Charo Santos-Concio to join long-running teleserye

MANILA — “FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano” made a massive leap to a new viewership record on Thursday, with an action-packed episode showing Cardo (Coco Martin) barely surviving his nemesis Lito’s (Richard Gutierrez) blood-thirsty pursuit.

In the episode titled “Habulan,” Cardo and Lito, once bitter rivals over the late Alyana (Yassi Pressman), exchanged blows and bullets before the hero cop managed to escape by vehicle.

Hell-bent on putting down Cardo, Lito chased him on a motorcycle, with a teaser for the next episode showing them speeding toward each other.

The preview also showed a new character, portrayed by screen veteran Charo Santos-Concio, who appears to provide shelter for Task Force Agila, President Oscar Hidalgo (Rowell Santiago), and Aurora (Sharon Cuneta).

Building on the previous episode’s pivotal events — Cardo regaining consciousness, and Oscar reuniting with Agila — “Habulan” saw a spike in viewers on Thursday, bringing “Ang Probinsyano” to a new all-time high audience count on Kapamilya Online Live.

The June 16 episode logged a record 321,373 concurrent live viewers on the ABS-CBN YouTube stream — a significant increase from its previous record of 287,241, achieved just the night prior.

• ‘Ang Probinsyano’ record-breaker: Cardo wakes up, real president found

“Ang Probinsyano,” which was the Philippines’ No. 1 TV program for nearly five years until ABS-CBN was forced off free television, has steadily grown its online viewers since mid-2020, when the network migrated its programming to digital.

Over the last two years, the Coco Martin starrer has led ABS-CBN titles in marking successive audience milestones on Kapamilya Online Live, with the latest being a scripted drama crossing the 300,00-mark in concurrent viewers.

Aside from Kapamilya Online Live, “Ang Probinsyano” can be watched via Kapamilya Channel, A2Z, TV5, CineMo, iWantTFC, WeTV, and iflix.