TV5 has filed an official complaint against SkyCable with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) for failing to air TV5’s signal for over two hours on December 13, 2014. There was also a period during this erratic airing when TV5 on SkyCable fluctuated and was interchanged with AksyonTV.
Media monitoring records from The Nielsen Company (Philippines), Inc. verified this incident in a report that said, “The TV Events team has confirmed that there was indeed a signal loss to TV5 on our Sky Cable recordings. Per standard procedure, our TV Events team used a backup recording using free-to-air sources to encode the missed airings. Total off-air time was from 14:10:20 to 16:47:55 or 2 hours, 37min and 35 seconds. This was monitored from our metro manila monitoring site.” Furthermore, Nielsen reported that “there were 10 other free-to-air channels that we monitor that were affected by the loss of signal, but they were only off air by 7 minutes. These channels were NBN, 9TV, GNTV, ABS-CBN SPORTS+ACTION, RJTV, 9TV, IBC, ABS-CBN, GMA, and Aksyon TV.”
TV5 Head of Programming Dan de Padua stated, “On December 13, 2014, SkyCable failed to carry the TV5 signal for over two and a half hours, thus adversely affecting our channel viewership and depriving the public of an important news and entertainment source.”
TV5, through MediaQuest Holdings, Inc., a media conglomerate owned by the Beneficial Trust Fund of PLDT, is a sister company of Cignal Digital TV (Cignal), one of the country’s leading cable television provider. Cignal is the Philippine’s premier DTH satellite provider and, since its start in 2009, has been diligent in performing its functions under the guidelines set by the Cable Television Act of 2004.