ANC’s ‘Mornings’ firms up distinct advantage with David Celdran

We watch “Mornings@ANC” from time to time, and have noticed that it’s been looking and feeling rather blah these days, so we welcome its decision to make some key changes to improve its service to the viewing public.

Thus, we viewed the show’s reenergized version last Monday at 5:30 a.m., and were glad to see that David Celdran has joined its cohosting team, which also includes Paolo Abrera, Gigi Grande, Edric Mendoza, Ginger Conejero and Gretchen Ho.

Many of them are old hands on the show, so it’s the “Celdran factor” that is most notable in the program’s new way of doing things.

In our view, this is a distinct advantage, because we’ve felt for a long time that Celdran has been underutilized on the channel, busying himself mostly with his weekly lifestyle-business program, “Executive Class.”

In fact, when Celdran surfaced temporarily on one of the channel’s political coverages sometime back, we welcomed his reentry to more topical, news and public affairs TV, and hoped that it would be for keeps.

Well, with his daily stint on “Mornings@ANC,” we’ve gotten just that—and the show’s very first telecast indicated that Celdran will be a key asset of the revamped production.

Why so? Because he’s experienced, looks good, talks well, and generally makes viewers feel that they’re in good, professional hands.

To further underscore the plus points that he adds to the show, it should assign him to cover or interview really significant topics and newsmakers.

If he rises to the challenge, as we expect him to, ANC shall have discovered, even if belatedly, that it has a major “rediscovered” talent who can be given increasingly more challenging assignments, unlike some mature news and public affairs “stars,” who are clearly past their prime.

As for the “new” program as a whole, its format changes aren’t all that evident as yet, so we’ll have to watch it some more before coming to any hopefully useful conclusions about that.