FTER pairing with local cinema's top leading ladies, like Sharon Cuneta, Regine Velasquez, Judy Ann Santos and Claudine Barretto, Robin Padilla teams up for the first time with Ai Ai delas Alas. This fresh combination will make the big screen come alive with rollicking comedy and edge-of-your-seat action in Viva Films' first offering for the year, Ikaw Pa Rin.

From the story and screenplay of the award-winning Mel Mendoza-del Rosario, Ikaw Pa Rin tells the story of veterinarian Baby Holmes (Ai Ai) who bumps into a simple fireman's son named Boy (Robin).

Ai Ai and Robin are excited over their newest project. At the movie's first shooting day, the two stars said they can't wait to see how their chemistry will work and are praying moviegoers will accept them as a fresh combination.

In the movie, Ai Ai's character considers herself a loser in love, since her ex-boyfriend proved to be a cad, after only her free services to his and his family's pets.

Boy is just as unlucky. His former girlfriend, mother of his son, left him for a foreigner.

He is now a single father worried over how his son will turn out since he seems to be absorbing his grandmother's feminine traits and his aunt's dishonesty. But the community looks up to him since Boy always comes to his neighbors' rescue in big and small things like rescuing a pet cat from a tree, saving a young drug dependent, etc. Love is the least of his worries.

But this is not so in Baby's case. She feels her biological clock ticking and becomes desperate.

The two cross paths in a restaurant when Baby saves Boy's son from an incident of choking. Grateful, Boy tells her to ask anything from him. Baby demurs, saying it's just part of her job as a doctor.

Things change when they meet again in a town fiesta. This time, Baby tells Boy ?" in full hearing of the townsfolk ?" what her one request of him is. She wants to have a child to complete her womanhood.

Boy thinks he's joking, but Baby is dead serious. Knowing that he promised to grant her wish after she saved his son's life, will Boy agree? Will this lead to something much deeper between them? What about Boy's son? How will he react?

Find out in this heartwarming movie that will make laughter come your way soon.

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Sagot ng GMA Network sa ‘mapanlinlang' na pahayag ng ABS-CBN sa kanilang pa-presscon

CONTRARY to what ABS-CBN said in its statement to the press last Jan. 24, the disparity between cable and non-cable ratings in GMA's programs is a legitimate issue in the move to clean up the ratings survey.

Since 2003, GMA Network has been complaining to AGB Nielsen why the ratings of GMA Network's programs are so low in cable TV households but so high in non-cable TV homes, a situation that does not happen in ABS-CBN's programs.

It is to be noted that when GMA Network was not a strong competitor of ABS-CBN, the cable and non-cable ratings of both GMA and ABS-CBN consistently exhibited a normal behavior in the past.

The abnormal ratings behavior of GMA's programs in cable TV homes started to happen only when GMA Network began to compete head-on with its rival station five years ago and when GMA Network began to beat ABS-CBN in Mega Manila TV ratings. At that time, AGB and Nielsen were providing separate ratings for TV programs. And the cable ratings disparity happened only in the AGB results and not in Nielsen's. In 2005, AGB and Nielsen merged their TV ratings services in the Philippines .

ABS-CBN said in its official position paper that it presented to the trade in 2006 that the reason for their high cable ratings was that “among cable homes, the connection through cable takes away the vulnerability of ABS-CBN's reception from noise, especially in instances when ABS-CBN is assigned to a channel 8.”

ABS-CBN was referring to the movement of their cable channel assignment from channel 6 to 8. GMA Network consulted with a third party technical expert to seek his opinion on that claim and the following was what he said:

* No VHF (Very High Frequency) be it low, mid, or high-band is immune or not susceptible to interference, thus making it imperative for the cable industry in the present to undergo a study to ascertain that a channel is ‘clean' enough to be operated in.

* Engineering surveys conducted have also yielded that interference varies in different portions of Metro Manila. It is on the Cable provider's shoulders to limit amplifier cascades to attain a decent carrier to noise ratio resulting in better picture quality.

* In summary, the Cable television provider and its engineers are the ones responsible in seeing to it that a specific Cable television channel is clean enough for a commercial TVstation to operate in, thus making everyone operate on a level playing field. ABS-CBN did not reply to the rebuttal made by the expert consulted by GMA Network. After a long silence, ABS-CBN now says that the disparity between cable and non-cable ratings is due to their reception problems on Free TV and that these problems are eliminated on cable TV where their signal is clear. GMA Network believes that the highly erratic or fluctuating behavior of ABS-CBN's cable ratings, particularly in the suburbs, cannot be logically attributed to their clear cable TV signal.

It is not true that GMA's complaints of interference in cable TV have no basis because GMA has received thousands of complaints of signal distortion and degradation from Sky and Home Cable subscribers who have executed affidavits. The complaints ranged from snowy and/or blurry to black and white reception; wavy/shadowy image; zigzag/moving/diagonal/vertical/horizontal lines; noisy/distorted video; weak audio; and weak or no signal. These complaints prompted GMA Network to file a case before the NTC, where it is now pending.

It is a fact that GMA Network's competitor owns and/or controls the dominant cable operators in the country. Thus, it is the one who has both the means and opportunity to know where the people meters are installed by AGB Nielsen among cable TV homes.

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