- GMA Network remained Urban Luzon leader.
- GMA Network’s lead vs ABS-CBN saw a significant drop in the 2nd quarter.
The ratings battle between the two giant Philippine networks has always been hotly contested with the two both claiming supremacy over the other.
While ABS-CBN claimed dominance in the nationwide ratings provided by Kantar, GMA Network boasted of their number one status using their ratings provider AGB Nielsen.
GMA Network for the 1st half of 2019 has reported leadership in the ratings game as it swept Urban Luzon against competitor ABS-CBN.
Disclaimer: LionhearTV focused on the Urban Luzon numbers because GMA Network abandoned the NUTAM numbers starting April 2019 and has only released Urban Luzon results since then.
From January to June 2019, GMA Network reported their ratings win over Kapamilya network.
In the first month of the year, GMA Network edged out ABS-CBN at 41.9% vs 30.1% in the Urban Luzon area.
The Kapuso network also captured the NUTAM rating for January beating ABS-CBN by 1.9% at 37.8% vs 35.9%. Mega Manila in January also went to GMA Network registering an average rating of 43.7% against Kapamilya’s 26.8%.
For February, GMA still held on to their lead, 42.1% vs 29.25 in Urban Luzon. This was the highest recorded lead by GMA against ABS-CBN for the first half of 2019 at a 12.9% margin.
NUTAM was also captured by GMA in February at 38.4% vs 34.6%.
At the end of the first quarter, GMA continued to dominate the Urban Luzon ratings although the margin was trimmed down to 9.8% at 39.85 vs 30%.
NUTAM was also a very close fight as ABS-CBN managed to close in with just 0.9% gap against Kapuso at 36.4% vs 35.5%. It was also the last time that GMA Network released the NUTAM numbers.
For April 2019, GMA Network still managed to lead with 44.2% vs 33.2% in Urban Luzon and 45.8% vs 30.55 in Mega ManilaAt the start of the second quarter, GMA only released the usual Urban Luzon and Mega Manila data.
In May, while GMA still managed to command the lead, the gap grew smaller. They also released Urban Luzon only, giving rise to speculations that ABS-CBN had already captured AGB Mega Manila numbers also.
GMA’s gap with ABS-CBN in May was trimmed down to 5.6% at 36.3% vs 30.7%, which is the second to the smallest margin for the first six months of the year.
For the last month of the second quarter, GMA was still able to top ABS-CBN but their lead is getting smaller.
In Urban Luzon, GMA registered a rating of 35.3% vs ABS-CBN’s 30.7% or a gap of 4.6%, 1% lower than May’s 5.6%.
They also brought back Mega Manila number in June but the drop in the margin was noticeably significant. GMA got a rating of 36.3% while ABS-CBN got 28.8% totaling the gap to 7.5% which is a steep drop from 15.3% margin in April 2019.
Social Media influence
Meanwhile, Kapuso network’s win in the ratings game didn’t transcend to social media as rival ABS-CBN dominated social media competition.
On Facebook, GMA Network pages trailed ABS-CBN by millions of fans.
This was the same with Twitter where ABS-CBN led in the number of followers beating rival GMA.
On YouTube, ABS-CBN topped the number of subscribers and total views.
