Bachelor of Arts in Broadcasting (BABR)

The Broadcast Communication undergraduate curriculum was last revised in 2018 and was implemented the same year. This revision saw the design of more holistic production courses, where research processes and production flows from concept to execution became fundamental in teaching audio and visual production. Three-unit radio and television production courses were revised into six-unit core courses to intensify the role of each creative component (brainstorming, research, scriptwriting, editing, etc.) in the larger context of broadcast production flows. The revision also included the institution of the Political Economy of Broadcast Media, Analysis of Broadcast Texts, and Audience Studies. These three required courses equip students with critical theories and research approaches to analyzing broadcast media organizations and institutions, texts, and audiences.

This curriculum has been evolving into an interdisciplinary program, integrating and synthesizing the philosophical approaches and methodologies of both the Humanities and the Social Sciences. In its first few decades from the 1970s, its teaching was founded on the training of professionals with a view that broadcasting was an aesthetic tool for mass dissemination of information. Since the 1990s, the Department has been steering the curriculum towards a broader, more holistic program that maintains the teaching of broadcasting as an art but also borrows and assimilates perspectives from several disciplines. This is particularly reflected in the use of the term "Studies," which implies a critical cultural studies approach in the study and teaching of the ways in which the practice of broadcasting participates in the creation of cultures and everyday life, maintains and challenges social relations and the exercise of power, and promotes or frustrates social transformations. The changes are premised on the complex paradigm shifts in the practice of broadcasting in the last three decades, shaped and reshaped not only by technologies but by the profound transformations in the global and local public spheres.

The bridging of theory and practice needed review, especially with the key output of the program, the thesis, implementing research through audio-visual methods and using audio-visual projects as final projects. These insights echoed countless conversations with several batches of undergraduate students who wanted to do production theses but were daunted by the task of producing a written thesis and an audio-visual production as a solo project within a semester’s three-unit course.

It is important to note that the shift from a predominantly arts and skills-building curriculum to a critical cultural studies approach in the Broadcast Communication program does not abandon the ideation, writing, videography, and editing aspects of broadcast production. Instead, we strengthen the theoretical and methodological aspects within the creative work. In the old Department of Broadcast Communication (DBC) curriculum, there already exists a balance between the bridging of theory and practice. However, we as a faculty articulated that the Department should not only produce, create or enhance talents and, as part of PUP that is a teaching, research, and public service university, that it should also nurture the audiovisual creativity of graduates who will teach and will be involved in research and public service.

The term "Broadcast Media" in place of "Broadcast Communication" indicates the multifarious cultural and technological platforms in which conventional broadcasting is now practiced alongside new mediations, such as digital media, and other media that have yet to emerge. The program name maintains the term “Broadcast” as its audiovisual anchor and reimagines the discipline to be inclusive of digital Web-based, mobile, and other emerging media, its practices, and its audiences.

This move signifies the program’s intent to examine the connections and intersections of “old” and “new” media, the contexts that inform the evolving uses of these media, and the way the new media ecologies encourage dynamic modes of meaning making among producers and audiences.

Program Description

The BA in Broadcasting is designed to provide students with the appropriate and timely training to become future broadcast practitioners who are competent, critical, and responsible.

Furthermore, graduates are enabled to adapt to the changing broadcast landscape in terms of new technologies, modes of production, distribution, and exhibition of broadcast products, and encourage the students to integrate their knowledge and skills for service to their communities, career advancement, graduate study, and life-long learning.

Program Learning Outcomes

Practice critical creativity in the production of content, research, and implementation of conventional and emerging media production strategies;

1. Generate knowledge in emerging media material design and production that can be used in broadcasting such as broadcast producing, script writing, management and educational broadcasting;

2. Effectively write and produce for broadcast media and client-based production within the Philippines, ASEAN and Asia;

3. Contribute new perspectives in media production and the producer’s role in a changing media environment by demonstrating new knowledge in shooting and editing video in the field and studio, using professional-level equipment as well as non-linear editing systems;

4. Demonstrate life-long learning via progress toward completion of an advanced degree in broadcast media, or professional skills development in the practice of broadcasting and the other media.;

5. Appraise leadership qualities and managerial skills in the practice of broadcast profession and the emerging media;

6. Understand the local and global standards of broadcast media laws and ethics, research methodology and utilization, and principles of broadcast management;

7. Adeptness to the new practice of creative content production with other creative methods and historical and theoretical lenses; and

8. Produce research, scripts and contents on Philippine media texts, institutions, practices, and audiences that is ethical, theoretically informed, socially aware, and methodologically sound.

Job Targets

Broadcast Practitioners

·      Television or Radio Anchorman

·      Host

·      Newscaster

·      Field Reporter

·      Broadcast Editor

·      News Director

·      Commentator

·      Assignment Manager

·      Assignment Director

·      News Producer

·      Executive News Producer

·      Segment Program Producer or Director

·      Public Affairs Executive

·      Researcher

Broadcast Media Artist

·      Radio Disc Jockey

·      Video Jockey

·      Television Actor/Actress

·      Radio Artist

·      Radio or Television Director

·      Scriptwriter for Radio or Television

·      Graphic Artist

·      Cinematographer for Television

·      Musical Director for Radio or Television

·      Costume Designer

·      Cameraman

·      Television or Radio Consultant

·      Television Editor

·      Talent Manager

·      Voice Talent

Broadcast Production Staff

·      Production Manager

·      Production Director

·      Production Designer

·      Art Director

·      Production Assistant

Online Broadcast Specialist

·      Blogger

·      Social Media Specialist

·      Writer

·      Reporter

·      Editor

·      Publisher

Visual Artist

·      Graphics Artist

·      Video Journalist

Broadcast Journalist

·      News Writer

·      News Reporter

·      Segment Writer/Producer

·      Documentary Writer/Reporter/Producer

·      News Anchor

·      Field Reporter

·      Researcher

·      Editorial Assistant

Investigative Reporter

·      Government Agent

·      NGO Agent

Broadcasting Educator

·      Professor

·      Lecturer

·      Program Coordinator

·      Dean