost a media partner in information dissemination", Duterte's
spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement on Sunday when asked for
comment on the survey.
However, he reiterated that the granting of the broadcasting franchise remained
the exclusive prerogative of Congress.

(Reporting by Enrico Dela Cruz; editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)