A MASS OF DESPERATION
Thousands of others were apparently thinking the same way. By early morning of Feb. 4, says the NBI, the crowd outside the stadium had swelled to over 30,000. Many of those who had gathered there had been lining up for four or five days, lured like Lolita Bergado and her neighbors by the promise of a P1-million cash prize and giveaways that included two houses and lots, 15 passenger jeepneys, two taxicabs with franchises, and 20 tricycles. The NBI says the Ultra crowd was made up mostly of housewives and the unemployed, mainly from Metro Manila, but some from as far as Cavite, Laguna, and even Pangasinan. There were some out-of-school youths and children who had tagged along with their parents, but many were around the age of 50 or more, and female.

	SENSELESS TRAGEDY. Relatives search for missing kin after the tragedy. [photo by Sheila S. Coronel]

The NBI report, based on the testimonies of ABS-CBN management and eyewitnesses, says that at about two a.m. of Feb. 4, the show's organizers announced to the crowd outside the stadium that only 17,000 or a little over half of them would be allowed in. The organizers offered to raffle off 40 prizes of P5,000 each among those who would not be permitted inside, hoping this would cause the crowd to thin out. But it didn't.

At around six a.m., when people began to be let into the stadium, the crowd was still swelling. When the organizers announced that they would give out tickets to those who would be allowed to enter and that the priority would be those at the head of the queue, the crowd started pushing and shoving. The NBI report says that even when the gates were shut, the mass surged forward, trampling hundreds of people underfoot.

Many in the crowd had waited so long to get in. "They ate and drank very little while they guarded their place in the queue," says the NBI report. "They sat under the hot sun. Many of them arrived at the site with only enough money to get there and no money to get back to wherever they came from if they did not win any cash from the game show." The crowd was so packed, the report adds, that those in the queue were not even able to move their hands to take a sip of water. "People were and been trampled over, still others walked over the corpses to inquire where the raffle tickets could be had."

WOMEN AND WILLIE
The elderly women were the weakest and were therefore also the least able to defend themselves from the surging crowd. This was why most of those who died were females past the age of 50.

After the stampede, ABS-CBN formed the 71 Dreams Foundation to look after the families of the victims. Social worker Silvestre moved there and got to know the families better. Her interviews with the victims' kin show that while some went there because they were Revillame or "Wowowee" fans, many had seen the show as a way out of hardship. One grandmother, says Silvestre, promised her grandchild that if she won, the child would be able to go to school. Another fatality, 60-year-old laundrywoman Nida Cruz, left behind a husband stricken with tuberculosis, six children, a daughter-in-law also sick with TB, and two grandchildren. All had been dependent on her earnings of P2,000 a month. Nida, according to Silvestre, had four adult sons, all jobless. They lived off their mother, who paid even for their mobile-phone loads. Even in her death, their mother provided for them. The 71 Dreams Foundation is now considering employment and livelihood assistance for Nida's family.

Women hold the purse in Filipino homes and as various studies have shown, it is also the women who ensure that the money the household earns provides for the family's needs. Women bear the psychological burden, they suffer the stress, of stretching and making do with meager family incomes even when, like Mang Peryo and his sons, it is the male members of the family who earn a living. When sons and fathers are unable to work, it is women like Nida Cruz who find ways to put food on the table.

	WOMEN AS VICTIMS. (From left) Julieta Ferrer, Rosario Alorar, and Zenaida del Perio hang out at the neighborhood sari-sari store to swap stories. [photo by Sheila S. Coronel]

Unsurprisingly, the bulk of "Wowowee's" audience is made up of women, who saw in Willie Revillame their own lovable rascal son or brother, the ne'er-do-well who nevertheless knew how to make them happy.

They laughed at his antics, his corny jokes, his occasionally cruel sense of humor. Revillame would cluster contestants — tricycle drivers, laundrywomen, fish vendors, etc. — and make fun of their looks, their jobs, even their poverty. He would tell an elderly fishmonger that she smelled of fish and everyone would love it, even the fishmonger herself. He pitted poor contestants against well-off balikbayan, who would generously give the wrong answers just so their poor compatriots back home would win. That way, he tapped into the goodwill of Pinoys overseas, many of whom also watched "Wowowee" on ABS-CBN's overseas affiliate, TFC (The Filipino Channel).

No doubt, Willie Revillame's language and sense of humor clicked with "Wowowee's" target demographic: the poorest of the poor, those in the lowest rungs of the social ladder, the so-called D and E social strata who make up the bulk of the Filipino audience. According to AC Nielsen, which studies media markets, the D and E make up 73 percent of the TV audience.

PROGRAMMING AND MASA MARKETING
It didn't use to be so. Television was once a middle-class appliance, with mainly the English-speaking, more affluent sectors of society watching it. Television became a truly mass medium in the 1990s, with the availability of cheap TV sets, thanks to mass production and the flooding of the Philippine market by second-hand appliances. In the 1990s, it was estimated that 500,000 TV sets were being sold every year. The Bergados, for one, have a second-hand, 14-inch color TV, which they bought for P2,000 some years ago. All the homes in 200 P. de la Cruz have a TV set, which often occupies pride of place in the tiny living rooms of the neighborhood.

Today over 90 percent of all Filipino households have a TV, compared to only 30 percent two decades ago. As a result, television has also become the most efficient medium for selling products. TV now gets 75 percent of all advertising revenues, which were estimated by AC Nielsen at P113 billion last year. This makes television one of the most profitable businesses in the country today.

The emergence of a mass audience for television saw a radical shift in TV programming starting the late 1980s. The English-language shows and the canned U.S. programs were booted out. In their stead, the top networks introduced all-Tagalog programming, heavy on soaps and game shows intended for a mass audience.

Today the top advertisers on television are companies that produce goods intended for mass consumers. AC Nielsen says the biggest advertisers on free TV are telecommunication firms and shampoo and detergent manufacturers, which sell 80 percent of their products to the D and E market. It says that TV ad revenues are growing at about 20 to 30 percent every year, regardless of the state of the rest of the economy.

The channeling of so much money to television is a consequence partly of the emergence of more sophisticated technology to measure ratings, according to AC Nielsen. With ratings as their guide, advertisers can tell which programs can best sell their products — whether it is shampoo, corned beef, or cell-phone services. TV network executives therefore shape their programming so advertisers can sell their products more efficiently. The needs of advertisers to sell products and of TV networks to get the ratings so they could get the ads feed on each other. They are mutually reinforcing.

The result: programs like "Wowowee," which are marketed relentlessly to an audience of mostly poor people. While celebrities like Willie Revillame entertain target audiences with the promise of big wins, the shampoo and detergent people get to sell their wares. The poor are a willing and captive audience of television. In fact, poor people watch free television more, if only because they have few other alternative distractions. In some poor households, the TV is on 16 or 18 hours a day. The better off have cable TV, DVDs, and cinemas. They visit malls, travel elsewhere during their vacations, eat out in restaurants, and look for nighttime entertainment in theaters and clubs. The poor watch TV all day and all night. Mang Peryo recalls that his wife would even skip lunch just so she could watch "Wowowee."

For the longest time, GMA-7's "Eat Bulaga," was the top noontime show. In its drive for ratings, "Wowowee" ate into "Eat Bulaga's" audience share by providing bigger prizes, easier games that anyone could win, and inviting into its studio audiences from the poorest of the poor. No qualifications were needed. The more pitiful a person looked, the more likely he or she would be accepted as a contestant. Revillame made fun of them, but he also asked them questions anyone with even the barest of schooling could answer, thus opening the floodgates to an audience of desperate, dead-ended people who looked to television for their salvation.

Willie Revillame had a cult following in poor neighborhoods like that of 200 P. de la Cruz. Many of the women here had lined up outside ABS-CBN for a chance to be on his show. They knew the drill: start queuing at six a.m., fill up the form, drop this in a box, and wait for the raffle. If you're lucky, you get to be one of 40 allowed into the studio, with the possibility of ending up as one of the contestants for the day. Lolita had already tried her luck there. Aling Chi of the sari-sari store queued outside the station six times before her name was drawn. Aling Julieta across the alley lined up daily for a whole month, but then she won P80,000, which she used to buy a sofa set, a mattress, and a shelf on which her TV now has a place of honor.