Short answers, pulled from the story.
Japan's first radio station opened on the 12th of July 1925, marking the birth of NHK. Three separate organizations in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya merged under this new entity in August 1926 to create a unified national voice.
NHK became the first broadcaster globally to transmit high-definition television using multiple sub-Nyquist sampling encoding known as Hi-Vision. This technology set a precedent for future digital standards worldwide and led to the launch of ultra-high definition broadcasting with NHK BS8K on the 1st of December 2018.
The Broadcasting Act governs NHK as a dependent corporation funded primarily through viewer license fees. The Diet of Japan reviews and approves the network's annual budget while appointing its twelve-member board of governors.
Director-General Momii sparked controversy on the 20th of December 2013 when he suggested NHK should support government territorial disputes with China and South Korea. Internal documents later revealed bans on referencing the Nanjing Massacre or wartime sex slavery in English broadcasts, leading to public protests demanding his resignation by April 2014.
Analog signals were finally discontinued by March 2012 after digital terrestrial TV arrived in three major metropolitan areas in 2003. Anyone owning equipment capable of receiving NHK must pay a standardized fee which reached 12,765 yen annually for terrestrial reception alone in recent years.