Conrad Banal
RCMD PRESIDENT FOR ROTARY YEAR 2020-2021
Our Perfect Vision President
Conrado R. Banal III likes to call himself a newsman, having been such for more than 40 years now, or throughout all of his working life.
He got into the news gathering job by accident. He started as a proofreader at the defunct Business Day, the first economic daily newspaper in Asia. At that time, Conrad was trying to recuperate from a serious knee injury as a basketball player for the Crispa amateur team that recruited him after he donned the blue and white colors of the Ateneo Blue Eagles. He applied for a job with Business Day because, according to him, writing was really his first love.
He eventually became a senior reporter of Business Day, covering the financial sector in the 1980s, during the time of the foreign debt crisis and bank runs. It was in Business Day that he received awards in news reporting.
Today he co-hosts and co-produces the highly popular commentary program Karambola, now on its 5th year, in the radio station DWIZ 882 in Aliw Broadcasting of the Cabangon media group, which includes Graphic magazine, Business Mirror economic daily newspaper and CNN television station.
For more than 25 years, he also wrote a political business column, called “Breaktime,” in the business section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The column nevertheless first came out in 1986 in the business section of the Philippine Star in which Banal was the pioneer business section editor.
He eventually moved up to become managing editor of the Star until 1992.
He then moved to electronic media to become the vice-president for news of GMA Channel 7.
In his own words, however, he considered television news reportage as too much in a hurry, lacking in depth, since television was basically a visual medium. He went back to print news reporting when he resumed “Breaktime” in the Inquirer in 1993.
During the stock market boom in the 1990s, Banal co-anchored the country’s first full coverage of the stock market on IBC Channel 13 in a morning television show called “PSE Live,” providing viewers analysis of the news that could affect the market.
He was also the first to do a “column on air,” entitled “Biz-a-Biz,” doing a 5-minute business commentary for RPN Channel 9 from 2001 to 2004.
In those same years, he co-hosted a two-hour morning radio talk show.
Banal is an active Rotarian, serving in various capacities the Rotary Club of Makati Dasmariñas in the past 14 years.
Playing golf, according to him, is an unavoidable part of his work as a newsman.
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