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AlDub Update: Maine Mendoza And Alden Richards Become Mega Stars As Drama Helps ‘Eat Bulaga’ To Record Ratings

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 13:14 PST, Nov 22, 2015

The AlDub phenomena has swept through the Philippines, making stars Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards some of the nation’s biggest stars and pushing the noontime show Eat Bulaga to record ratings.

For several months now fans have followed the love affair between the two characters, who were introduced almost by chance on the show. Since then their success has captivated the entire country, drawing millions of fans and leading to some of the largest social media campaigns the world has ever seen.

As the show’s success grows, Alden and Maine have both secured large advertising contracts and become in a large way the face of the Philippines.

Ben Chan, the chair of Suyen Corp., knew early on in the AlDub story just how much appeal the two young faces held for fans. Chan said he wrote to the company’s managers, saying they should bring on the two as Bench endorsers.

“Bench has always chosen endorsers who capture the zeitgeist, the current mood of pop culture,” Chan told the Inquirer. “And if there’s any local show that embodies ‘Pinoy pop culture and love local,’ it’s got to be a 40-year-old institution like ‘Eat Bulaga.'”

Chan said the company finally followed through during the “Tamang Panahon,” when Alden and Yaya Dub finally met in public for the first time.

“The clamor from our market to have them at Bench made this project more exciting,” he said. “It’s all about perfect timing — tamang panahon.”

Chan said Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards are the perfect endorsers, saying “you can feel their sincerity.” Chan said the fans demand this authentic nature, which has shown in the positive messages and overall supportive nature of AlDub’s online legion of fans.

“Alden and Maine are as positive as they come,” Chan said. “It comes as no surprise that they’re well-loved and cherished by fans. They bring happiness into people’s lives.”

Bench is putting Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza on billboards and marketing materials and even plastered to the side of trains, saying fans have responded very enthusiastically.

The AlDub drama isn’t just making Maine Mendoza and Alden Richards mega-stars — it has also helped Eat Bulaga surpass its noontime competitor, the ABS-CBN program It’s Showtime. As Philippine Entertainment Portal reported, It’s Showtime was starting to creep closer to Eat Bulaga in ratings this summer and even caught up with it in mid-July.

“However the dynamics changed on July 16, 2015, when the love team of Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza was accidentally discovered,” the report noted. “With this onscreen tandem breaking the Internet, the nationwide ratings between Eat Bulaga and It’s Showtime also flipped in favor of the Kapuso show.”

From that day onward, AlDub pushed Eat Bulaga well beyond its competitor on a consistent basis. It’s Showtime topped Eat Bulaga a handful of times since then, including August 8 when Ryan Rems Sarita was named the winner of the #FunnyOneGrandFinals. Though even then it was close, with It’s Showtime generating 27.1 percent of viewers and Eat Bulaga’s #ALDUBWeBelongTogether episode registered 21.1 percent.

AlDub is blowing up on Twitter as well. As Rappler noted, the September 26 official hashtag #ALDubEBforLOVE generated 26 million tweets, close to the all-time record of 28.4 million global tweets set during Super Bowl XLIX. That record was then smashed by #AlDubEDTamangPanahon, which generated close to 40 million global tweets.

But almost as important as the ratings records and the endorsement deals for Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza is the show’s staying power itself. As the romance between Yaya Dub and Alden was budding over the summer, many critics wondered how long the phenomena could last before fans started to get burned out and tired of the abrupt endings and cliffhanger moments. The fact that AlDub is still going strong now four months later shows that there may be no end to the show’s appeal.

[Picture by Eat Bulaga/Facebook]

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