Free-to-air networks in Japan are relying heavily on variety/quiz shows to resist the general and continuous fall of ratings across genres and the overall decline of TV viewing over the last decade or so. The ratings and revenue leader Fuji Television is adding five new variety and quiz shows a week this season, striping the 7pm ‘F&F (Family & Fuji)’ quiz belt with different 30-minute and one-hour shows seven days a week. These quiz shows are built around the powerful Wednesday night show, Quiz Hexagon, in which 18 entertainers in three groups challenge a total of 50 quizzes to get group awards or punishments. The show has constantly earned 20+% ratings since its debut three years ago, outclassing other networks’ quiz shows, though hardly comparable to popular quiz shows of the 1980’s that achieved ratings of over 40%. And yet, all the commercial stations are inundated with quiz/variety shows today, with more than 120 shows filling terrestrial airwaves every week, because that’s where they believe the ratings lie as all other genres continue to lose viewers. Fuji TV is striping afternoon slots with variety shows Monday through Friday; Nippon TV is lining up over 40 shows every week, including, since 2002, the strong Sunday night legal consulting type show, Line-up Law Office, with outstanding ratings of 35.3% on August 19, 2007. TV Asahi is adding 4 new shows this season to its roster of about 20 variety/quiz shows while TV Tokyo, the smallest of the five commercial networks, carries 24 shows, one of which is the long standing tests of collectors’ items, similar to the legendary British show, Experts’ View. NHK, the public broadcaster, has also caught variety fever, with about 20 variety/quiz shows of its own running across seven days a week. Such proliferation of variety shows results in the over-exposure of a limited number of popular entertainers, particularly in the comedian category managed by a few strong talent agencies. Among them are the comedian duo Bakusho Mondai (guffaw issues), who appear in nine regular shows a week plus several non-regular shows; Mino Monta, a 64-year-old ex-radio announcer who is featured in nine regular weekly shows; and Shinsuke Shimada, a seasoned, outspoken Yoshimoto agency comedian, emceeing seven regular shows a week. They are believed to be earning close to US$100million dollars per annum. No such luxury is witnessed in other genres, except for an occasional bonanza of international sports like the FIFA World Cup soccer finals and elimination rounds; women’s figure skating championships; or World Baseball Classics where ratings could jump above 40%. This year, however, even FIFA matches lost steam, as the Asian elimination match between Japan and Thailand on TBS on February 6 ended up with only 17.7%, while the one between Japan and Bahrain on TV Asahi on March 26 recorded only 11.6%. In the drama category, not a single serial drama attained ratings anywhere near past hits. The best recent performance was seen with the last episode of Fuji TV’s Bara-no nai Hanaya (Flower Shop without Roses), with 22.1% on March 24, 2008. NHK’s Sunday night samurai drama series, Atsuhime (Princess Atsu) that began with 20.3% on January 6 for a year-long run is doing all right with 21.6% for its 13th episode, but is no match for past hits like Ako Roshi in 1964 (average ratings of 53%) or Takeda Shingen in 1988 (49.2%). One genre faring relatively well is news shows – long dominated by NHK – but now led by such infotainment shows as Nippon TV’s Shinso Hodo Bankisha (investigative reporter) that scored 16.5% with a 55-minute show on March 16, 2008, or Sunday Morning, a 114-minute magazine-type show that attracted 15.1% on the same day. Anime, once a strong forte of Japanese terrestrial networks, is not the killer genre any more, as the younger demographic is fast shrinking, while more and more kids are watching anime on cable and satellite channels. Most free-to-air stations, except TV Tokyo, have dropped anime from prime time slots in favor of variety shows over the years. The only two anime serials scoring 20 plus percent in ratings are Fuji TV’s back-to-back Sunday night shows, Sazae-san and Chibi Maruko-chan. With such a steady decline of ratings on terrestrial networks, a natural consequence is the migration of advertising money to more promising arenas. All the major ad agencies that were until recently sitting back on the massive media reach of terrestrial networks, are now taking a more serious look at cable and satellite media, and at the same time scrambling to seek partnership with IT agencies for Internet and cell phone advertisements. Late 2007 saw ad agency Dentsu acquire a controlling share of the 14-year-old leading e-marketing agency Opt. While the total ad spend in 2007 edged up 1.1% over the previous year to reach Yen 7,019billion (US$63billion), spending in the four major media fell by 2.6%, both newspaper and television posting year-on-year decline for the third consecutive year, according to Dentsu. Cable and satellite media-related ad expenditures increased 10.8% to Yen 60.3billion (US$550million), and internet ads registered a 24.4% jump to Yen 600billion (US$5.45billion), passing magazine ads to loom as the third largest medium, after TV and newspaper. Mobile ads for cell phone and other mobile media reached US$569million in 2007, up 60% from a year ago. At the current growth rate, Nomura Research Institute predicts internet advertising to exceed US$6.5billion, or 10% of the total Japanese ad spend in 2011. In the meantime, the number of cell phones and PHS (personal handy-phone system) users exceeded 104million in 2007, accounting for 82% of the total population, according to a Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) survey. Of the total, about 80% are capable of receiving digital terrestrial television signals via 1seg transmission, which in the US is called ‘white space,’ meaning unused TV airwaves. The growth in the number of Japanese broadband users is also paving the way for further migration of regular TV viewers to IPTV and internet viewing of TV content. With the start of the new fiscal year 2008 on April 1, Japanese broadcasters, content providers and ISPs stepped up broadband distribution of their content to PC’s and cell phones. Fuji TV began its own VOD distribution Fuji TV On Demand to PC users on April 1 and Fuji TV On Demand Mobile to mobile phones on April 7, using Fuji’s own portal sites for the first time, on top of content distribution via outside ISPs. Nippon TV, TV Asahi and TV Tokyo are already operating in the similar way, either ad-supported or on a VOD basis, while TBS is distributing its content on subscription basis under the rubric of Boo Bo Box via external ISPs. As the competition in this field intensifies, all the networks are racing to cut the time gap between the content’s first run on terrestrial TV and its internet distribution. Nippon TV, for instance, is internet distributing some of the late night anime shows on terrestrial airwaves as early as the following day and free via USEN’s GyaO distribution network to PCs and to NTT Docomo cell phones for a week. TBS is working with Yahoo to start simultaneous talk shows on the new Saturday prime time TBS serial drama Rookies, to be distributed free to PC users via Yahoo’s Internet portal, in sync with the drama itself running on the terrestrial air wave. NHK, given the green light to go into internet distribution of its content under the revised Broadcasting Law, effective April 1, is getting ready to offer its massive programs, both current and archived, to internet users via VOD format in December 2008. Working with the leading MSO Jupiter Telecom (J:COM) and Actvila, the 2006-founded TV portal service, NHK will distribute via VOD a few dozen brand new programs just shown on NHK terrestrial networks on the following day for up to about 10 days, and also more than 1,000 programs from a catalogue archive of half a million titles. NHK is considering a paid business model for the new internet distribution of its programs, to be called NHK on Demand. It will probably be either all one missed on terrestrial networks for about US$15 a month, or about US$3 per piece on a VOD basis. J:COM launched its VOD service, J:COM On Demand in 2005 and is now capable of reaching some 1.2million digital households, offering a total of 13,000 titles today. Actvila, its name deriving from a Japanese pan combining ‘aku (to open)’ and ‘tobira (door)’ to an English-like spelling, is basically designed to promote PC-compatible TV sets in a unique TV portal site to market TV content, so far a little over 1,000 titles, on a US dollar apiece VOD basis. Its investors include Hitachi, Matsushita, Sharp, Sony and Toshiba. So far, TBS is supplying Actvila about 50 programs and Fuji, a dozen since earlier this year. NTT Plala, another major internet portal site, combined three video distribution services – NTT Communications’ OCN Theater, On Demand TV and 4th Media – with a total of 250,000 subscribers on March 1 to launch Hikari (optics) TV service to VOD distribute over 10,000 TV titles to PCs subscribing to NTT fiber optics services. For the monthly basic fee of about US$35, viewers can watch 12 basic channels, 40 music, movie, anime channels plus up to 7,000 titles on a VOD basis. NTT Plala hopes to increase the number of subscribers to Hikari TV to 1.1million by the end of 2010 and to 1.7million by the end of 2012. Softbank’s BBTV and KDDI’s Movie Splash services are also offering some 5,000 titles each to PC users. Sony Marketing (Japan), Inc., Sony’s domestic sales wing, launched on March 31 a new, commercial-supported IPTV service ‘branco,’ offering six channels of content, including anime, movie, music and drama from Sony Pictures Entertainment and others to PC users who have installed ‘branco player,’ free, 24/7. Sports programming-wise Yahoo is live-feeding all 440 professional baseball official games and play-offs of the Pacific League to its internet users free of charge this season as its sister Softbank group has obtained internet distribution rights from all six clubs. Last year, Yahoo broadcast live all the games of four Pacific League clubs to reach over 6million internet viewers. Nippon TV is extending the live feed time of about 10 Yomiuri Giants games of the Central League pro baseball to 1seg cell phones over and beyond the time allocated to the terrestrial broadcasting this season. In the city of Hiroshima, western Japan, the local terrestrial station RCC Broadcasting company began full live feed of about 20 home games of the local pro ball club Hiroshima Carp of the Central League via its mobile phone site, ‘RCC Hiroshima Carp,’ for about US$3 a game. Such moves by broadcasters and ISPs to live-distribute pro ball games from start to finish to Internet users is a reaction to the long standing, infamous practice of terrestrial networks’ cutting off live broadcasting of such games before the games end because of the pre-set time frame allocated to the game. Cable and satellite sports channels increased their subscribers simply by showing these games in full from start to finish, thus establishing an advantage over the time constrained terrestrial networks over the years. Among the anime houses, GDH of Gonzo anime brand is pioneering to test an open-pricing business model as an option in the online overseas distribution of Tower of Druaga – the Aegis of URUK- and Blassreiter. The two anime titles were released on terrestrial TV stations in limited areas in Japan in April, exclusive internet distribution on USEN’s GyaO network in Japan, and via Crunchyroll.com website for overseas viewers at the same time. It will be with the San Francisco-based Crunchyroll site where viewers are to determine what they pay for the anime episode. Shochiku, Japan’s oldest movie studio that also owns kabuki theaters, is putting more force behind internet distribution of its own movie titles plus imported movies. Shochiku has distribution rights in Japan, first with KDDI’s video distribution service, Movie Splash, then gradually expanding service outlets to accommodate 20 or more titles. With its own movie streaming business Cinelier launched in December, 2006, and film shows of New York Metropolitan opera numbers at Shochiku theaters, the movie studio seems determined to expand its presence in the cyber space. The Kadokawa group, a relatively new media group that owns Daiei Studio and imported movie distributor Herald Japan, among others, is also aggressively pursuing internet and cell phone distribution of content in partnership with Google US and NTT Docomo in Japan. The group’s Kadokawa Mobile is preparing some 1,500 titles of Kadokawa content, including anime, music, movies and dramas, as ‘i Movie Gate’ for distribution to NTT Docomo cell phones on a membership basis, charging US$5 to US$10 a month. Walt Disney Japan that began its own mobile business in Japan working with Softbank Mobile in March is aggressively seeking partnerships with local ISPs and anime houses to maximize the impact of its branded characters on broadband channels as well. It launched a Disney game site on Yahoo PC portal, which is accessed by an average of 50 million PC users a month, in collaboration with Yahoo in April, two months after the two parties began joint operation on cell phone portal. Disney operates Disney Mobile on a MVNO format, without having its own phone network. Disney, in its fifth year of Disney Channel operation in Japan is also prepared for joint anime production with local anime houses like Toei Animation and Mad House for global distribution down the road.