by Oliver Bayani
MANILA —Bloomberg has followed up with expansion news of its own a week after CNN started airing its own localized version in the country, announcing the launch of Bloomberg Television Philippines in partnership with MediaQuest Holdings.
Bloomberg Television Philippines will be the country’s first 24/7 business news channel and will be run by free-to-air channel TV5 and pay TV provider Cignal TV, both subsidiaries of MediaQuest which is owned by media mogul Manuel V. Pangilinan.
Presented in English, the channel will include both canned and local content produced by TV 5 and will be exclusively distributed by Cignal TV to potentially reach 844,000 subscribers. Cignal Digital TV currently has 97 channels, including 27 high-definition channels.
To go live this 2015, Pangilinan said that Bloomberg Television Philippines “heralds a new era in Philippine television.”
“This also comes at the time when we are expecting to become the country’s biggest pay-TV service provider with more than one million subscribers by the end of this year.”
Bloomberg Television is the second global news network to launch a local version in the Philippines. Nine Media Philippines, formerly known as Solar News, is the license holders of CNN Philippines which debuted on March 16.
For Bloomberg, this marks as its fourth localized channel in the region, which includes India, Mongolia, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Bloomberg Television is another proud feather to Pangilinan’s cap. Aside from TV5 and Cignal TV, MediaQuest Holdings has interests in Nation Broadcasting Corporation, and top broadsheets The Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Philippine Star, and Businessworld.
“The Philippines is fast becoming a premier broadcast destination because of its strong subscriber growth,” said Gary Groenheim, Commercial Director of Bloomberg Television, Asia Pacific.
“MediaQuest’s substantial media footprint and stellar reputation make them an ideal partner for us as we expand our brand in Asia. Being in the third largest English-speaking country in the world will help us reach a vast new audience by combining elements of our daily global broadcast material with unique, tailor-made local content.”
