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Ben Aniceto (Benjamin Flores Aniceto) was an announcer, producer, and media executive. He was born in 1934 and died in California, USA on 16 March 2016. Aniceto was the son of Vicente Aniceto, a physician, and Adela Flores, a pharmacist. He was married to Mila de la Cruz, with whom he had nine children. He attended Lakan Dula Elementary School and Torres High School. He finished a two-year course in fine arts at the University of Santo Tomas and took two years of speech and drama at Ateneo de Manila University. In 1971, while working at ABS-CBN, he attended a management program for senior executives at the Asian Institute of Management. After a five-decade career in Philippine radio and television, he retired and lived in the United States.

Aniceto was in college in the 1950s when he began his career as radio drama actor and commercial announcer for programs sponsored by leading multinational companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and Colgate Palmolive. This was followed by other assignments, including staff announcer at DZPI, chief announcer at DZRH, production manager at DZMB, operations director for Radio Philippines Network, program director for radio and television in ABS-CBN Network, station manager for Channels 2 and 13, and general manager for ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation. He was also account executive and radio-TV director of RRA Advertising & PR Agency, executive vice president and general manager of Blackgold Records Corporation, and editor and bureau chief of Philippine News in Los Angeles, California.

When Marcos declared martial law in 1972 and ABS-CBN closed, Aniceto continued broadcasting at DZQL, then managed the Soriano-owned IBC Channel 13. When Roberto Benedicto, a powerful ally of Marcos, took over IBC in 1976, Aniceto moved to Vicor Music Corporation where he managed its affiliate, Blackgold Records. Later, he left for the United States and joined the anti-Marcos group in Los Angeles, California, while producing and hosting the TV shows Grand Chevrolet Hour on Channel 56 and Atin Ito (This Is Ours) on Channel 18. He edited Philippine News, the Filipino-American newspaper in Southern California, and bought airtime on KMAX to disseminate news and opinions that countered Marcos’s propaganda through the radio program Hello, Philippines. He also bought airtime on Channel 52 and aired several Philippine TV shows such as Martin after Dark, Maricel Drama Special, and Chicks to Chicks.

In 1986, Aniceto returned to the Philippines and again became general manager of ABS-CBN when it reopened a few months after Marcos’s ouster. He built up the network’s news and public affairs division by hiring Loren Legarda, Angelo Castro Jr, Korina Sanchez, Cheche Lazaro, Mel Tiangco, Angelique Lazo, Tony Velasquez, and Bill Velasco. He moved Noli de Castro to DZMM’s primetime hour and then to TV Patrol. A year later, in 1987, he left ABS-CBN and went into blocktiming. He also served as broadcast media strategist for presidential candidate Raul Roco and Sen Jovito Salonga.

Aniceto wrote and edited a 678-page book, Stay Tuned: The Golden Years of Philippine Radio; A Historical Perspective of Philippine Radio—Its Beginnings, Its Golden Years and Its Suppression in September 1972, published in 2007.The book covers landmark developments in radio broadcasting and personality profiles of announcers, managers, entertainment personalities, radio staff and crew members, with focus on the postwar years until the martial law period. The book also includes chapters written by some of his colleagues. He received the Gawad for Radio-TV from the Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1992 and the Four A’s Maverick for Radio Award from the Association of Advertisers and Advertising Agencies in 2004.