Japanese TV? Not Anymore They Don't!

This story makes me go, "Hmmmm?" Several Japanese TV manufacturers have stopped making TVs in Japan. This is truly the decline and fall of Japanese civilization!

I have already written about how high energy costs are going to force many factories to close especially if TEPCO is forced to raise electricity charges for these factories. For more on that, please refer to Japan's Collapse Will be Absolute and it Cannot be Stopped - Here's Why:

All one needs to do to see what that hollowing out has done to the middle class in America is to get on an airplane and fly to, say, Detroit to see what is left of industry there. It's not rocket science, but where's there's no industry, there are no jobs.

That is the future we are heading for in this country and I see no way out. Zerohedge writes in: A New Beginning in Japan: Glimmers of False Hope:

TEPCO, the bailed out owner of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, is trying to shove rate increases of 17% down the throats of its commercial customers—while rationing power at the same time. Power shortages will spread across most of Japan this summer as the last of 54 nuclear power plants will be taken off line in a few weeks. 

... Hitachi, a major Japanese TV manufacturer has already closed doors on TV production in Japan. Now this?

Toshiba drops Japan TV operations amid falling prices, global competition

Toshiba said Thursday it has stopped making televisions in Japan, citing slow domestic demand as falling prices, fierce global competition and a strong yen pressure the country’s electronics makers.

The IT-and-engineering conglomerate shuttered production lines at its last remaining domestic TV plant in Fukaya, near Tokyo, at the end of March, a company spokesman told AFP.

Toshiba, the maker of the Regza brand of televisions, has shifted all of its television production to factories in China, Indonesia, Egypt and Poland, he said, adding: “The fall in domestic demand is the reason.”

The move is the latest development highlighting the plunging fortunes of Japan’s once world-beating electronics firms.

A strong yen, intense global competition—particularly from South Korean firms—and falling retail prices of televisions have left Japanese manufacturers swimming in red ink for the financial year that ended in March.

The industry received a temporary boost from a now-ended government stimulus program aimed at encouraging the purchase of energy-efficient appliances, but demand has slackened in an economy that has been limping along for many years.

Domestic television demand also surged when the nation stopped analogue broadcasting last July, by which time nearly all households and corporations had bought new televisions capable of receiving digital broadcasts.

On top of low demand, I'm absolutely sure that the higher electricity costs played a major role in Toshiba's decision. 


There are two issues at play here. The problem of high energy costs in Japan (and they are going to go higher) and the collapse of the TV viewing audience in Japan. For more on that please refer to "Why the Digital Conversion Will Destroy TV Tokyo and TBS."


TV as a hardware industry and as entertainment vehicle have a poor future in Japan. The other two TV manufacturers in Japan, Sony and Panasonic, haven't thrown in the towel, but are attempting to tie up with South Korean manufacturers...


The time's they are a changing! If you had told people 20 years ago that the Japanese would not be manufacturing TVs today, everyone would have thought you were nuts.... What is Japan? Geisha, samurai, sushi... and TV sets.

TV isn't Dead... It Just Smells Bad!

Just returning from a trip to the USA whereby I spent the last week trying to help out a primary caregiver with my very ill father on hospice. 


It was/is a terrible situation and I hope that you don't have to go through this with any of your parents soon. But many will, so before that, won't you take one minute to take a look at this short message concerning that subject?


While there, I made some observations about television. It wasn't hard to do. I was staying at a household with my now 80-year-old father and his 80-year old live-in partner and caregiver where the TV was on from the first thing in the morning to the last thing, besides the kitchen light, to be turned off at night before bed.


Observing these folks watching TV was painful. The primary caregiver was constantly talking to the TV as if the conversation were all hers (seriously) and my dad was constantly complaining about how idiotic the TV was... Yet, on the TV stayed.... 


The situation with the TV on forever drove me crazy!


That house is, in my opinion, the typical TV household of the year 2011 and beyond. It represents the core of who are TV's main viewers today and it also represents why TV, in its current configuration, is dead. I've written about it before in "Part Two: Why the Digital Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo and TBS":


These are folks who have seen TV all their lives. The Internet is still a new thing to them. My in-laws are the kinds of folks who turn on the TV when they wake up in the morning and leave it on all day whether they are watching it or not. They are terrestrial TV's prime audience.

Why are these people the typical prime target for a station like TV Tokyo or TBS? Think about it.

Who has the time to sit around and really watch TV for 2 or 3 hours a day, everyday (like people did 30 years ago)? Well, the only people who do have the time to do so are either:

1) Inactive
2) Poor
3) Retired or aged
4) Handicapped or ill

Think about that. Now, if you were a sponsor, would you spend money on TV advertising for people who fit any of the descriptions above? No. You wouldn't.

That's one huge problem for these dinosaur TV stations that have thousands of employees and a dropping revenue base.


This problem is universal. Perhaps countries like India or China haven't (nor will they???) face these challenges... (But I know that in India, people still use 45 rpm records and cassette tapes, so maybe they will someday soon!)


Japan and the USA are in the same boat, though, when it comes to TV. Here are some things I noticed while in the USA that just confirmed and consolidated my opinion on that:


TV in the USA is now playing a defensive strategy that I have seen stations play in Japan. It is a strategy doomed to failure. I have seen this with my own eyes and even argued this point against program directors and station managers as far back as 1998.


The strategy that these stations are trying can't possibly work in the long run. It goes like this: The audience of TV viewers is shrinking. So, instead of pursuing an aggressive policy to reach out to younger people and gather new viewers and a new audience, the stations pursue a defensive strategy to prevent erosion of their current audience (old people). The stations will, instead of making efforts to attract new viewers, will make efforts to keep their old veiwers and prevent them from switching channels to the other competing station (who is pursuing the same policies). This might be fine, but when you realize that your core audience is numbers 1 ~ 4 above, this is not an audience that is growing. This is an audience that is dying off and shrinking.


Now, it doesn't take a genius to realize that this sort of strategy is a sure-fire way to fail. Most promising new business plans attack new, growing markets; not old and shrinking ones.


A good piece of evidence for this is the many FM radio stations that are still playing Bob Seeger, Journey, Foreigner and Steve Miller Band; the same music they were playing 30 years ago! The current sad financial state of today's FM stations - in Japan and the USA - is a testament to the failure of this policy.


My conclusions about network TV in the USA pursuing this policy were reinforced by the commercials I saw. They were very heavily geared to an older audience. One particularly memorable commercial was for a boxed set of DVD's of Shirley Temple movies. Now, I like Shirley Temple as much as the next movie fan (OK, maybe not that much) but for lack of a better description, when I saw the commercial, I thought, "This is not 'cool'!" 


Now, who in the world would want to buy a Shirley Temple boxed set of movies? Anyone under 50-years-old? No? How about under 70? How about 75? 


One of the stations that my ill father and his caregiver watched constantly was ABC. I surmise that their favorite TV show is Good Morning America that has been on since before I moved to Japan in 1984. This show has definitely declined in quality and popularity (I could deduce that by watching shots of the audience). The main host Regis Philbin is retiring so he has good timing. These stations are trying to do anything to pump some life into their lifeless format but it fails miserably. 


It used to be only on late night TV like David Letterman that when the station returned from a TV commercial, would the audience scream and yell while clapping. But now, even on the morning TV shows, they do that. It used to be just polite clapping on morning shows. Now, it's a bunch of people yelping and screaming like a high school sports match or American Idol (which is the intelligence level of this nonsense).

It might have been OK to have these people screaming loudly like a bunch of junior high school kids excepting that one time, on Good Morning America, they foolishly showed the audience and there weren't twenty people standing there. Probably most people don't notice that, but I caught it immediately.


Twenty years ago, it would have been a few hundred people trying to gain their 15 seconds of fame. Now? 


In a related note, as I predicted long ago, many Japanese have turned away from TV. I predicted that the digital conversion would see Japanese TV stations voluntarily throw away 20 ~ 30% of their core audeince. Some people scoffed. I had written in Why the Digital Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo and TBS:

It seems obvious to me that there's no doubt about it...  Basically:

1) People with money do not watch TV
2) The only people who do watch a lot of TV have either no money or too much time on their hands; they are not active
3) Advertising to people with no money and who are not active is a waste of money.
4) When digital goes online fully, then the only people who don't have the digital equipment are poor people
5) Poor people are the only ones who watch TV Tokyo and TBS now (see #2 above)

The countdown has begun. The digital TV conversion will kill TV Tokyo and TBS.

People aren't scoffing about what I predicted anymore. The TV people are panicking. It has happened and is happening right before your very eyes. The end of an era is upon us. TV, as we have know it for decades, is on its last legs and there is no one in that business (that I have met) who understands he problem enough to fix it. It is too late. The audience is gone.

Japan has lost a huge slice of existing viewers by cutting them off from digitial. They will not return. The USA still has the fashionable senior citizen crowd on Medicaid and Medicare....  

Japanese Are Turning Off the TVs.


Tokyo-- The Japanese, once one of the most TV-addicted people on the planet, are drifting away from the tube -- forcing networks to scramble for other sources of revenue, from pic production, satellite services, Internet streaming sites and other new technologies.

Daily TV viewing time, which averaged more than five hours in the 1970s, shrank to 3 hours and 28 minutes by 2010, according to figures compiled by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute.

Males aged 10 to 20 are watching less than two hours a day.

Meanwhile, program ratings have been trending downward for terrestrial networks, pubcaster NHK and commercial rivals TV Asahi, NTV, TBS, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo, despite spikes for major sport events and other special programming.

In June not one show on commercial TV in the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. "Golden Time" slot won a rating of 10 or above -- once considered the minimum for survival.

Even long-running shows that once seemed immortal have either been axed or are on the brink. One that recently got the heave-ho after 43 seasons is period drama "Mito komon," which bowed in 1969. At its peak, the show's ratings reached as high as 43.7, but recently it has struggled to achieve double digits. Its last episode will air in December on MBS, an affiliate of TBS.

Various causes have been advanced for the ratings slide. Like other countries, Japanese families no longer sit around the TV watching the same show, as viewers did in the industry's 1960-to-1990s heyday. The Japanese now consume entertainment on a range of platforms, including PCs, smartphones and game consoles.

Also, an estimated 100,000 households, including a lot of elderly "Mito komon" fans, failed to make the switch from analog to digital in July, and have effectively given up TV entirely.

But the biggest cause, says Hiro Otaka, a media analyst for the Bunka Tsushin entertainment news services, is that "the programs have become boring."

Otaka blames network execs who have responded to falling ratings by cutting costs and hedging their bets.

There is no media in the world who can survive when the under 30-year-old crowd do not care about it. Can't be done. And under 30-year-old in Japan definitely do not care about TV... Come to think of it, why should they?


TV isn't dead... Yet. It just smells really bad.

Japanese TV Drama on for 38 Years Comes to an End?

Well, a milestone has been passed and another chapter in people's lives comes to a close. One of the longest running TV dramas in television history comes to a close here in Japan. 

San-nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei (3rd Grade, B Group, Mr. Kinpachi's class) that has been on for 38 years in Japan is coming to an end. 


Kyodo News announces:


The TV drama series "Sannen B-gumi Kimpachi Sensei," which deals with timely social issues through the lives of a public junior high school teacher and his students, will conclude this spring after airing intermittently for 32 years.


In the final episode, expected to be aired in late March, the main character, Kimpachi Sakamoto, will leaveSakura Junior High School as he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 60.


"I feel sadness and a sense of relief of taking a load off my mind at the same time," said Tetsuya Takeda,the 61-year-old actor who plays the role of Kimpachi.


The Tokyo Broadcasting System Television Inc. drama series started in October 1979, featuring then up-and-coming teen idols Masahiko Kondo, Toshihiko Tahara, and other young actors and actresses.


The stories based on scripts written by Mieko Osanai have sparked debate in Japanese society, raising issues such as teenage pregnancy, school violence, bullying and gender identity disorder among others.


The final episode of the first series aired in March 1980 secured an audience rating of 39.9 percent in theKanto region including Tokyo, but the long-running series has also been criticized for having fallen into a rut.


snip 


The final episode in March is expected to focus on the last several months of Kimpachi's career and the school life of his students who are nervous ahead of taking high school entrance exams



Actually, I think that this might be the longest running TV drama in television history that starred the same main actor, Tetsuya Takeda, for all the entire 38 years of its running. If anyone knows of a longer one please add it to the comments section.





The influence this program has had on Japanese society cannot be overstated. When my wife found out about the cancellation, she grew melancholy, and started reminiscing about how she watched that show with her family and how even one of her classmates appeared in one episode.


The show also was a launching pad for the careers of many famous Japanese stars.


Heck, I never watched the show, but I blogged once about a bunch of the funniest Japanese TV commercials that  I had ever seen. Watch those here. They are hilarious. Those were influenced and a parody of San-nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei. How many TV dramas have you heard of that were so popular that they spawned TV commercials parodies?


I can't think of any others.


While it has been announced that San-nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei is finished after all these years... And many people are sad about it. Do not fret too much. After all, whenever people graduate - especially  in Japan, they always have class reunions.


I'll bet you a half a bento that we will be seeing a class reunion of San-nen B Gumi Kinpachi Sensei within the next 5 to 10 years.... If TBS can survive that long. 

Major Television Stations in Japan on Death's Doorstep

The major terrestrial TV stations in Japan are in big trouble. On July 24, 2011, they will stop broadcasting analogue and start digital broadcasting. On that day they will lose at least 30% of their viewing audience. If they are losing money now, what will they do when the estimated 30% of the people who do not own a digital tuner drop off?

I have written extensively, during 2010, about the coming collapse of TV Tokyo, TBS TV and TV Asahi in Japan before. Read those articles here, here and here.

Now, after spending five days at my in-laws house this New Year's I can definitely attest to the coming demise with anecdotal evidence.

Booooooooring

My father in-law is 72-years-old. My mother-in-law is 68. These folks are typical prime target audience for a station like TV Tokyo.

These are folks who have seen TV all their lives. The Internet is still a new thing to them. My in-laws are the kinds of folks who turn on the TV when they wake up in the morning and leave it on all day whether they are watching it or not. They are terrestrial TV's prime audience.

Why are these people the typical prime target for a station like TV Tokyo or TBS? Think about it.

Who has the time to sit around and really watch TV for 2 or 3 hours a day, everyday (like people did 30 years ago)? Well, the only people who do have the time to do so are either:

1) Inactive
2) Poor
3) Retired or aged
4) Handicapped or ill

Think about that. Now, if you were a sponsor, would you spend money on TV advertising for people who fit any of the descriptions above? No. You wouldn't.

That's one huge problem for these dinosaur TV stations that have thousands of employees and a dropping revenue base.

In fact, I was told that, in TV Tokyo's case, their sales are dropping by 5% a month and they are losing more than one million dollars a month.

But there's another, more subtle problem that I have discovered during this New Year's visit that makes me want to share it with you; it used to be, that coming to the in-laws house drove me crazy as they, like I mentioned, would watch TV all the time.

At my house, we do not have a TV and I do not want my 7-year-old son watching it. So, it would pain me whenever we visited the in-laws as the TV was on constantly....

Not this year. We have been here for 5 days now and they only turned on the TV 3 times that I saw, and each time was just for 10 or 15 minutes. Then they'd turn it off. After coming here annually for the last 15 years or so, this recent behavior had me curious so I asked my father-in-law what was going on. I asked him why they hadn't been watching TV like they did before. I was wondering if they were being kind to us as they know we don't watch TV and don't approve of our son watching it either...

Well, it wasn't anything like I was expecting. My father-in-law told me that they didn't watch TV like before because he said, "The Internet is more interesting."

I was so surprised. Of course, I'd agree. Yesterday, when my family and in-laws all went outside for a few hours, I grew curious. I mean, they have this expensive new-fangled system, yet they don't watch as much as they used to? Hmm....I sat here doing some work and then I watched TV for 20 minutes or so to see what the new system was like.

My in-laws have a brand new plasma TV and they get all the analogue channels and Chidigi (the analogue stations on digital) and both BS and CS digital. I flipped through the stations for a while and thought (as I usually do with TV) "Who'd watch this crap?"

I think the BS and CS stations have a chance to survive as most of these stations are small and have staffs that number under 100 people. But the Chidigi stations, like TV Tokyo or TBS, that have well over 1,000 employees are dead.

Just because their signal is digital, people are not going to watch the same old crap. Hello TV Tokyo, TBS and TV Asahi! The problem is not your platform, the problem is your content; it sucks and is boring.

On top of that, some of the channels asked for "pay per view" yet they were showing movie like "Kramer vs. Kramer." No joke! No one is going to pay for that! Why not rent it or watch it on Youtube? At with those you can watch it when you want - with no commercials!

I did watch a bit of some other movie about the CIA but gave up after 20 minutes because of commercials.

After flipping through the channels a while and seeing lots of Shopping TV and commercials, I turned the TV off. Not only was the content the same old boring stuff, but, the tuning system is confusing... Instead of one block of channels to pick from, you now have three...

It's not convenient at all.

If older folks like my in-laws have turned away from TV; if 30% of the TV audience is dropping off this July; if the content is going to be the same old thing; and Japan's economy stays in the doldrums - which it will. Then I stick by my predictions:

TV Tokyo, TBS and TV Asahi will not survive 2015 in their current configuration. Expect TV Tokyo and TBS to go bankrupt first.

What happened?

1) No one has time to sit around and watch TV anymore.
2) TV demands that you adjust your schedule to fit theirs. That doesn't work anymore.
3) Minor stations only have to support 40 ~ 80 workers. Big stations need to support thousands. There is no revenue base for that anymore.
4) Other forms of entertainment are much more satisfying and time-flexible.

Considering the above and now, throw in the older folks coming to the conclusions that TV isn't interesting anymore then, there you have it.

Are there any stations that will do well? Yep. I predict that Cartoon Network will always do well.

Bizarre Japanese Surveys: 72% of 20-some-year-old girls would date men over 40!

In Japan, surveys are very popular. The Japanese love to know just what percentage of the population they fit into. Be it where people like to go or what they like to do or what they think about this or that, the average Japanese, it seems, finds comfort in knowing that they are not alone in their views... No matter how silly the surveys get.

Here's one that was done by the Japan Times that had two things that I thought were interesting. See if you can find the two:

• 72% of women in their 20s who were polled by Yomeishu Seizo Co. replied that they would consider a relationship with an older man aged between 44 and 62 years old.
• 71% of those who responded to a survey by ishare Inc. said that they have already purchased the necessary equipment to view digital television.
• 68% of respondents surveyed by Japan.Internet.com and Goo Research said that they do not read the license agreements before installing new software.
• 44% of women who responded to a poll by Nikkei Woman Online said the first international destination they intend to visit from Haneda Airport’s new international terminal is Paris.
• 33% of people in a survey by ishare Inc.  said that they had something that was discovered by their mothers that they didn’t want to be found; 39.6% of this group responded that what they didn’t want to be found were books.

Of course it is the first two. Really? 72% of women in their 20's would consider a relationship with an older man between 44 and 62 years old!?

Maybe I should start going back to the sport gym! Do you think my wife will give me the money so that I can run around with a girl younger than my own daughter?

"Really? You'd date me?.. Ok, well, can you also lend me a dollar?" 

(writer's image girl - left)

And the second one: 71% of those surveyed said that they had already bought digital equipment to view digital TV. Aha! That is another piece of evidence that verifies what I wrote a few months back that the digital conversion is going to bankrupt TV Tokyo, TBS and TV Asahi.

If you want to read that blog and check the rationale, see here: http://modernmarketingjapan.blogspot.com/2010/08/marketing-japan-why-digital-tv.html

Part 2: Why the Digital TV Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo & TBS ...

Analogue TV will end broadcasting in Japan on July 24, 2011. I have written before that this will signal the end - and quick collapse - of TV Tokyo and TBS TV in their current configuration here in Japan. This is part two of why I firmly believe that TV Tokyo and TBS won't survive, in their current form, past 2015 and my proof for believing so.

On the surface, the reason that TBS TV and TV Tokyo won't long survive a digital conversion is that they are last in ratings even now. Sometimes, TV Tokyo gets a mere 1% of total TV viewers. That's terrible for a city like Tokyo that has 35 million households and only 5 terrestrial private TV stations.

They certainly will get even lower ratings when there are, not just 4 other private TV stations competing with them, but over 300 stations competing with them. I wrote about that in a previous blog:

...the stations like TV Tokyo and TBS are all crowing about their new digital channel... The content is still the same. Only the broadcasting platform has changed. What makes them think that just by changing platforms that their ratings and income are going to increase? Good question. If anything, their viewership is going to decline due to more choices being offered and some people opting out of buying an expensive new TV (at my home, we opted out of TV over seven years ago and haven't missed it once. I wrote about not having a TV and the benefits of that here and here.)

Today, TV Tokyo's ratings are dead last and they are losing millions of dollars a year and having to borrow massive amounts of money from banks to stay afloat. How long will banks keep lending them money?


...What makes TV Tokyo management think that, when digital goes online, and the competition increases one-hundred fold, that their fortunes will get better? 

Once the digital conversion happens, I estimate that TV Tokyo and TBS TV will lose at least another 30% of their audience. I also believe that my figures are conservative. Read on and I'll show you how I come to that conclusion using existing government, NHK and private company statistics as evidence.

From the Japan Times (July 30, 2010):

According to a survey conducted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications last March, 83.3 percent of Japanese households now receive digital TV signals. However, an NHK survey carried out two months earlier found this number to be only 63.7 percent, and a private research company quoted in the Yomiuri Shimbun said it was “less than 70 percent.”


Get that? The government says, "83.7 percent" of all households receive digital TV signals; NHK (a branch of the government) says "63.7 percent" and Yomiuri Shimbun says "less than 70%"! There's a huge difference between 63% and 84%. Something has got to give here.

I think this government figure of 83.7% is pure and complete nonsense. I think the private research is probably the closest to the truth but still exaggerrated...

In Japanese, this is called the "Minami Kanto Mondai" (Southern Kanto area problem). The Southern Kanto area problem is due to a very low percentage of homes having digital equipment (due to being  very low income and not being able to afford luxuries like digital tuners).

Besides the above consideration, in recent reports, it has become common knowledge around the world that Japan has a serious economic problem and that more than 15% of the people live below the poverty line. This is another critical factor in considering what is going to happen once the digital conversion is complete.  As the NY Times reported:

Many Japanese, who cling to the popular myth that their nation is uniformly middle class, were further shocked to see that Japan’s poverty rate, at 15.7 percent 

Just with that information, you know the government statistics are complete and totally cocked. People who are out struggling to make ends meet everyday are not out buying digital equipment that costs thousands of dollars a set. If 15.7 percent of the people are at "poverty line" then that means that, if you believe the government stats, then nearly every single person in Japan who is not on the poverty line has a digital tuner!?

What a load of rubbish!

In my own "Mike in Tokyo Rogers" informal survey, I registered 6 homes out of 10 that have satellite - I went around and knocked on doors and asked - and I took my survey in an upper-class neighborhood. If I include the one 10 unit apartment building that only has 2 satellite dishes, then we have 8 homes out of 20 (40%).

Consider these figures with the fact that more than 50% of the Japanese population lives in apartments - that do not normally have satellite TV (and are TBS and TV Tokyo's core bread and butter audience) - you can see where TV Tokyo and TBS are about to shut the spigot on possibly half their viewers.

Don't forget the fact that upper-middle class income families have been demonstrated to watch less TV per person, per week, than their middle-class income family counter-parts and you have TBS and TV Tokyo setting themselves up for a serious crash.

Oh, yes, I think TBS and TV Tokyo are in for a big surprise in their annual report to shareholders in mid 2012. I think current management are going to be out of jobs very soon.

Once you understand the above, you can see how - using simple math - TV Tokyo and TBS will lose at least 20% of their current audience from July 2011! They are losing money now. What are they going to do when 20% of their viewers disappear?

This 20% drop figure also has nothing to do with an increase in competition from other TV stations. It has to do completely with the fact that, in spite of the government spin, most likely, less than 80% of all Japanese households have digital equipment! In fact, the real numbers are far worse.

Depending on who you believe, I'd estimate that at the most, only 60% of the Japanese public has digital equipment. Go to any middle or lower class neighborhood that has huge apartments or "Danchi" and consider that fact that these dwellings do not have satellite TV! Even if it were an 80% penetration... TV Tokyo's ratings are last today. What's going to happen when they voluntarily throw away at least 20% ~ 30% of their audience?

At a "danchi" (apartment) in  Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima You can count that only  4 of 24 apartments have digital TV.  That's only 16%

You might be saying now, "Those fools!" (there are more than a few of us who have been saying this for a few years) but it is too late. There's no turning back now. They've sold the farm on this digital bet. They've borrowed more money than they could ever pay back (sound familiar?).

The Japan Times reports:

NHK and the commercial stations have together spent ¥1.5 trillion to convert to digital, and the nation has contributed another ¥200 billion to the project. 

$1.5 trillion yen is about $17,000,000,000.00 (17 billion dollars!) NHK can get away with this because they are a blood-sucking parasitical publicly owned broadcasting station; no matter what happens to them, the tax payer will be forced to bail them out... But the private stations? Ha! Good luck with that!

With the economy in the doldrums and no relief on the horizon, people are not about to fork out several hundred dollars for digital equipment.

Why would they? Why would anyone think that they will? The digital equipment has already been available for years already in Japan and, still, to this very day, some surveys show that less than 70% of all households have digital equipment. Everyone has known for at least 10 years that the best TV is on digital, yet they didn't buy the equipment.

Why didn't people buy the equipment before? I figure it's because of one of six reasons (or maybe a bit of all six):

1) TV sucks, er, I mean, TV is boring

2) Digital equipment is too expensive for TV (see #1)

3) The Internet is much more interesting

4) DVD rental and things like Youtube are killing TV (and are much cheaper and more satisfying)

5) Young people want to play computer games and Internet and have no time for TV

6) Cell phones are more fun and personal for youth

It seems obvious to me that there's no doubt about it...  Basically:

1) People with money do not watch TV
2) The only people who do watch a lot of TV have either no money or too much time on their hands; they are not active
3) Advertising to people with no money and who are not active is a waste of money.
4) When digital goes online fully, then the only people who don't have the digital equipment are poor people
5) Poor people are the only ones who watch TV Tokyo and TBS now (see #2 above)

6) Internet TV is going to dominate the vewers habits.

I'd like to touch on that last point #6. I totally believe that the Internet is going to spell the death knell for the TV stations as they stand now. And that includes Fuji TV and NHK. Why? Because these old TV stations (and FM stations) are dinosaurs.

Someday soon, Podcasting is going to become super popular (the seeds are being sown now) and the big difference is that, no matter what, TV costs money to watch (not just electricity) but also TV Tokyo has more than 1000 employees at this very moment.

Some Podcaster is coming and is going to blow them away with viewership and that podcaster will have only himself and perhaps one other person to pay for. How in the world can a company compete with a lone individual with millions of viewers and basically no overhead when the TV stations have to pay the salaries of 1000 people? They won't.

They cannot possibly pay that money. The sponsors will have their own Internet TV or pay 1/100th the cost of regular TV advertising.

The countdown has begun. The digital TV conversion will put the TV stations in the coffin. The Internet will nail the coffins closed.
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Keywords: TV Tokyo, TBS, Mike Rogers, Marketing Japan, Digital, digital conversion, NHK, Yomiuri, analogue, Mike in Tokyo Rogers

Marketing Japan: Yahoo Japan Starts Long Decline...

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

What did I tell you? When those fools at Yahoo Japan decided to throw in the towel to Google and start using Google's search engine, I said it was the beginning of Yahoo Japan becoming an "also-ran." Now we have Yahoo Japan making excuses, sputtering out "spin"by making statements claiming that they are going to remain "competitive."

Yahoo Japan is following Myspace... You'll see.

From the Japan Times article "Yahoo Japans Vows to Stay Competitive":

Yahoo Japan Corp. will remain competitive with Google Inc. even after adopting Google's Internet search engine and online ad technology, because the two firms will use their own editing and advertising policies, Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue said. "We will operate the search engine under an editing policy that is independent (of Google's) and also have different screening criteria when it comes to advertising," Inoue told reporters, dismissing criticism by Microsoft Corp. that the Yahoo Japan-Google tieup is anticompetitive.

Forget about what Microsoft is saying. Read in between the lines. Microsoft doesn't give a hoot about Yahoo Japan anymore, they are a lost cause, Microsoft only cares about Google's rapidly growing dominant position in Japan. A dominant position that, I might add, has quickly become irresistible.

By the way Microsoft owns Yahoo Inc. (USA) and Yahoo Inc. owns 37% of Yahoo Japan. So Microsoft must be be really steamed about this Japan deal!)

I suggest this for Yahoo Japan's new logo: A long decline.

You can also disregard what Yahoo Japan president Masahiro Inoue says too... This nonsense about remaining competitive due to a difference in Yahoo Japan having an "editing policy" different than Google is just that; nonsense.

A different "editing policy"? Right. When ad revenues are hard to come by, and you have voluntarily become second rate, you are going to start denying people who walk into your doors with money to spend?

Guffaw! 

If Yahoo Japan is going to use Google's search engine, then Google will always at least a one step advantage on Yahoo Japan. If you are an advertiser, why go for the second choice unless you don't have money for the first choice?

This means that Google will get the first tier sponsors and Yahoo Japan will get second tier or less.

When any media stops getting the best advertisers, look at what happens to them, especially in Japan. For evidence of this, one need look no further than the television examples of TV Tokyo or TBS TV. The number one TV station in Japan, Fuji TV has ads for Toyota, Nissan, Canon cameras and copiers, high end household goods like Panasonic refrigerators and HD TVs... TV Tokyo has ads for discount car insurance, pachinko parlors and local businesses like Parrot Cage Emporium.

It's rare to see high end goods advertised on TV Tokyo. 

When Yahoo Japan switches to the competitor's search engine, it's game over for them... Regardless of how they try to spin it.

See original Japan Times article here.

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Keywords: Google, Yahoo Japan, Microsoft, Japan, Tokyo, Panasonic, Mike in Tokyo Rogers, Marketing Japan, Mike Rogers, Nissan, Tokyo, Canon, TV Tokyo, Fuji TV, TBS, television, Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue

One More Phase in the Shattering of Mainstream Media

By Mike in Tokyo Rogers

I rode the Tokyo subway today and saw a sign inside the car that notified the passengers that as of July 24, 2011, terrestrial television stations will no longer broadcast analogue signals in Japan and will finally make the switch to digital.

This signals what could be the final nail in the coffin of many of the FM radio stations in this country and the collapse of TV Tokyo and TBS.

I predict that InterFM will either be bankrupt or sold to a new owner by 2014 and TV Tokyo will be in the same situation: insolvent or absorbed by another company by 2016.

I'd like to explain why in this post but first let me give you some important details involving the background of broadcast signals so that you may have a better understanding and why I think this way. Let's see if you come to the same conclusions that I have.

Let's start with AM and FM radio.

AM is called "Amplitude Modulation" and its signal is wavy. When an AM signal comes to an obstacle like a mountain or a tall building, it bounces off of it in many directions and continues going. This is why, in many areas of the United States, there are some AM stations whose broadcasts can be heard over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) away. The AM signal is like an ocean wave so, if there are no mountains to make the signal deflect into the heavens, the signals will bounce along the earth's surface.

This makes AM radio great for talk and the friend of people who drive long-distance trucks.

FM is called "Frequency Modulation" and it goes in a straight line. When an FM signal hits a mountain, tall building or other obstacle, it stops. We've all had the experience that our favorite FM station drops off when we go through a tunnel or through a valley. That's the shortcoming of FM radio.

What many people do not know is that terrestrial TV uses the same FM frequency for its broadcasts too.

People who were brought up in Japan may remember from their childhood small portable transistor radio that had the AM / FM band on them but also played TV channels NHK and NHK Educational (1 & 3).  If you understand that analogue TV uses FM frequency to broadcast, then you now understand why those old transistor radio's had TV channels on them.

This is important so keep this in mind.

On July 24, 2011, the TV channels will stop broadcasting analogue signals. What this really means is that they will stop using the FM band for transmitting their services and go to terrestrial digital.

FM, Frequency Modulation, is a broadcast wave. Digital broadcasting is not a wave at all. Digital broadcasting is a completely different technology. Digital broadcasting is not a wave, it is binary data.

I suppose that some of you have seen binary data before. It's a series of zero's and one's and looks something like this:

00110010111100101101001110100010000100001000001

00110001000011101110001010101001001000100111000

01011110111101111011011111110010001000001101010

That is binary data. The reason why digital broadcasting is so clear and high quality is that, with binary data, it is either "on" or "off" unlike an AM or FM signal that can be blocked or deflected by tall buildings, mountains or even trees. Binary Data is crystal clear.

Now, how does this spell the end of FM radio? Bear with me here, cause now we're getting to the nitty gritty.

The future of FM radio doesn't lay in what they broadcast or how they up the ante of quality of content (but, of course, it will always be a competition between stations for dwindling audience and sponsorship dollars)...

The future of FM radio depends on what Toyota does.

That's right. Toyota is the one who decides what is going to happen. In my opinion, it is obvious that FM  is is serious trouble and that we are now witnessing the end of an era; and it's happening, in slow motion, right in front of our eyes.

But, don't take my word for it, decide for yourself. Let me explain further...

Think about this: Where do most people listen to FM radio? In cars, right?

The Japanese government and all the big manufacturers in this country, Sony, Panasonic, etc. (who, by the way, all have an incestuous relationship with each other and Toyota in stock holdings) are pushing for the digital conversion big time. These manufacturers need their flagging fortunes to get an injection of sales and profits that new broadcasting and new equipment will generate. Digital equipment costs anywhere from $500 - $2,000 (USD) a set. The Japanese manufacturers want and need for the Japanese public to go whole-hog into digital broadcasting. They need the public to dispose of their analogue equipment and buy the new digital equipment... (By the way, a cursory check of analogue equipment at Bic Camera the other day - what little I could find - showed that all the analogue products were all manufactured outside of Japan).

If digital broadcasting is a failure in this country, then it's going to hurt Japanese manufacturing for a very long time... The analogue equipment I saw was all manufactured in Malaysia, Indonesia, and I found some from Taiwan (which was surprising).

Now, how does Toyota fit into this equation?

Imagine your car dashboard. It has a GPS, CD player, and television/radio set all built together. Most people have an analogue device (with terrible TV reception!) From July 2011 there will be no cars that come with that device. They will all be digital.

After July 2011, on your dashboard, you will have a digital GPS, Internet, digital TV and digital radio. Want to do Social Media, YouTube, Twitter, U-Stream, blog? Got you covered. Need to Google or Yahoo search? Sure. When you need traffic conditions, just a click on your GPS will give you up to the minute details on traffic and road conditions. All the TV channels? No problem. Throw on top of that 6 digital radio channels and, of course, a CD player and probably an iPod connection, and you have the next generation of car entertainment system. (In Japan, as of now, there are 6 digital radio channels that are shown on CS or BS television. These channels broadcast soft jazz and classical music).

Toyota HD Digital Screen. 

All sorts of fun things like iPod, digital TV and digital radio... 

Do you see FM or AM radio? I don't

Remember I wrote that digital signals are binary data and analogue is a broadcasting wave? This is important now.

I ask you, dear reader, to consider; Since Sony, Panasonic, etc. and companies like Toyota and Nissan all have an incestuous relationship as to stock holdings and company ownership, and they desperately need to have the Japanese public buy their digital devices that cost at least $500 each... And digital devices receive binary data and are not analogue compatible... Do you think that Toyota will cut a hole in your dashboard, just under your $500 digital GPS, TV, Internet, radio device in order to install a $1 dollar made in Indonesia FM tuner?

I don't, and I think it is insane to think otherwise. Actually, the notion is laughable, isn't it?

So, if people can no longer hear FM radio in their cars, then where are they going to listen to it? In the subways with their white earplugs through their iPods and iPhones?... Get serious. Nobody does that now!

If there are any folks reading this who remember how popular short wave was way back when compared to what it is today, then they have a good idea what I think the future of FM radio in Japan looks like....

No FM radio in the car spells doom for the FM stations because if no one can listen in their car, then FM will have no listeners at all... No listeners means no sponsors. No sponsors means no money. No money means no FM...

I cannot imagine how they will survive the next 5 ~ 10 years.

If I were a station like J-Wave - that still has good ratings and high listenership - I'd get into negotiations real soon for an open digital radio channel... And, no, the license and digital conversion are not cheap. We're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. The smaller stations will never afford it, so they are dead.

And that's why July 2011 is the last nail in the coffin of FM radio in Japan.

But what about AM radio you say? Ah, that's the interesting contradiction. AM radio will probably survive. Because AM car radio is the bottom of the pit for basic car equipment (besides nothing at all)... Almost every Tokyo Taxi has an AM radio in it. Few have FM radios.

Tomorrow I will explain why this entire situation bodes ill for TV Tokyo and TBS TV.

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Keywords:
Nissan, Tokyo, Pick, Twitter, FM, Toyota, FM radio, Yahoo, U-Stream, J-Wave, Social Media, TV, YouTube, AM, AM radio, blog, blogs, Internet, Japan, digital TV, Panasonic, digital radio, Japan, TV Tokyo, TBS TV, iPod, iPhone, Sony, Google, Tokyo subway