DTH station buys terrestrial TV station

April 14, 2014

MANILA — RPN-9 owned and chairman Wilson Tieng has the government-owned sequestered media network to be the No.3 terrestrial network with Robert River, the president and CEO of the network, for about $83 million in effort of privatization.

Tieng going with Dream Broadcasting, the country’s first digital direct-to-home TV company; the buy-in is a strategic move to push Dream and to make RPN-9, a major player in the network war dominated by ABS-CBN, owned by the Lopez family, and GMA Network, owned by the Gozun, Duavit and Jimenez families.

Tieng’s family owned of Solar Entertainment about thje block-timer of the station.

The new RPN is expected to target the burgeoning middle- to upper-class youth market. ABS-CBN and GMA focus on income markets, which lap up soap operas and fantays series, drama anthologies, talk sows, local comedies, variety shows, game shows, reality shows, Japanese animes, Mexican telenovelas and Asian dramas from Korea and Taiwan. The younger auds have abandoned these for cable TV.

RPN-9 may win auds with foreign shows, including MacGyver, NYPD Blue, The Walking Dead, Community, Revolution, Mission: Impossible, American Idol, Survivor, NCIS and Chicago Fire, a strong of telenovelas including Mar de Amor and Porque el Amor Manda and Koreanovelas Wonderful Life and Dear My Sister, and a growing base of locally produced shows as well as its sports programmin fans with the MBA and KBL basketball games, boxing matches are Pacquiao Flashback and World-Class Boxing, the biggest mixed-martial arts (MMA) organization UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship and the wrestling fans of WWE Bottom Line and WWE SmackDown!. RPN has 15 stations nationwide and more than 100 cable TV affiliates.