Whatever debt it still carries and however much pressure it remains under five years after losing its broadcast franchise, ABS-CBN continues to mount a magnificent defence of its corner of the Philippines video entertainment market. 

The effort – including previously unthinkable alliances – has given rise to a slate of killer titles, including last year’s record-breaking movie Hello, Love, Again, which, at ₱1.6 billion/US$28.6 million worldwide, is now the country’s highest grossing movie of all time. 

A first-of-its-kind collaboration between ABS-CBN Studios, Star Cinema and GMA Pictures, Hello, Love, Again is among a growing catalogue of shows born into (and perhaps because of) the Philippines’ dramatically re-shaped entertainment landscape in the past five years. 

The newish-found peace between media giants ABS-CBN and GMA, forged in the aftermath of the licence fiasco of 2020, seems to be holding. In March 2025, the two celebrated the 20th anniversary of Pinoy Big Brother in the Philippines with a special celebrity edition. The companies called the new project yet “another ground-breaking collaboration”.

There are others: It’s Showtime, ABS-CBN’s popular noontime variety show,  began airing on GMA’s secondary channel, GTV, in July 2023. moving to GMA’s main channel in April 2024. 2023 drama series, Unbreak My Heart, was co-produced by GMA Network, ABS-CBN’s Dreamscape Entertainment and Hong Kong-based regional streaming platform Viu. The star-studded cast was plucked from both networks, including Jodi Sta. Maria, Richard Yap, Joshua Garcia and Gabbi Garcia. The series aired on GMA and streamed on Viu across 15 territories.

Perhaps the most ironic new alliance is the one that put ABS-CBN content back on the channel 2 broadcast frequency that it fought so hard to keep and lost in 2020 during the Duterte administration.  

Exactly a year ago, in April 2024, ABS-CBN Corporation and Advanced Media Broadcasting System (AMBS) announced a partnership that expanded the reach of ABS-CBN TV properties – including news and current affairs flagship, TV Patrol – on AMBS’s Alltv. The agreement kicked in on May 2024 and was seen as something of a homecoming for ABS-CBN, which having been forced to vacate the channel two slot, watched from the sidelines as the frequency was given to the politically and commercially powerful Villar family’s AMBS. 

SUBSCRIPTION TV 
If Cignal is the sexiest subscription TV story in the Philippines for its sheer size and leadership position, the bloodiest story is all about ABS-CBN’s SkyCable. The platform, victim of ABS-CBN’s forced exit from broadcasting in 2020, was brought back from the almost-dead in early 2024 – five days before it was scheduled to go dark. 

The whole story is complicated and winding, but ultimately telco/media giant PLDT decided not to go ahead with its ₱6.75-billion/US$123-million acquisition of Sky’s broadband business and related assets. The deal was announced in March 2023. A condition of the original sale was that Sky’s pay-TV/cable business –  one of the region’s oldest pay-TV platforms – was terminated. The agreement turned Sky into a dedicated internet service provider.

Although all the regulatory clearances were secured, speculation is that the companies could not agree on final closing conditions. Insiders at the time did not rule out political maneouvring, which has its roots in the 2020 refusal to renew ABS-CBN’s broadcast franchise and is said to have scuppered multiple efforts to realign the local landscape. 

A year later, the SkyCable issue is a headline writer’s gift that keeps on giving.  

In April 2025, ABS-CBN said the massively discounted equipment sale to Dennis Anthony Uy’s Converge affiliate, Reliance Broadcasting Unlimited, was just that – the sale of equipment it no longer needed. The equipment, valued at ₱3.1 billion/US$54.9 million, was acquired by Uy for US$7.5 million, meaning an impairment loss of US$47.6 million from the 2024 sale. This was in addition to ABS-CBN’s US$42.5 million write-down in 2023 as part of Sky Cable’s financial restructuring. Explaining its logic to the Philippines Stock Exchange after a local news platform flagged the write down, ABS-CBN said that the idle assets were “mainly equipment and infrastructure from Sky Cable’s now-defunct direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV business, which shut down after the non-renewal of its franchise”. Will that make the speculation about Uy driving a SkyCable comeback go away Probably not. And who knows, it might turn out to be true. 

FILM 
Philippines’ box office for 2025 has been a handful (if that) of highs but mostly lows. According to Box Office Mojo, gross box office for 2025 to end April is just US$8 million. That’s not terrible compared to the same four months in 2024, but it has sounded an alert for a possible dive from last year’s total US$45.5 million and 2023’s US$47 million. The best year on record was 2015, when gross box office hit US$157.4 million. 

Recent highs are led by Hello, Love, Again (2024), which became the highest-grossing Philippines’ film of all time at ₱1.6 billion/US$28.6 million worldwide, followed by a March 2025 peak with domestic romcom, My Love Will Make You Disappear.

The Philippines’ 2025 weekend box office rankings (as of 27 April) were topped by Captain America: Brave New World (US$1.7 million gross, 12-16 Feb) followed by My Love Will Make You Disappear (US$1.07 million, 26-30 March), produced by ABS-CBN Film Productions and distributed by Star Cinema. The two titles were the only films that have crossed the US$1-million gross box office mark by end April 2025.  

My Love Will Make You Disappear stars Kim Chiu and Paulo Avelino in their first big-screen project after TV blockbusters Linlang and What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim. ​Directed by Chad V. Vidanes, the film is about a woman who believes she is cursed. Her life takes a turn when she meets a man who sees her curse as an escape from his own troubles. Box office hopes for June ride on Star Cinema/Cornerstone Studio’s Only We Know, starring Dingdong Dantes and Charo Santos-Concio.

Philippines in numbers
In numbers
Population ........................... 116.5 million
Households ............................ 26.39 million
Avg household size ................ 4.1 persons
TV households rate .......................... 79.9%
Source: Worldometer (population, March 2025), Philippine Statistics Authority (households, 2020 census)

Published in The Big List Philippines | May 2025 edition