Got the Newest Model of TV? You Have No Privacy Anymore! Your Data is Being Sent to Third Parties With Your Permission!

Been telling people for years to trash their TV sets. Few listen. First wrote about it in Lew Rockwell in an article entitled: "The Plug-in Drug."

My favorite dig at parents who, they themselves say they think TV is bad (but do nothing about it):

"People always say that they love their children and that they will do anything for them. But, for the most part, and from what I’ve seen, it’s not true. There is one thing that they will not do for their children: They haven’t the courage to throw the TV out."

Yep! Parents, often more than children, need the TV because they use it as a baby-sitter or - even though they won't admit it - they are hooked themselves (sports, etc.)

Now, today, here's something I picked up from Karl Denninger (I've paraphrased it for you):

"....I just bought a new TV.  

I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which delivers streaming, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too.

The only problem is that I’m afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs and records everything you do with the unit. It can even turn on while the set is off and record what's going on in your living room.

The unit comes with a warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.” 

Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV."

I don't have a TV in my home and have no intention of ever allowing one in the home... 

Ever wonder why digital TV was/is touted to be such a great thing? 

1) They can sell you more crap you don't need (to watch the very same crap that was on your analogue TV; 

2) You can be tracked and spied upon.

And, no, this isn't illegal. A third party can turn on your microphone and record you from outside. Why? Because it is stated in the Users Agreement and the moment you turned on the set, you approved of it. You approved of this invasion of your privacy, so it isn't illegal.

Whose fault is it if you didn't read the Users Agreement? 

Enjoying your time at home now, in front of the TV?

I sure hope so.

Cool & Strange Music Vol. 1: Japanese Sixties & Seventies TV Shows & Theme Music

(Secret surprise at very bottom of this post!)


Wow! Way cool! Japanese sixties and seventies TV and cool music! Retro world, here I come!

I stumbled on this a minute ago and my wife went crazy. She said that, "Oh! I love these shows! They would come on at night and those were shows for adults and not kids, so it was our bedtime. But we'd watch by peaking through the sliding doors as our parents watched in the living room!"


Funny, eh? Some things are the same all over the world.


Here's some that I found that look and sound really cool (or at least really sixties kitsch or campy). 

This looks like a classic... I can tell just by looking at this that it has superb script writing and acting....Anyone know what show this is?

Here's some that I found that look and sound really cool. I'll ask my wife for comments:

The first one makes me laugh. It's called "G-Men '75":

"G-Men '75" was a drama about, well, G-men. It ran from 1975 ~ 1982. The announcer says these folks were "Hard-boiled" (whatever that means!) My wife says that this drama made her heart "Doki-doki" (heart pound) because these guys were "so cool!"

Next up is the theme from Key Hunter (performed by the Tokyo Panorama Boys). This is definitely very cool and strange music:

What did I tell you? Is that a cool tune, or what? I love that! "Key Hunter" was a drama about international police and it ran from 1968 ~ 1973. 

Then, my wife tells me that the next really famous one was "Taiyo ni Hoero" (Howling at the Sun):

Wow! Taiyo ni Hoero ran for 14 years from 1972 to 1986. It was your typical police show... Well, I guess it can't be that typical, running for 14 years is amazing. 

OK, so let's really go down the rabbit hole. Remember The Guardman? No? Neither do I. But this looks pretty cool. Listen to the end because there are two tunes here:

God! I guess Tokyo traffic was bad even in the sixties! I like how all these police shows always have shot of all these cops walking along in a line. The Guardman ran from 1965 ~ 1971. It was a show about guys working for a private security company.

Sure seemed like the Japanese liked police shows!

Here's one with a really cool theme song. It's called "Hijyono License" (Rough translation: "License to Show No Mercy" or maybe "Cut-throat License"):

Hijyono License ran for seven years from 1973 ~ 1980 and was a spin-off from Key Hunter.

Finally, this last one is hilarious. It is called "Shonen Jet" (Young Jet). The music isn't all that cool but you can see what a creative director with little money but lots of ideas - mostly, er, "borrowed" - from American TV can do.

Cool (50cc) motorcycle, eh? Like the Zorro looking guy who is hanging out in the young girl-in-her-pajamas house!? Shonen Jet ran for 1.5 years from 1959 to 1960.

Hey! This stuff cracks me up! I like it a lot! This is going to become a regular series on this blog. I'm going to run this regularly until I find all the coolest sixties guitar themed songs I can.

Finally, may I brag? I think I am good to write this sort of thing as I used to be in some cheesy kid's dramas too in the eighties. No! Really! I was. This is me as Napoleon and Dracula in the popular eighties kid's program "Bishojokamen Poatorin." This particular episode was from 1989.

I also used to be in a bunch of other VERY embarrassing programs (much more embarrassing than even this one!) that, hopefully, will never ever see the light of day again!  

Have a great weekend!

TV Really Going Down the Drain in Japan

I've written extensively on the fall of television in Japan. In July of 2011, all terrestrial television stations in Japan stopped analogue broadcasting and switched to digital. That cost all the stations 20% of their viewership. Japanese major TV stations were losing money before the switch to digital, how shall they make money when they spent a cumulative $5 billion dollars on the switchover and then lost 20% of their audience?

I can't figure that out no matter the size of my abacus.


While on vacation to Guam the other day, I saw a sign along the road that made me chuckle. In Guam, there are a very many people who are quite a bit overweight... No! Make that quite obese. The sign along the road said,


"You need more fiber in your diet and less cable TV"

Yep. Sitting around and watching TV while munching on chips and junk has seriously fallen out of favor with the active and young crowd.


Another sign that TV viewership is collapsing in Japan is the fact that, after initial fanfare and many years of positive spin on poor sales, Sony has decided to get out of flat TV manufacturing. The sales projections do not make up for poor sales ( and high manufacturing costs) which have lead to wide price dumping across the board. 


Bloomberg reports:

Sony Corp. sold its stake in the venture with Samsung Electronics Co. to make liquid-crystal displays to the South Korean company after predicting an eighth consecutive year of losses from TVs amid sluggish demand.

Samsung will pay 1.08 trillion won ($935 million) in cash for Sony’s stake in S-LCD Corp., a venture formed in 2004, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in a statement today. Sony, which invested 1.65 trillion won in the venture, will take a charge of about 66 billion yen ($846 million) in the quarter ending Dec. 31 after the deal, Japan’s biggest consumer- electronics exporter said in its statement.

The stake sale enables Sony Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer, 69, to shed the responsibility of panel manufacturing amid losses in the TV business, where Samsung is the world’s biggest. To turn around Sony, which has forecast a fourth consecutive annual loss this year, Stringer has teamed up with partners to announce acquisitions worth a combined $8.4 billion in 2011. The purchases are designed to bolster the profitable phones and music divisions and introduced tablet computers to challenge Apple Inc.’s iPad.

Catch that? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what Sony has figured out: There's no future in TV sales; they're best off investing in the future of hand-held devices... Hand-held devices and tablet computers are generally not used to watch TV.

Tissue Time was a famous Japanese TV show in the mid-80's... No more.

How much clearer could the writing on the wall be? 

People Leaving the USA? The Trickle Becoming a Flood? It's Like 1939 Again.

"The chickens have come home to roost" - Malcolm X

I had many reasons for leaving the USA and moving overseas. One of the big reasons was, because of traveling outside of the USA a lot, especially in university days, I began to realize that the story (brainwashing) about the USA being the "Greatest country on earth" (that we were all exposed to throughout our youth in school) wasn't exactly true. 


The propaganda involving American exceptionalism and how "we are different (better)" certainly wasn't true either.

Many people's of the world are proud of their countries (rightly so) and think they are living in the best country in the world... I've met lots of those outside the USA. Before I had met these people, I was under the impression that everyone was desperately trying to find a way to escape their country and get to the USA... 

Maybe trying to escape to the USA was the dream of most people during World War II. It's not that way today. In fact, it's definitely become the opposite of that today; American people are trying to leave the USA. 

I notice that, over this last year or two, this trickle of folks escaping from the USA has gotten bigger and bigger. Of course, the MSM doesn't report it. MSM only reports about important things like what kind of spray tans the stars use, but the fact that entire web sites and blogs, (like my favorites, International Man, or Dollar Vigilante) as well as many other online and offline publications that have popped up supporting expatriation or diversifying out of the dollar, shows you what I told people in the early 2000's: People who can read the writing on the wall are getting out of the USA. 

"Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home 

is to be charged against provisions against danger, 

real or pretended from abroad." 

- James Madison in a letter to Thomas Jefferson

I warned people about that just after the Invasion of Iraq. My friends scoffed. I doubt that they scoff anymore (or maybe they are still clueless or in denial).


Anyone who studied any sufficient amount of history should have seen the parallels of what happens to a country that wages wars of aggression to what that means for the domestic populace. I certainly wasn't the only one who saw it coming. My example was the historical record of the smart Jewish people and some wealthy and educated people leaving Germany and Europe before 1939. By Sept. 1, 1939, even those who wanted to leave, couldn't.


I knew what was going to happen. Many others did too. That the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were a precursor to today problems in the USA should have come to no surprise to anyone. Of course these types of foreign adventures and wars of aggression lead to a collapse of society; they always have throughout the course of human history. To think that these incidents and wars would not lead to the current US debt, economic problems and a loss of freedom is foolish. To think that foreign wars would not lead to a suppression of the people and a rise of the police state is to ignore history... These economic problems and despair, and other recent examples such as the police beating of OWS protesters were completely predictable (they'll get much worse too!) Or, even this wonderful tidbit about how well life in America is today from Reuters this surprises no one:

A shopper pepper-sprayed other bargain hunters and robbers shot at customers to steal their Black Friday purchases, marring the start of the U.S. holiday shopping season, according to authorities.

Up to 20 people were injured after a woman used pepper spray at a Walmart in Los Angeles to get an edge on her competitors. In a second incident, off-duty officers in North Carolina used pepper spray to subdue rowdy shoppers waiting for electronics.

A man was in critical but stable condition after being shot by robbers in a parking lot outside a Walmart In San Leandro, California, at 1:50 a.m. (0950 GMT), Sergeant Mike Sobek said.

The man was in a group of men headed for their car after shopping when robbers confronted them and a fight ensued, Sobek said. The man's shopping companions held down one of the robbers until police arrived and took him into custody.

What's the problem here, officer? Boys will be boys. If you guys can pepper-spray peaceful protesters then why can't this lady pepper-spray a pack of insane and possibly dangerous shoppers out buying crap? I mean, think about it, anyone who would get up early and line up at a Walmart to buy cheap made in China junk must be insane and dangerous... At least dangerous to themselves!


I can write this sort of critique of the USA today, but even 7 years ago, when I wrote about how bad the USA was becoming, in America is Bankrupt, I received lots of hate mail and even a few death threats. Today, from seeing so many different writings and publications on the Internet along the same lines as what I wrote about, talking about USA expatriation is no longer laughed at, but seriously considered by those who matter.


In fact, the window has almost closed, folks. If you can get out now, you should. You won't be able to so easily in the near future. 


Jeff Berwick recently wrote an article entitled, "Escape From America":

Recently I was surfing the internet and reading some of my favorite writers and thinkers when something dawned on me. I read articles or interviews with the following people – all of whom I respect and enjoy their viewpoints – in approximately the following order:

• Marc Faber, The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report
• Doug Casey – Founder, Casey Research
• Jim Rogers – American investor and author
• Jim Willie – Hat Trick Letter
• Dudley Baker – PreciousMetalsWarrants.com
• Fred Reed – Author

Can you name something which they all have in common?
If you said that they are all top writers or speakers about free markets and/or precious metals you'd be correct. But that isn't their only similarities.
They also all have expatriated from their country of origin. After having read seven articles in a row I realized that every person I was reading has already defected from the USSA or other similar western countries.

Like I said, the smart people have gotten out. 


It is not unusual to write about these things today. It was risky to do so seven years ago... But when I first decided to move here to Japan in the early 1980's, there was no one that I could tell my fears to... In those days, if you had told anyone that you believe that the USA was way overstepping its authority and turning into the new Nazi state, American people would have thought you were nuts. 


Probably most foreigners, the world over, would have just nodded their head and said, "What took you so long to figure that out?"


To recall an experience when I was working at a company office before I came to the USA allows me to exemplify one case of just how twisted the modern American mindset has become. This is the case of the US invasion of Grenada. For me, this was a quick preview of what was coming for the USA. I didn't like it at all.

Ronald Reagan was the president of the USA. He had won by a landslide against Jimmy Carter in 1980. The US invaded Grenada in 1983. 

In 1981, I had started working at a Prudential district office as a salesman / broker. The other salesmen were nice guys and most of them were typically at least 20 ~ 30 years older than me and many of them were ex-military men. 

One day when I came to the office they were drinking and having a celebration. I walked in and it was a happy scene.  A few dozens guys drinking and eating and having several "toasts" to whatever it was they were toasting. When they saw me they shouted, "Mike! Come on in! Have a drink! We're celebrating!"

I grabbed a drink and was very happy to join the party! "Wow! Drinking at work? Cool!" I then asked, "What are we celebrating?"

To which several guys smiled and said to me, "We won a war!"

"What war?" I replied. 

A very nice older guy named Jim Cline said, "We invaded Grenada and won a war! The Vietnam war is over! We've won!"


At first, I was happy. But then it dawned on me... "What the hell are we doing invading some Caribbean nation and half these people don't even know where that is?"


The MSM was reporting that we invaded that island nation to save US university students... Then the story was something about 5,000 Cuban regular army on the island building an airport... There were so many excuses. (sounds like Iraq?)


Later, I went to the public library and found out some truths. First off, if you are Cuban, everyone is in the army so 5,000 "Cuban regulars" means about 600 Cuban soldiers, their wives and their 8 kids. The University students were never in any danger and that the UK and several other nations severely protested the US action as US imperialism (Nah! Couldn't be! We're the good guys, remember?) and that a US puppet government was put into power. So much for being the good guys. 


Wikipedia says:


While the invasion enjoyed broad public support in the United States, and received support from some sectors in Grenada from local groups who viewed the post-coup regime as illegitimate, it was criticized by the United Kingdom, Canada and the United Nations General Assembly, which condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law".


I remember thinking that everything the US media was telling us about this naked aggression was a complete lie. I remember thinking, 


"Hey! We're supposed to be the Land of the Free! We're supposed to be helping people and spreading democracy (and I don't mean from the barrel of a gun). We're not supposed to be invading other countries!!!"

The writing was on the wall for me. I hated my job and, because I studied television and media in university I understood how this brainwashing business worked (thanks Mr. Al Miller). I could see what kind of right wing America we were heading for. I was surprised that no one else saw it coming, it seemed to me.

I was still young, cocky and believed I could do anything I wanted. 

And I wanted to be free. I left the US police state. Now there are many following. 

I do feel vindicated. I feel sorry for those in the USA who fail to see what's coming. I am still, to this day, astounded that even university educated people (like my family) in the USA support the vast US empire and military industrial complex. Their day of reckoning is almost here.

Just today, another article appeared on Lew Rockwell about how bad things have gotten in the USA. Please refer to: Be Thankful if You Were Not Born in the US:

.....Inside their borders, as Americans get tazed, pepper sprayed, beaten and caged on a regular basis, they are beginning to realize that the land of the free and home of the brave was a catchy jingle from centuries ago. It is now the land of the fee, home of the slave. TRAPPED Today, as the American government works to erect a wall and conducts unmanned drone flights on the border with Canada, many in the US are awakening to the fact that they are becoming trapped. The US Government has even made it so all student debt is now completely inextinguishable in bankruptcy... meaning that for students who wasted 4-8 years of their life getting what is often a worthless piece of paper and six figures of debt, they will be enslaved for life and, as we are predicting at TDV, will be forced into the military to pay off their obligations. GIVE THANKS IF YOU WERE NOT BORN IN THE US In an erstwhile change of fortune, what was once the best place to be born, between 1623-1970 has now become one of the worst. Only those born in North Korea and Cuba, and a handful of other despotic regimes, can be said to be much worse off.....

It's 1939 again... Excepting the fascists have taken control of the USA. 


Get out while you still can.

US Government Hypocrisy. Watch this: 

NOTE: Thanks to T. Foley for part of this article's inspiration. T graduated from a top class California University at Santa Barbara. I used to think he was an intelligent guy... That is until he was totally "Gung-ho!" for the Iraq invasion and actually told me before that fiasco started, "We'll be in and out in 4 weeks!" ... I totally lost respect for him and the rest of the "Gung-ho!" people he associated with then. Here were people who were university educated and vehemently anti-Vietnam war just  a few years before, but then, at that time, they suddenly became cheerleaders for the US military machine? Extraordinary!


Proof that the US education system has totally gone down the shit can when university educated people cannot see through the lies and propaganda techniques developed in the late 1930's by the Nazi's (use of "Bandwagon") and identified by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis in the USA... I'll even bet these guys don't know that the Germans invaded Poland in 1939 because the Poles attacked Germany in the Gleiwitz incident first! Nazi Germany was merely defending itself from "terrorism"... Ahem...


Not only are these people tools of the state, they are now reaping what they sowed.


Hope you guys enjoy the garden you've planted. 

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.

Tokyo Crisis Update: Nuclear Meltdowns, Drama Queens, TV News and Coca Cola

It has now been reported even in the Japanese media that the foreigners have all freaked out and ran away from Japan. I'm still here reporting to you live from my home in Tokyo on events on the ground here a 150 miles away from the crisis area.

WILLIE WILLIAMS - ARMAGIDEON TIME

First off, let me state unequivocally that the mass media are involved in blatant sensationalism and grotesque scare mongering. Jerks. The crisis area is in Miyagi prefecture. That's 200 kilometers north of Tokyo. In Tokyo, our biggest problems are the store shelves are empty and rumors abound.


If one were to watch the news, it would seem that the entire country is underwater.

"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

I suppose if you understand the beast that is television, then it is understandable why TV broadcasts the wildest scenes possible; that's how they get ratings. It is how they make their living.


For a good rule of thumb about television, always remember this: 90% of everything you see on TV is bullshit. The other 10% are commercials. 


As of this very moment, the real crisis for TV news is how they are desperately trying to hold on to their now rapidly declining viewership as video images of things such as plumes of smoke coming out of a building - shot from a mile away - are not nearly as riveting to their audience as explosions at nuclear power plants. Nor can smoke coming from a building glue an audience to the TV set like towering buildings crumbling into the streets, close ups of massive tsunamis washing rubble, cars, trucks, and buildings across vast lands and destroying hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure in their wake. 


Nope. Smoking buildings from afar and people in food lines do not make for exciting TV. 

As with all disasters in the past, the people in the west and Japan - those outside the affected areas - will soon lose interest and then it will be back to whatever Charlie Sheen - or the next Hollywood star like him - is up to this week. 


Japan has their share of scandalous gossip too... But not nearly as bad as the USA.


Call me cold, but that's the way it is in a consumer society.


Do not take my comments as being callous towards the poor unfortunate people whose lives have been forever altered by these tragic events, take these comments as a frontal assault on the sensationalist reporting by the mass media. Because of this sensationalism in the media, People are getting the impression that all of Japan is destroyed. It's just not true. The media are not responsible. They are propagating fear. . 


Once again, do not take my comments wrongly. I am speaking of events in Tokyo now. If someone in, say, Europe wrote to me - while I was living in California - sending their condolences and worries about Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans I would say the same. 

The nuclear accident is happening in Fukushima just south of Sendai

If you want to hear what other Tokyo people have said, here's a good example from Tokyo Trends. You'll be surprised that people are going to the park and still eating out. The Tokyo elementary schools are still in session and life goes on.

Of course I feel sorry for those people whose lives have been forever altered. I apologize in advance if some take my comments as callous. I cannot comment on the situation for the people near the accident site. I can only comment on Tokyo.  

I, like most Tokyo people, have merely been inconvenienced by this incredible chain of events. I do not think, though, that I should adopt a "victim complex" like many people do when these sorts of things occur. I think doing so is dishonest. I believe that taking a "victim complex" identity like many people do only cheapens the experience of those who have truly suffered.

One need only remember the group victim complex shown by Americans after 9/11 for an example of that. As for me, I'm doing my best to suppress my inner "Drama Queen." 

"It is important for all of us to be able to recognize the difference between '

fear' and 'danger'" - Marc Abela

Folks in Tokyo have not suffered. We have been greatly inconvenienced. That's all. That's not to say that many people haven't over reacted and panicked. They have. 

To get a better feel of what the locals think, this morning, I went out and interviewed three Tokyo people about the situation on the ground here.

My next door neighbor told me that she was a bit concerned because she didn't have any food or water stored up and became frightened because of a near panic at the grocery store and because the shelves there were bare. She said she was having her family send water and canned food from Kyushu. She also mentioned that she thinks the Japanese government completely messed up the handling of this situation and contributed to the panic by changing their story every few hours. She thinks that current prime minister Naoto Kan "has to go."

Interestingly, she also told me that her husband worked for Coca-Cola Japan and all the foreign upper-management have gone on unspecified "business trips" (with their families) and have left no return date to their staff. I could tell from the way she said it and her attitude  that she and her husband were disgusted at these people. What dedicated and responsible management, eh? What a great way to build respect for management.

I will, here, take this chance to strongly criticize the foreign management of Coca-Cola Japan for showing such a compete lack of responsibility to their employees and to the Japanese people. So much for Corporate Social Responsibility, eh Coca-Cola? Also, so much for dedication to your work and company. Leaving on a "business trip"? Disgusting. Don't you clowns have the guts to even say that you are running away? Saying that it is a "business trip" allows you to get paid from your company at the same time you skirt your responsibilities all the while you expect that your staff and workers continue on like everyday? If I were your boss, we'd definitely have more than a few words about this. I'd probably fire you.

I can understand you sending your family away... But you running away too? And then expecting to get paid and your employees to carry on in your absence at the same time!? 


Scandalous.

So much for the days of the captain being the last to leave a sinking ship. And, in this case, the ship is not even close to sinking. Coca-Cola wussies. I'll never drink that stuff again.

Chicken Little is currently working in 

upper-management at Coca-Cola Japan

But I digress... Continuing with my neighborhood interviews, I again asked the construction workers a few houses over what they thought about events and they, once again, just shrugged their shoulders. One guy (the same guy I spoke to yesterday) said that he saw on Japanese TV news that the foreigners all left Japan and he thought it was a quite curious happening. He smiled.

But the coup de grace of interviews this morning was that I caught a Tokyo taxi driver in front of my house. If you want to know what the man on the street thinks about in Tokyo, then a Tokyo taxi driver is the guy to ask.

"Business is very bad"

Just like the gangster and police TV shows and movies of old, there's no one who knows better about what's going on on the street than a New York shoeshine boy. We have our version in Japan and those are the Tokyo taxi drivers. These guys have all the scuttlebutt. Here is the short conversation I had with that taxi driver:

Me: What do you think about the events of the last few days?   

Taxi: It's no good at all.

Me: Specifically, what is no good?

Taxi: Business is very bad. There are no customers.

Me: How about the danger to Tokyo? Aren't you worried?

Taxi: Not really. We're okay. The problems are up north. I'm originally from Aomori (Aomori is north of Miyagi). I spoke to my family there and everything is fine. 

Me: What do you think about how the Japanese government has handled this situation?

Taxi: As best they could considering how things kept changing everyday.

Me: Aren't you worried about radiation coming to Tokyo? Why haven't you escaped?

Taxi: Where am I going to escape to? I'm not really worried at all about radiation. We're up wind so we don't really have a problem. What I am worried about is my job as I have no customers.

With that, I said "Bye" as he was working and I didn't want to take up too much of his precious time.

Come to think of it; why should this guy be worried? Most of these Tokyo taxi drivers smoke cigarettes like bandits. They have a much bigger risk of dying from lung cancer than from nuclear radiation. No wonder he seemed so calm; he risks his life two packs a day - everyday! Talk about a real-life Marlboro Man! 

So, ultimately, I guess what I want to say in this blog post is that, as my friend Marc Abela says, "It is important for all of us to be able to recognize the difference between 'fear' and 'danger'." In spite of how much people want to be a part of the collective 'victim complex', if you are not "there" and you are here in Tokyo, then you only add to the fear and do nothing positive for yourself and everyone else. Unfounded fear does nothing except satisfy your Drama Queen desires.

Please try to suppress them. First step that I would recommend is to turn off the TV. Second is to stop drinking the Kool-Aid, or, in this case, stop drinking the Coca-Cola.

UPDATE: FYI... CNN fellow (Sanjay Gupta) relocated up to Akita, around 250km north of Fukushima, and put on a personal radiation monitor … Which said nothing unusual over the past 48 hours, and nothing meaningfully above normal background radiation levels. 


POST UPDATE:  Those who got on a jet plane and escaped from Japan can rest assured in the knowledge that they got 10 times the dosage of radiation when they went through airport security - and another 10 times that while flying in the plane to their destinations - than we've had in Tokyo.