Ben, Erwin Tulfo’s ‘Kilos Pronto’ replaced by Tagalog-dubbed animes, a day after sister Wanda Teo resigned

Last updated May 10, 2018 Ben Tulfo, Erwin Tulfo

Out in a flash?

A day after Tourism Secretary Wanda Teo resigned, PTV-4 on Wednesday replaced Kilos Pronto, the public service program hosted Ben and Erwin Tulfo, with Tagalog-dubbed animes.

Instead of seeing Ben, Erwin and co-host Alex Santos, fans of the show were inundated with the top-rating anime favorites Erwin, the main anchor on PTV-4’s primetime news, has been a no show on the program since Monday.

Ben and Santos went live on the show last Tuesday or just hours after Tulfo sister was confirmed to have been kicked out of office due to public uproar over the P60 million worth of Department of Tourism ads given to Kilos Pronto, a conflict of interest situation which did not sit well with President Rodrigo Duterte.

Based on an ad solictation letter from PTV-4 to Teo, the state-owned network proposed a one year ad contract to air 6-minute segments of the DOT on Kilos Pronto every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Kilos Pronto is produced by Ben’s Bitag Media Unlimited Inc. which, as a block timer, paid air time to PTV-4 in exchange for getting all revenues on ads aired on its show.

The Tulfos lawyer, Ferdinand Topacio, claimed that the original DOT contract for PTV-4 was P272 million – P139 million for the PTV4 newscast; P63 million for an eco-tourism program; and P69 million to the Tulfos’ show – but this was reduced by more than half to P120 million.

The Commission on Audit red-flagged the three check payments worth a total of P60.09 million made by PTV-4 to Bitag – P22,089,560 released on May 11, 2017; P18.96 million released on November 8, 2017; and P18.96 million released on December 15, 2017 – because these released were not properly documents and no Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) or Certificate of Performance were attached.

Kilos Pronto first aired on UNTV on October 10, 2016 to January 20, 2017. It started airing on PTV-4 on January 23, 2017 at the 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. time slot from Monday to Friday.