The media mogul as inspirational and aspirational change agent

CONCIO. Fuller appreciation and utilization of her compleat character and purpose.

Charo Santos-Concio, top power player at ABS-CBN and Star Cinema, is one of the few media industry leaders I make it a point to touch base with every few years or so. Each time we talk, I see a progression, not just of important achievements, but also of a public and private person being continually formed to come into a fuller appreciation and utilization of her complete character and purpose.

Last month, I interviewed Charo again, and clearly detected a new maturity and depth, which can only be partly explained by the fact that she’s turning 59 this October — a brand-new Senior Citizen in the excited offing!

More pertinently, it felt like her having become a top multimedia mogul has deepened her sense of mission—happily, without subduing the delight in living, she continues to radiate!

Her position and mission are given to only a chosen few, she certainly isn’t about to let this rare and golden opportunity pass — less than fully, feistily seized.

The bracing sea change in Charo’s outlook and insights is both exciting and reassuring to observe, because the media industries in the Philippines have never been as important and powerful as trendsetters and change-makers as they are today.

Now that the Filipino audience is 100-million strong, our entertainment and information networks can no longer be satisfied with merely diverting the populace, while making a fortune in the profitable process.

If all those mega-millions of Filipinos are to belatedly but finally fall into a fuller appreciation of how they must shape the shapeless society they’re in, powerful media moguls like Charo must appreciate even more fully and bravely their role in getting that change-making process going!

Charo’s new maturity reassures us that she’s up to the daunting task. Her confidence, and our trust in her, are born out of the many decades that she’s (perhaps unknowingly at first) prepared herself for this, the biggest and most crucial “role” in her career!

She herself recalls over our long lunch that, even as a youth, she was already star-struck — but, unlike other fans, she prepared herself to be a professional player within the industry, not in the giddy, ga-ga peripheries thereof.

Armed with a communications degree (cum laude from St. Paul’s University), she steadily moved up the TV-film production ranks, at BanCom Audiovision, Experimental Cinema of the Philippines, Vision Exponents, Regal Films, and the then new ABS-CBN.

Even as Charo became a professional production person of increasing experience and clout, another, separate aspect of her career in entertainment was launched with an even bigger bang: Being not just bright but also beautiful and sensitive, Mike de Leon tapped her to play the female lead in his pioneering “indie” film, “Itim” — and the dark drama unexpectedly went on to reap honors not just here, but abroad!

Most unexpectedly of all, its tyro lead actress, Charo, romped off with the prized Best Actress plum at the 1978 Asian Film Festival!

Charo always had film acting as one of her driving goals and ambitions, but her personal triumph at the Asian film fest bowled everybody over —herself included!

MULTI-HYPHENATE achiever—as a top producer and star combined.

After the first, sweet, blissful thrill of victory subsided, however, she more soberly realized that her unexpected triumph as actress and star had given her “permission” to excel at more than just one endeavor — that she could in fact become a multi-hyphenate achiever, as a top producer and star combined — provided that she knew how and when to separate one from the other.

In this regard, please note that, at ABS-CBN and Star Cinema, she calls the shots, and yet she’s tempered and even clamped down on her own stellar success, leaving it up to other studios to do the showcasing for her.

Thus, even as we want to see her acting in more productions, because her thespic ability cannot be gainsaid, we’ll just have to wait — possibly until she turns 60, when her “mogul” schedule might lighten up. (My hunch is that she could be looking forward to that prospect).

For now, however, there are many important change-making goals to achieve, not the least of which is the start of a new ABS-CBN channel for young viewers—an exciting prospect for parents and educators!

More fully formed, young viewers can help in the creation of a real Philippine nation, finally free of the colonial mentality and other restrictions and constrictions that have kept us from genuinely coming into our own—for centuries.

Aside from the new digital channel for kids, Charo is keen on further strengthening the effectivity of ABS-CBN and Star Cinema productions, not just as consistently popular viewing fare, but also as “inspirational and aspirational” shows.

MIKE de Leon’s film won for her the Best Actress plum at the 1978 Asian Film Festival.

She insightfully senses a strong need for this on viewers’ part, born out of an often frustrating and frustrated desire to make better sense of the fractured and fractious world they live in—and their role in setting things right.

This is a hugely tall order, but now that she can call the shots, Charo fully aims to do her best to help make it happen. Of course, industry do-gooders often bump into the unseen glass wall of the age-old struggle between profitability and quality. In some jaded and defeated producers’ eyes, never the twain can meet—but, her studios’ occasional success in this regard makes Charo more “realistically optimistic” than most.

Key to this success is the savvy blend of an inspiring story and a populist and popular way of telling it. Some of ABS and Star Cinema’s productions attest to the fact that it’s difficult as heck to pull off, but it can be done!

Still at Star Cinema, innovations this production season include the conceptualization of more numerous but smaller movies as a further extension of the current “indie” trend into sort of “maindie” productions, and the viewing public’s delighted acceptance of such products bodes well for its future.

This is a significant development because it results in more and occasionally better mainstream films, which the local movie industry needs to fully recover from its now decade-long slump. It’s heartening to note that Star Cinema currently leads other movie studios in terms of annual output, and that some of its products are certified hits.

Other film initiatives that should be noted and encouraged include ABS and Star’s campaign to restore and re-release some iconic Filipino film productions. In addition, the ABS-CBN Archives boast of a veritable treasure trove of significant or genre- and period- representative productions that would otherwise have been lost to new generations of film buffs, students and practitioners.

In all of these developments, Charo feels secure (and empowered) to help lead the way because, as she’s belatedly realized, with “Itim” and some of her early starrers, “Ang past ko pala, indie!”

As a leading change agent, Charo is also very keen on training and education, and points to the fact that the ABS-CBN’s own “university” offers a wide range of workshops and courses, not just for its stars, starlets and younger production personnel, but for outsiders, as well.

More personally, she’s made it a point to watch out for exceptionally promising new production talents, and assign them to challenging TV productions to stretch their limits and discover what more they can do. Even when they fall short, she gives them “permission to fail,” realizing that a lot can be learned from so-called failure.

KEY to ABS-CBN’s success is the savvy blend of an inspiring story and a populist and popular way of telling it.

More personally, Charo observes that this is a key reflection of one of the main aspects to her persona, her being basically a mentor, described as a “guru” by others, not just in terms of art and craft, but even as a life coach!

‘Tough love’

Charo herself adds that her efforts to reach out, mentor and help are done in the context of “tough love,” setting high standards to challenge her trainees to improve, but always with a caring and loving motive “humanizing” the process.

Come to think of it, she shares, this “tough love” orientation colors her personal relationships, as well, with her two sons and two granddaughters. What about Charo’s husband, Cesar? He’s 20 years older than she is, so in their relationship, the roles have been reversed—she’s the one who looks up to, and has learned a lot from him.

Looking ahead to the next couple of years before she becomes one of the loveliest and most accomplished senior citizens in the land, Charo notes that the TV-film medium can and should do much more to help young viewers develop into better and more proactive Filipinos, and trusts that government and advertisers will do much more in supporting the productions that will bring this seminal change about.

She rues the fact that ABS-CBN’s exceptional educational shows like “Math-Tinik” and “Hiraya Manawari,” satirical shows like “Abangan Ang Susunod Na Kabanata” and cultural showcases like “Ryan Ryan Musikahan” are no longer around due to lack of advertising support, despite advertisers’ palpitating promise to encourage exceptionally good and child-friendly TV.

But, always “realistically optimistic,” she sees ABS-CBN’s new digital channel for young audiences as a sign that a key change in this regard is in the offing, and hopes that government, advertisers and viewers will take enthusiastic and full advantage of the new possibilities that are just now emerging—and crying to be seen, heard and actualized!

Charo describes herself disparagingly as a “digital immigrant,” but she believes so much in the future of digital TV that she has taken the time and effort to learn to “speak” in the new “language” and explore the possibilities of the social media’s new platform.

CHARO with husband Cesar (far left), sons Francis and Martin, daughter-in-law Carla, granddaughters Julia and Talia and Carla’s grandmother Julie Lozada.

To this end, ABS-CBN has set up a full digital division, and has launched its own ABS Mobile platform. Despite the high-tech developments now exciting especially the plugged-in youth, however, Charo believes that “it all still comes down to inspired and inspiring storytelling.”

How reassuring and bracing to note that, in these exciting times, we have Charo Santos-Concio on our side—to point the way forward as one of the prime actualizers of the inspirational and aspirational entertainment we so urgently need!