MANILA, Philippines - Political developments today are witnessed live, or within minutes, by TV viewers and Internet users around the world, thanks to technological developments that are now considered part of everyday life. It seems not too long ago when we viewed events many days after they had happened.
Journalists of my generation lived and worked without cell phones or digital cameras; reporters used pen or pencil and a notebook, while photographers and TV cameramen used film cameras for still photos and news coverage footage.
Strange to hear that word still being used these days - footage - to mean moving images stored in some memory device (USB, DVD, etc.). Footage comes from the actual measurement of film length that's equivalent to its running time.
Most popular among TV cameramen covering the Vietnam War was the 16 mm. Bell and Howell with three built in lenses. It was all-metal, rugged and required no batteries; one cranked it up to tighten a spring that in turn made the camera work. It could drop from a helicopter and be put back together again with a Swiss knife. Each 100-ft roll of film produced 4 minutes of moving pictures, with no sound. For SOF, or sound on film, we had to lug around the coffin-sized case containing an Arrifles or an Auricon 16mm camera with microphones, cables, clappers, very heavy batteries and 400-ft rolls of film in tightly-sealed light-proof cans.
When covering out of town, a reporter's first task was to know where there's a phone, telex, or telegram company so he could transmit his story. A photographer or TV journalist had a more difficult task: Find a courier who would hand carry his film back to civilization or his station's city. It could be a commercial flight's pilot, crew or passenger, the driver of a passenger bus, a millionaire aboard his private plane taking off from a lonely private runway in the middle of a mining or logging concession.
We called those kind souls pigeons, after the carrier pigeons that have been used for thousands of years to carry messages in times of war or peace. After the new organization's messenger picked up the packet of film, it was rushed to the newspaper/TV office, processed in the lab and edited for publishing or broadcast. Film clips of the news event were duplicated and air-shipped to subscribers around the world after the initial US or London broadcast.
At ABS-CBN in the late 1960s, where I was a news producer, bags containing rolls of black-and-white news film clips arrived daily from syndication companies UPITN (United Press International) and Reuters. They were usually several days old, but were considered fresh, compared to the months-old newsreels in movie theaters. They were not cheap; the network paid thousands of dollars per week for the subscription, so we aired as much of them as possible in the evening newscasts.
Many of those reports had been transmitted via telecommunications satellite from the areas of conflict. Journalists of the era nicknamed those satellites "birds" because they were always in flight and had flaps that resembled wings. Foreign correspondents covering the Philippines during the period had to go to ABS-CBN to get their news coverage film processed, edited, and transmitted by the station's satellite dish to a "bird" in space and to the their home studios.
Flash forward to 2012, when a TV viewer can pick from Asian, American, European and Mideast television networks and enjoy what the natives of those countries are viewing at the same time. So we watched with the rest of the world when two jets crashed into the World Trade Center, grieved with millions when Princess Diana and Whitney Houston left our midst, held our breaths while dictators were ousted and executed.
Technology also enables wives and children to converse, as if face to face, with Filipino seamen in the middle of oceans thousands of miles away. The computer and Internet allow students, in the comfort of their own homes, to work through the night at cooperative projects such as reports and even their thesis.
For TV reporters and photo journalists, their digital cameras, cell phones and various gadgets can now send live pictures from almost anywhere in the world. Columnists like me do not have to travel to the newspaper office; I write at home on a desktop PC and email my stories, accompanied by captions to match photos earlier similarly transmitted to my email address. At home or on the move, the task is easy, thanks to telecommunications companies (telcos) that have kept up with the needs of all sectors of society.
While in the past, Internet connectivity was a prime consideration when choosing hotels for my foreign clients, they now fly and out of the Philippines confident of wireless access almost anywhere, especially in major metropolitan areas, at rates that will not break their budgets. Philippine telcos keep coming up with prepaid promos formulated for convenience, economy and efficiency.
The latest of these was launched on Valentine's Day by Globe Telecom: Four (4) new prepaid offers bundled with text, call, and mobile browsing services available in different prices and validity periods. The first offer is the Unli All Trio offer, which has unlimited texts and calls to Globe/TM and unlimited mobile browsing, valid for 1, 3, 7 and 30 days for R60, R150, R350, and R1,400 respectively.
The All Net Combo has unlimited texts to all networks, five (5) minutes of calls to all networks, and 50MB of mobile browsing at validity periods of 1 day for R30, 3 days for R80, 7 days for R150, and 30 days for R600. Globe's most popular Immortal offer is now available in two variants: the Immortal Trio which has 50 texts to Globe/TM, 5 texts to other networks, and 5 minutes of calls to Globe/TM available for only R25. The Immortal Text is bundled with 25 texts to Globe/TM and 5 texts to other networks for only R15.
The last offer is Unli Tingi, which combines unlimited texts to all networks, unlimited calls to Globe/TM, and unlimited mobile browsing for only R5, valid for 1 hour, with registration open from 7a.m.-9a.m. daily. All the new prepaid offers are exclusively available on *143#, which also provides access to billing and load details, a complete list of Globe promos, GCASH and share-a-load services, and download of applications. To use the service for free, just dial *143# and press the call button on the mobile phone.
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