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Abstract
The switch to digital terrestrial broadcasting on 24 July 2011 marked a watershed for the broadcasting industry in Japan. Digitalisation is the single largest industry-wide event since the advent of alternative distribution technologies, satellite and cable, in the 1980s. Preparation for the switch to digital, known as chideji-ka, has put existing business arrangements under pressure and has led to a renewed focus on the future shape of the industry. There is increasing acknowledgement that change, especially in the relationship between central and local broadcasters, is inevitable. This paper summarises the position of the industry at the beginning of its digital age, arguing for a new view of broadcasting in Japan that recognises the two-tier reality behind industry rhetoric. It also summarises the major options open to the industry as it looks to redefine itself in a much-changed media environment.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the AHRC and the JSPS for their generous support of the research presented here, as well as the anonymous reviewers without whose insightful comments this paper would still be unfinished.
Notes
1Kwak, ‘Restructuring the Satellite Television Industry’, 63.
2KBS Kyoto (Kinki Hōsō) applied for protection under the Corporate Rehabilitation Law in 1994 after involvement in the Itoman scandal which left it with debts of ¥11.5 billion, from which it finally emerged in October 2007. ‘KBS Kyōto, kōsei shūketsu iwau’.
3Front cover headline, Tōyō Keizai Shinbun, 19 February 2011
4The system in use in Japan, and adopted throughout most of South America is known as Integrated Services Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T). Other standards are DVB, developed in Europe, and the US system ATSC. DTTV is a generic term for all forms of digital terrestrial television.
5Cooper-Chen and Kodama, Mass Communication in Japan.
6Valaskivi, ‘Mapping Media and Communication Research: Japan’.
7Pharr and Krauss, Media and Politics in Japan.
8Kwak, ‘Restructuring the Satellite Television Industry’; Kwak, ‘The Context of Regulation of Television Broadcasting in East Asia’.
9Nakano, Hōsō gyōkai no dōkō to karakuri; Nishi, Shinpan zukai hōsō gyōkai handobukku; Tanami, Gen’eki terebiman ga akasu!; Takahashi, Hōsō no zen-shigoto.
10Yuasa et al., Media sangyōron; Matsuoka and Kōgo, Shin genba kara mita hōsōgaku.
11Terrestrial broadcasters are represented at national level by their industry association Minpōren, known in English as The National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan (NAB). To avoid confusion with the parallel US organisation, also the NAB, I refer to this organisation as Minpōren throughout.
12Of these 29 smaller broadcast areas, three are amalgamations of neighbouring prefectures: Kagawa-Okayama, Tottori-Shimane, and (less formally) Fukuoka-Saga.
13Sugaya and Nakamura, Hōsō media no keizaigaku, 140.
14Chihō-bunken Kaikaku Suishin Iinkai, ‘Dai-39 iinkai kanren setsumei shiryō’.
15In the three prefectures affected by the tsunami of 11 March 2011 analog broadcasting continued until 31 March 2012. ‘Hisaichi 3ken no chideji-ka’.
16 Minpōren nenkan 2010, 732.
17One of these satellites is in the same position as the BS satellite, thus subscribers can receive both BS and CS broadcasts on one dish, though they still need separate tuners.
18‘“Chideji-ka-go” ni nani ga okoru?’.
19SPTVJ, ‘News Release: 2011nen 8gatsumatsu genzai’.
20Kwak, ‘Restructuring the Satellite Television Industry’, 73.
21Data for this section is taken from MIC, ‘Kēburu terebi no genjō’.
22‘Terebi gyōkai: 10 no gimon’.
23Ikeda, ‘Rieki o umanai chideji-ka’, 18.
24‘Tomaranai ‘‘make no rensa’’’. Some companies do, however, make their broadcasts freely available online, at a very reduced audio and video quality, via the KeyHoleTV P2P service; see KeyHoleTV website: www.v2p.jp/video/index.html (accessed 11 May 2011).
25Brinkley, Defining Vision, Sec.2.
27Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) shipments data: www.jeita.or.jp/english/stat/shipment/2011/ (accessed 3 October 2011).
26‘Chijō dejitaru hōsō e no ikō ni tomonau keizai-kōka nado’, 55.
28Dentsū Sōken, Jōhō media hakusho, 202.
29Miyazaki, Citation 2012 -nenpan zukai kakumei! 28, 126.
30Compiled from Yahoo Company Profiles: profile.yahoo.co.jp (accessed 7 October 2011).
31MIC, ‘Chijo-dejitaru hōsō’, 2011, 1.
32MIC, ‘Chijo-dejitaru hōsō’, 2010, 1.
33‘Viewers mustn’t end up as “radio-wave refugees”’.
34‘Hosei-yosan de kōgū sareru terebi no chideji-ka’.
35NDL, ‘Issue Brief: Chijō dejitaru hōsō no genjō to kadai’, 2008, 2010.
36MIC, ‘Shūhasū ōkushon ni kansuru kondankai’.
37DOCOMO, ‘Press Releases: NTT DOCOMO announces “Xi” LTE service brand’.
38DOCOMO, ‘Press Releases: NTT DOCOMO “Xi” LTE Subscribers Top 5 Million’.
39NDL, ‘Issue Brief: Chijō dejitaru hōsō no genjō to kadai’, 2010.
40See ‘Local TV May Lose in Digital Shift’, also section ‘Shrinking Production Budgets’ below.
41Kimura, ‘Dai-30kai NHK jushin jittai chōsa’.
42‘Topics: Results of Terrestrial Digital Broadcasting Penetrance Survey’ (multiple answers recorded).
43‘Tomaranai ‘‘make no rensa’’’, 46.
44Kamei, ‘Chideji no detarame. Dai-2kai’.
45Barnhurst and Nerone, The Form of News, 25.
46Kamei, ‘Chideji no detarame. Dai-1kai’.
47Kamei, ‘Chideji no detarame. Dai-2kai’.
48Popularly known as the Kaden risaikuru hō, correctly the Tokutei katei-yō kiki sai-shōhin-ka hō; see www.meti.go.jp/policy/kaden_recycle/case2/pdf/03.pdf (accessed 20 June 2011).
49Kamei, ‘Chideji no detarame. Dai-2kai’.
50 Minpōren nenkan 2010, 123.
51Dentsū Sōken, Jōhō media hakusho.
52TBS Holdings, ‘Citation2010nen 3gatsu-ki dai-2shihanki kessan shiryō’, 19.
53Nakano, Hōsō gyōkai no dōkō to karakuri, 155.
54Kimura, ‘Chideji-ka to uriagegen de’.
55Kimura, ‘Gyōseki-kaifuku ni tenjita minpō-terebi’, 46.
56‘Oikomareru terebi no setogiwa’.
57Ogawa, ‘Terebi-kōkoku o torimaku tayō na henka’.
58Kimura, ‘Gyōseki-kaifuku ni tenjita minpō-terebi’.
59Tanami, Gen’eki terebiman ga akasu!
60JFTC, ‘Media kontentsu sangyō de’.
61Nishi, Shinpan zukai hōsō gyōkai handobukku, 60.
62See section ‘Financial Links between Key and Local Stations’ below for a fuller discussion of NDF.
63Kimura, ‘Gyōseki-kaifuku ni tenjita minpō-terebi’, 51 (based on Minpōren data).
64‘Seisaku genba de nani’. Also, Kubota, ‘Jakusha no gisei de’.
66‘Uriage-hangen, seisakuhi ōhaba katto’.
65Nakano, Hōsō gyōkai no dōkō to karakuri, 112.
67Hayama, AD zankoku monogatari.
68Tanami, Gen’eki terebiman ga akasu!, 85.
69Shimazaki, Ikeda and Yonekura, Hōsō-ron, 51.
70‘Terebi gyōkai: 10 no gimon’, 48.
71Ibid.
72‘Nittere-rōkumi, 24jikan suto e’, ‘Nittere-rōkumi, 24jikan suto no totsunyū’.
73Interviewed in Tōyō Keizai, 20 February 2010, 70–71.
74This model was influenced by the World War II ikken-isshi (‘one prefecture one paper’) system for newspapers; see Kasza, The State and the Mass Media in Japan, 187–188.
75‘Uriage-hangen, seisakuhi ōhaba katto’.
76Ibid.
77Kimura, ‘Chideji-ka to uriagegen de’, 19.
78The Minpōren yearbooks include an appendix listing broadcasters in order of their founding; see e.g. Minpōren nenkan 2010, 731–733. Such information is possibly useful to industry historians, but should primarily be seen as a confirmation of the industry’s seniority structure.
79This is calculated from figures in Minpōren nenkan 2010.
80JFTC, ‘Media kontentsu sangyō de’.
81Dentsū Sōken, Jōhō media hakusho, 132.
82Used here as a measure of how appealing a market is to advertisers in search of sales.
83FBC in Fukui prefecture is a cross-network broadcaster offering programs from both TV Asahi and NTV. Its sole competitor is Fukui TV Broadcasting, an FNN affiliate.
84Nishi, Hōsō gyōkai handobukku, 106. Under the ISDB-T digital television standard (see above n. 4), each 6 MHz digital channel is divided into 13 segments. ‘One-seg’ broadcasting uses one of these to broadcast a much-compressed signal. HD-DTTV occupies 12 segments and an SD channel requires four.
85Kwak, ‘Restructuring the Satellite Television Industry’, 70.
86‘Kii-kyoku to no kankei wa hōkai-sunzen’.
87Sugaya and Nakamura, Hōsō media no keizaigaku, 139–140.
88Usui, Terebi no kyōkasho, 109.
89Hanzawa and Takada, ‘Terebi bangumi seisaku no kigyō keiei’, 1.
90Tanami, Gen’eki terebiman ga akasu!, 41.
91Suzuki, Chihōterebi-kyoku wa ikinokoreru ka, 73.
92Nishi, Hōsō gyōkai handobukku, 32.
93The performance of the ANN network in this particular year was adversely affected by the very large one-off loss of ¥4.9 billion posted by its Chūkyō WBA affiliate MeiTV (Nagoya Hōsō).
94Hasegawa, ‘Hōsō shūnyū no suii ni ōjite’.
95See the Dentsu FY2009–10 accounts, www.uforeader.com/v1/se/E04760_S00066R3_4_0.html# #E0002 (accessed 12 June 2011). Current president Wakabayashi Itsuma was with Dentsu 1969–2009, and his predecessor Kimura Takehiko in the period 1964–2006.
96There is no formal definition of a block newspaper, but they tend to be larger than city papers and not national.
97Sadaoka, ‘Chijō-ha hōsō gyōkai saihen no tenbō’.
98‘Mainichi Shimbun-sha no Kyōdō Tsūshin sai-kamei’.
99Suzuki, Chihōterebi-kyoku wa ikinokoreru ka, 103.
100Ibid., 181–183.
101Ibid., 173–174.
102See ‘Terebi gyōkai’, 54.