Hyperfocus #4: How the Itchyworms' Noon Time Show points a mirror at all of us

One of the biggest albums of Philippine alternative's mid-noughties renaissance says so much more than "television networks can do better"—but are we willing to listen?

The Itchyworms, from left: Jugs Jugueta, Chino Singson, Kelvin Yu and Jazz Nicholas.

On 31 May, Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon—the main hosts of the Philippines’ longest-running noontime show, Eat Bulaga!—announced on a YouTube live stream¹ that they are parting ways with the show’s producers, TAPE Inc. It brought to a head months of gossip and speculation brought forth by clashes between the show’s hosts and the production outfit’s new management, who sought to introduce wholesale changes to the show. It was quickly followed by the resignation of the rest of the show’s hosts and staff.

At that point, Eat Bulaga! was two months shy of its 44th birthday, and while the trio hinted that the show will continue in some form somewhere, the departures from a show otherwise marked by stability and longevity dominated the zeitgeist. But first, I feel I have to explain the place of the noontime show in Filipino pop culture.

The noontime variety show has provided entertainment to viewers from the early days of television in the Philippines. The giant of those early days was Student Canteen, which first ran from 1958 to 1965 on the former CBN, before returning to GMA—and its dominant position—in the 1970s. The show was a bit of a formal affair then, reflecting its origins and the sensibilities of its lead hosts, Eddie Ilarde and Bobby Ledesma. Nonetheless, they reflected popular trends of the time through dancing and singing contests.

Eat Bulaga! launched in 1979 on the RPN network as a vehicle for Tito, Vic and Joey—who were established first as musicians and songwriters, and later, as anchors of the country’s alternative comedy scene at the time². It initially struggled in the ratings, but the following year, their “Mr. Macho” segment—where contestants danced to the Village People’s “Macho Man”—saw them surpass Student Canteen in the ratings for the first time. Just like that, the torch was passed, and they would be the dominant noontime show—save for a few dips, which they would recover from³—for decades to come.

As the network wars intensified in the 1990s—and especially after ABS-CBN, which began airing Eat Bulaga! in 1989, lost the show to GMA six years later—the search for a strong competitor heated up. For years, the former fielded ‘Sang Linggo nAPO Sila and then Magandang Tanghali Bayan, which stuck with the EB template: a trio of male hosts as anchors, a set of competent hosts and comedians beneath them, and a steady diet of quizzes, talent contests and the requisite joke segment at the end⁴.

Meanwhile, Eat Bulaga! evolved, but slowly. By the turn of the millennium noontime shows gave more play to giving away massive cash prizes: EB had “Laban O Bawi”, while MTB had “Pera O Bayong”, both of which made big play of giving away up to a million pesos to its winners. By then EB also had the Sexbomb Girls⁵, whose popularity led to a long-running afternoon drama anthology. ABS-CBN responded by doubling down on the prizes, cancelling the troubled MTB⁶ and replacing it with Wowowee, hosted by comedian Willie Revillame, in 2005.

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Founded in 1996, the Itchyworms was among the many bands from the Ateneo de Manila University⁷. Its most popular line-up—vocalist and drummer Jazz Nicholas, guitarist and vocalist Jugs Jugueta, guitarist Chino Singson and bassist Kelvin Yu—would coalesce just before the turn of the millennium; their debut, 2001’s Little Monsters Under Your Bed, would deliver ear-catching singles like “Antipara” and “Happy Birthday”.

They are now firmly established as one of Filipino music’s most thoughtful musicians, balancing wit, sentiment and really catchy sing-along grooves, as in their 2016 hit “Di Na Muli”⁸. But their popularity definitely came in Philippine alternative’s peak in the mid-noughties, when bands dominated radio and television. It was around that time—2005, to be exact—when they released Noon Time Show.

It’s a concept album, but loosely. It doesn’t focus squarely on Eat Bulaga! and its ilk, instead using it as a launchpad for commentary on the Filipino’s relationship with celebrity and television in general. One of the singles, “Love Team”, is sung from the perspective of an actor who has fallen in love with his on-screen partner⁹. (The music video features Gerald Anderson and Kim Chiu at the height of their pairing post-Pinoy Big Brother.) While the first half leans heavily on the noontime show take-off—the dark-yet-saccharine “Theme from Noon Time Show”, the jumpy “Contestant Number One”—the second half widens its view. Take “Wala Nang Pwedeng Magmahal Sa’yo (Stalker Song)”, which explores the possessive (and one-sided) relationship between fan and celebrity, something much more evident today in a world of social media fandoms.

Arguably the beauty of the record is how it does not lean heavily on its key concept. Granted, you’ll need to be able to read Filipino to understand what the songs are saying, but you don’t exactly need that potted yet overly-long primer on noontime variety shows to get it either. It’s a fun romp through different styles: the band effortlessly switch between decades of pop while still sounded grounded in the mid-noughties, and their singles—also including modern Filipino classics like “Beer” and “Akin Ka Na Lang”—can stand outside of the premise.

Yet, while it doesn’t force its message, it somehow manages to deliver it. By the time “Everybody Thinks You’re Crazy” and “Falling Star” come on, you feel the inherent emptiness of the noontime show—and, as it’s a microcosm, of celebrity culture in general: it’s all bright lights and special effects when we’re watching, but it’s far more complicated when the cameras are off.

(I must note that streaming services have the “commercial break” edition of Noon Time Show, which has a lot of bonus tracks. The original release ends with “Production Number”.)

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The fascinating thing with Noon Time Show is how, eighteen years since it was released, it still feels timely and relevant. Yes, Philippine television is not the most innovative of places—it has a reluctance to go beyond what’s tried and tested—but the passage of time and the demands of evolution are difficult to refuse. Wowowee—popular in the ratings, but very much subject to the whims of its host throughout its five-year run—kept up with Eat Bulaga! enough to force the latter to add new segments, leading to the long-running “Juan For All, All For Juan” segment, which saw its hosts venture to communities around the country to give prizes and throw hijinks in between¹⁰—and was the take-off point for the wildly popular pairing of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza, the result of a months-long dabbling in improv, if anything.

ABS-CBN would have a formidable competitor to the noontime show wars by transforming an existing morning talent competition into one. While the formula of It’s Showtime remains familiar, it differentiates itself with a more democratic host roster—no hierarchies, although Vice Ganda is the de facto lead—and a more modern sensibility that counters the now conservative and staid EB. It is now the network’s longest-running noontime show, surviving even the revocation of ABS-CBN’s broadcast franchise in 2020. (And it has, as one of its hosts, Jugs Jugueta.)

The formats and faces may have somewhat changed, but the noontime show is still an important pillar in Philippine television—and it is a microcosm of our celebrity culture in general. It’s a shop window for what’s going on in the primetime schedules, which is a different yet just as ruthless beast altogether. It still has the ability to make or break stars: take EB’s secondary trio of Jose Manalo, Wally Bayola and Paolo Ballesteros, or Jane de Leon, who started her career as a member of GirlTrends on It’s Showtime and went on to play Darna in the franchise’s most recent on-screen version.

Noon Time Show’s longevity is because it does not go for easy pickings. Sure, the record ends—through the funnily chaotic “Production Number”, a pastiche of how Sunday variety shows like ASAP tend to have everyone, singing ability or not, perform in one long opening number—with an “apology” from the titular noontime show, an admission that they can do better and provide more meaningful entertainment for its audiences. But it also points a mirror at those of us watching. We demand our favorite artists are able to do everything; we’ll chastise them if they can pull it off, and chastise them if they can’t and don’t bother. We get annoyed when local celebrities dance to K-pop songs, although it’s really just us cringing at the idea.¹¹ We get overly invested in our love teams, and want them so bad to be real, to the point of fabricating stories of secret marriages and secret children. (We also love it when a new pairing is constructed, seemingly in real time, on national television.) We yearn for stories of redemption, of down-on-their-luck people getting a chance at a better life with a sponsored cash prize. We say we want more from local entertainment, but why are the so-called “bad examples” still popular?

For what its worth, Philippine noontime shows are a comfort blanket. You turn it on, and you know what to expect. Perhaps that’s distorted by the longevity of Eat Bulaga! and how it’s set the template for all the other shows that come up against it. But it’s also down to its privileged place as part of our lunchtimes, when we—families, workplaces, random strangers in a roadside eatery—gather and share a moment or two. I myself am an EB viewer, having grown up with it. But with no new episodes for the foreseeable future, I tuned in to It’s Showtime, only to realize I had to learn a whole new dynamic, a whole new language. Old habits are hard to break.

And, for better or worse, television networks are in the business of giving viewers what they want. At the end of the day, they are a business, and they will go for what draws the more viewers—which means the advertisements in between get more viewers, too. It’s no wonder Philippine television evolves so slowly. Any faster and it becomes treated as a revolution. It’s no wonder the behind-the-scenes implosion of Eat Bulaga!—indeed, the fact that it even happened—feels so much of a shock. A show that’s so popular it’s lasted almost 44 years, suddenly off our screens?

It’s easy to say that the shortcomings in Philippine television is all because the networks are happy to pander to the masses with drivel made for the lowest common denominator. It’s also a cop-out. For one, it wrongly suggests that it’s a matter of income class and background, that poorer and less-educated people like this “drivel”—a lazy, reductive argument. The Itchyworms’ Noon Time Show does not absolve the producers, but it asks us the same question, too. Why are we happy to be pandered to? Perhaps things have changed now that social media has made it easier for us to have our voices heard. But perhaps we have also given up, choosing to retreat into our bubbles of Korean dramas and YouTubers rather than call for our own broadcasters to evolve faster than what’s actually happening now.

1. Tito pointed out that the show was not allowed to go live on air on that date, which forced the trio to once and for all quit TAPE.

2. The trio’s variety show career began with Discorama, an afternoon variety show on GMA hosted by Bobby Ledesma. Their parodies of top 40 hits at the time lifted the show from ratings trouble and led to the successful Tough Hits album series. This led to a stint hosting Student Canteen—and, more importantly, the lead roles in the popular comedy Iskul Bukol—before they were offered Eat Bulaga!

3. Eat Bulaga! got a shot in the arm in 1987, when Ice Seguerra—then identifying as female—took part in the Little Miss Philippines competition, and became a regular on the show known for delivering quips with a precocious assurance. He has remained a presence on the show throughout the decades, most recently returning for occasional performances on their Saturday shows.

4. ‘Sang Linggo nAPO Sila, anchored by OPM legends Apo Hiking Society, evolved from the Sunday musical show Sa Linggo nAPO Sila. The transition from a more sophisticated, performance-heavy program to one that relied on street-wise humor was an awkward one.

5. Yes, they were named after Tom Jones’ “Sexbomb”, a song they danced with aplomb and a certain degree of suggestiveness. I must also add for my few non-Filipino readers that one of their members, Jopay Paguia, may or may not be the inspiration for Mayonnaise’s “Jopay”, another track from that mid-noughties alternative renaissance.

6. Magandang Tanghali Bayan’s anchor trio of hosts—actor John Estrada, singer Randy Santiago and Willie Revillame—were more successful in providing mass-appeal entertainment, but faced controversy with their attempts at edgy humor. The show’s beauty pageant segment, “Calendar Girl”, was characterized by sexual innuendo from the three, which got them reprimanded by government censors, and later suspended by ABS-CBN. The show went through a series of reformats after Willie left the show, none of which would stand up to Eat Bulaga!

7. I remember reading somewhere that the Itchyworms’ name came from Atenean slang for “higad”. Scientifically, it’s the larvae stage of the brown-tail moth, which causes an itchy rash when it comes in contact with human skin. But an interview with the band says they named themselves, in a roundabout way, after the late Filipino compère and talent manager German Moreno.

8. I’ll go out and say “‘Di Na Muli” is the 2000s baby’s “Ang Huling El Bimbo”. But then I may be prone to hyperbole. I certainly think Noon Time Show is one of the best Filipino albums, full stop.

9. On-screen pairings are not new, but the concept of the “love team” has been actively promoted—or exploited—in the Philippines for decades, from Nora-Pip and Vi-Bobot in the 1970s, to Sharon-Gabby in the 1980s, to Bobby-Angelu in the 1990s, and even now that the world calls them “ships” and we have portmanteaus for everyone from JaDine to Aldub to DonBelle. CNN Philippines has a pretty good take on this new wave of love teams.

10. One of my favorite EB moments was when Jose Manalo fell down a river while going to a competition winner—and managed to make 45 minutes of comedy out of it. Everybody had to be game for that to happen. And yes, I know it’s unintentionally a sad commentary on how we Filipinos treat our waterways badly.

11. I wrote that sentence while watching someone I don’t recognize dance to Fifty Fifty’s “Cupid” on ASAP. It’s a remixed medley of K-pop songs, I must add. They’re dancing to NewJeans as I type.