ABUNDA, AQUINO AND GONZAGA. The times have changed?
The Sunday show biz talk-magazine show, “The Buzz,” usually dispenses “breaking news” reports about the latest “hot” developments in stars’ lives and careers. Last Sunday, however, the show cohosted by Boy Abunda, Kris Aquino and Toni Gonzaga, became the stop-the-presses new s that others would immediately be reporting on, and reacting to:
In the middle of what looked like a (show) business-as-usual telecast, Boy up and announced that the program was being terminated—as in, right now!
Talk about a stunning way to grab viewers’ attention, the unexpected “instant” termination of the 16-year-old program was it! The other hosts left it to Boy to explain what had prompted the decision to axe the show—but, even as he tried his best to clarify the situation, Boy’s take on what happened left more questions than answers.
—Something about the times having changed, both the production and its viewers now being older, the field now dominated by new technology and mind-sets, etc. As a result, the production thought it best to “temporarily” take one step back, the better to evaluate the new lay of the land, before coming back on-air with a new, more plugged-in and presumably better “Buzz.”
Other factors
—Is that really all there is to it? What other factors, pressures, motives and issues were less obviously involved in the “shocking” decision to “kill” the popular program? Will those unstated and unacknowledged considerations ever come out, in their own good time?
Pending that, what will Sunday-afternoon TV programming be like for viewers who relied on the show to give them their weekly show biz “fix?”
More questions: How will the show’s departure affect other Sunday-afternoon shows on ABS-CBN? What will take its place—and why that show in particular?
Thus far, Kris and Toni haven’t added their own takes on their show’s cancelation. Pending that, we’ll just have to conclude that the decisi on may have been agonizingly hard to arrive at, but it was ultimately “acceptable” to most everyone concerned.
—Except, perhaps, for some production staffers, who’ve suddenly lost their bread-and-butter, so we trust that ABS-CBN can shift at least some of them to other productions, so they and their dependents’ lives can at least go on, even if on survival mode.