The creation of an organization such as ANAKTV (the original name upon inception was Southeast Asian Foundation for Children's Television) was the result of nagging concerns expressed in various forums in society.
Parents and teachers, not only in the Philippines but in all of Asia, increasingly agitated for more child-sensitive TV programs and shows that helped define to children what it was to be Asian.
The executives running the TV networks in the Philippines, even in Southeast Asia, are parents themselves, torn between raking in profit and delighting the stockholders on one side and ensuring that their children had a healthy media diet, on the other.
Virtually half the population of Southeast Asia was composed of persons under 18. In the Philippines, it was officially pegged at 47%. That meant a vast audience that needed to be given age-appropriate television programs.
With the oftentimes fractious relationship among private TV networks, time was ripe for a truce when it came to children.
Hence, an aggrupation of all terrestrial, free to air as well as cable television operators was convened with ABS-CBN'S Gina Lopez as the first president. Lopez was then at the throes of shoring up national interest in educational television and was aghast at the behavior of many major TV networks in the West who defined children's TV simply as those produced and syndicated from the West.
A national summit on children and television was held in Manila after staging three vital consultations in the major islands. The advocacy group was soon in business.
Three years after, then vice-president Edgardo Roces (representing Associated Broadcasting Corporation), was elected president. Lopez's co-founder, Mag Cruz Hatol remains a strong supporter of the foundation.
The organization has evolved into a major advocacy league, instructing parents about the perils and advantages of television, advising them to be prudent in their usage of the medium and smart in their choice of programs because children are always around.
With Elvira Yap Go, current President of ANAK TV, the foundation has become the vanguard of television literacy in a country that regards the television set as the favorite appliance, surrogate parent and baby sitter and main source of entertainment and information at home.
ANAKTV is chiefly an advocacy organization that promotes television literacy and pushes the agenda for child-sensitive, family-friendly television in the Philippines.
It does so by staging forums, symposia and consultative meetings in village halls, schools, parishes, government centers, churches and many other unorthodox places like inter-island vessels and basketball gyms. The main targets are parents who grew up with meager media education and who suddenly found themselves unprepared and confronted with a lot of communication technology and beguiled by massive doses of entertainment television.
It is also the parent and education sectors, besides the church and NGO groups, that lead the militant crowd in castigating television stations for the programs dished out and which are in turn patronized, sometimes mindlessly, by children.
The foundation relies on the goodwill of some like-minded corporate partners. It steers clear of politics, commercial, charity and religious activities and aims to be a strategic partner of education and child welfare programs.
Messages about the advocacy are circulated through print and broadcast media as well as through the internet.
In addition to forums and jury screenings, ANAKTV stages video bars and discussions for children, a national video contest for kids, occasional monitoring programs and researches, polls and surveys, youth programs and exchanges as well as on-the-job training activities. it sustains a small active army of youth volunteers poised to enter the broadcasting industry.
By 2015, the most constant partners of ANAK TV include Columbia's, Soka Gakkai and KBP.
The now iconic Anak TV seal adorns several television programs that proudly display the seal of approval from the public attesting to their child-sensitivity.
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