Philippines

There are approximately 7.6 million television homes in the country’s urban areas, half of these in Metro Manila, where TV penetration exceeds 95%.  The other half are scattered in the country’s three major island groups, Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The latest Kantar Media Establishment survey pegs multichannel subscriptions in the ‘Total Philippines‘ at 2 million. Central Luzon posted the highest growth, rising to 25% from 19%.

The National Capital Region (NCR), North Luzon and South Luzon are the biggest cable markets but it will take another two or three years before overall national levels reach the 35% of television homes subscribing that NCR and parts of Luzon had achieved by 2009.

Viewing levels in cable homes over the past 18 months have been stable at 20 - 25%. Cable channels are watched more in the mornings and data shows that of the 27% viewers in this period, over 10% are watching cable. The two leading terrestrial channels managed only 5% of viewing during this time.

SkyCable and Destiny Cable are the major multichannel providers in ‘Total Philippines’ and Mega Manila and cable subscriptions are expected to grow to the levels of NCR and Luzon. However, signal theft remains an issue.  At least 40% of cable subscriptions are illegal taps.  Skycable is on a crusade to put a stop to this by converting their subscribers to digital. In a country with one of the lowest GDPs in the region, where the cheapest form of entertainment is television, households are happy to split the cost of legal subscriptions with the neighbors.