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The shutdown of ABS-CBN broadcasting arose from the lack of renewal of Philippine media network ABS-CBN’s congressional broadcast franchise. The disputes between the administrations of Presidents Benigno Aquino III and Rodrigo Duterte and the media conglomerate arose over the terms and conditions of the franchise renewal agreement. Amid the controversy, the Congress of the Philippines, the country’s legislature, was unable to renew the franchise before its expiration date. The congressional franchise expired on May 4, 2020, while the Philippines was dealing with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the enhanced community quarantine in Luzon. The next day, exercising constitutional powers, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) issued a cease-and-desist order demanding ABS-CBN cease all of its free TV and radio broadcasting operations immediately. ABS-CBN complied with the government order and shut down all of its radio stations and free television channels later that day. On June 30, 2020, the NTC released two alias cease-and-desist orders against ABS-CBN TV Plus and Sky Direct.
For most of the 2010s decade starting from July 28, 2012 up until the early 2020s on September 10, 2020 (during the presidencies of Benigno Aquino III and Rodrigo Duterte), the network had an eight-year controversy regarding the renewal of their broadcast franchise. In 2014, they applied the renewal through private bills that had been pending in the House of Representatives but had not been addressed by either the 16th, 17th, or 18th Congresses of the Philippines. Prominent figures in ABS-CBN Corporation, the political opposition in the Philippines, media advocacy groups, and the international press have labeled the refusal of Congress to renew the franchise as a result of Duterte’s pressure for ABS-CBN to cease broadcasting and a direct attack on the country’s democracy and press freedoms, although sources from the previous administration reported that there was lack of support for renewal because “Mr. Aquino’s allies felt the criticisms against the President were too personal and offensive and went to the point of nitpicking.” Duterte’s ruling coalition maintains a supermajority in both chambers of Congress, and Duterte criticized the ABS-CBN network for their allegedly biased and unfavorable news coverage against Duterte beginning with his presidential campaign in the 2016 Philippine presidential election, repeatedly voicing his opposition against the renewal of the network’s congressional franchise. ABS-CBN subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court of the Philippines to nullify as unconstitutional the cease-and-desist order, which the Court likewise refused to do.
The resulting franchise expiration and withdrawal of its broadcast rights marked the first time ABS-CBN, considered a historical and cultural icon in the Philippines, had been off the air since the 1986 revolution, having been seized and liquidated by the authoritarian government of the Martial Law dictatorship from 1972 until the regime’s collapse in 1986. Critics of the Duterte government consider the NTC’s cease-and-desist order and the denial of the franchise application as contributing to a growing democratic backsliding in the Philippines under the Duterte administration.