House good gov't panel to hold separate probe on ABS-CBN block-time deal with Amcara

The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability will hold a separate investigation into the questioned block-time agreement of ABS-CBN with Amcara Broadcasting Network, to which frequency Channel 43 has been assigned.

Senior Deputy Majority Leader Jesus Crispin Remulla made the motion to investigate the block-time agreement during the continuation of the House joint panel hearing on the ABS-CBN franchise issue.

He made the motion after ABS-CBN insisted that it sees nothing wrong with its block-time agreement with Amcara, even as he maintained that it was a usufruct.

"I move that we investigate Amcara in the Committee on Good Government together with the NTC's testimony to go into the bottom of this block-time agreement which I refuse to believe is a block-time arrangement but is a usufruct," Remulla said.

With no objection from the members of the panel, House good government committee chair declared Remulla's motion carried.

Remulla, in the previous hearing, accused Amcara of being a "dummy" of ABS-CBN after hearing the testimonies of Amcara chairman Rodrigo Carandang and Commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba of the National Telecommunications Commission.

Carandang admitted that Amcara has not yet purchased its own transmitter for digital broadcast, and it was ABS-CBN that purchased the transmitter so it could use its frequency for its test broadcast for digital TV.

Cordoba, meanwhile, said that NTC engineers found out that the signal for Channel 43 was coming from the direction of ABS-CBN's tower in its compound.

Katigbak earlier said that the block-time agreement it entered into with Amcara is not usufruct, saying that it was standard commercial agreement and is common in the broadcast industry. —LDF, GMA News