Nippon Television

• 1. Introduction

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  Nippon Television went on the air on the 28th of August 1953, and the very first TV commercial it broadcast aired upside-down by mistake. The product being advertised was a Seikosha clock. It was, in every sense, an imperfect beginning. Yet that stumbling first broadcast made Japan's NTV something no other broadcaster anywhere in Asia could claim to be: the first commercial television network on the continent. What followed was seven decades of firsts, from color broadcasting and satellite experiments to buying a majority stake in Studio Ghibli. How did a single station restricted to the Kanto region become the backbone of Japanese television? And why does it matter that a CIA codename, a sumo wrestler, and a Hayao Miyazaki mouse all share the same origin story?

• 2. A CIA Agent and a Clock Ad

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  US Senator Karl Mundt, the key proponent of Voice of America, made the announcement in 1951: commercial television was coming to Japan, then still under United States-led Allied Occupation. Behind that announcement was a man named Matsutaro Shoriki, whom writer Benjamin Fulford identifies as a CIA agent operating under the codenames "podam" and "pojackpot-1". Working alongside executives from the Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, Shoriki lobbied Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida to authorize a commercial network. The government granted Nippon Television the first commercial TV broadcasting license in Japan on the 31st of July 1952. Equipment delays pushed back the launch and allowed NHK to get on the air first with its own test broadcasts. When NTV finally started trial broadcasts on the 24th of August 1953, it was only four days before the full launch. The network chose an animated dove spreading its wings as the image for its first sign-on. Television sets were expensive and rare, so NTV placed 55 street TVs across the Kanto area. Crowds of 8,000 to 10,000 gathered to watch professional baseball and sumo wrestling, making the street-TV program a success. Shoriki's influence at the network continued until 1955, when he stepped down as president after winning a seat in the House of Representatives. That election, it turned out, was the first in Japan to receive commercial TV coverage.

• 3. Color, Satellites, and The Beatles

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  Nippon Television applied for a color broadcasting license in April 1957 and received it in December of that year. Shoriki returned as president the following year after leaving his post as minister of state, and he pushed investment in color technology. In December 1958, NTV introduced videotape recording during a one-off drama series, using American RCA 2-inch quad tape. The first color live broadcast in Japan was the wedding of the crown prince, now Emperor Emeritus Akihito, on the 10th of April 1959. That same broadcast carried the first TV commercial in color seen in Japan. Later that year, NTV aired Japan's first color VTR broadcast: Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, sourced from NBC in the United States. Color programming grew steadily; by April 1970, color accounted for 76.4% of NTV's total broadcast time, placing it ahead of NHK. By October 1971, every program on NTV was in color. The network was also pushing the edges of transmission technology. On the 22nd of November 1963, using a communication satellite relay, NTV conducted the first black-and-white TV transmission experiment between Japan and the United States, during live coverage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On the 1st of July 1966, The Beatles' concert at the Nippon Budokan, part of their Japanese tour, was shown on NTV in color, having been prerecorded on tape. The viewing rate for that broadcast reached 56 percent.

• 4. Global Premieres and Cultural Reach

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  On the 14th of January 1973, NTV aired the live satellite relay in Japan of Elvis Presley's concert in Hawaii. Two years later, NTV secured what turned out to be a notable television milestone: the world television premiere of Gone with the Wind. Shown in two parts on October 8 and 15, 1975, it reached Japanese audiences 13 months before NBC broadcast the film in North America. NTV had also been successful in exporting programs internationally; The Water Margin and Monkey both aired on the BBC in the United Kingdom. The network's cultural investments extended beyond broadcasting. Nippon TV participated in the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1984, a project that took 13 years and cost 2.4 billion yen; NTV also held two special exhibitions at the Vatican Museums. In August 1978, NTV launched 24 Hour Television: Love Saves The Earth, a telethon tied to the network's 25th anniversary. It was the only telethon on Japanese television, and it continues to air today. On the 9th of March 1984, Dan Goodwin used suction cups to climb the 10-floor Nippon Television Kojimachi Annex in Chiyoda, in a paid publicity event.

• 5. Ratings Wars and a Bribery Scandal

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  By the early 1970s, NTV was in recession, hurt by economic depression and the fallout from a financial reporting falsification scandal at the Ministry of Finance. Ratings had slipped from competing with Fuji TV for second place during much of the 1960s to a position behind both Fuji Television and NET TV (now TV Asahi). Kobayashi Shoriki, son-in-law of the founder, launched business reforms including outsourcing program production and constructing a new headquarters. The changes allowed the company to return to profit in 1972. A more damaging crisis arrived in 2000. In October of that year, NTV employees were found to have bribed households that were being surveyed for ratings data, with particular impact on baseball game numbers. Fuji TV exploited the scandal, moving ahead to become the ratings leader. Earlier, at the start of the 2000s, NTV and its 29 affiliates had won the triple crown ratings. The network reclaimed the triple crown in 2011, driven largely by high ratings for the drama I'm Mita, Your Housekeeper. TV Asahi then held the crown in 2012 and 2013 before NTV regained it in 2014. Since then, NTV has held the triple crown rating for 12 consecutive years. The 1990s turnaround was led by Seiichiro Ujiie, a former Yomiuri Shimbun journalist who became NTV president and shifted the programming strategy: moving late-night news to earlier slots and ending certain primetime variety shows. Those changes helped NTV overtake Fuji TV to become number one in ratings from 1993 to 1994.

• 6. Studio Ghibli and Animation

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  Hayao Miyazaki designed Nippon Television's mascot character to mark the channel's 40th anniversary in 1992. The mascot he created was shaped like a mouse with the tail of a pig, meant to represent creativity, curiosity, and hard work. A public naming campaign drew 51,026 votes, and the winning name was Nandarō, which literally means "What is it?" The mascot was intended to run for one year but remained in use until 2013 because of audience affection. The professional relationship between NTV and Miyazaki's studio went far deeper than a mascot. NTV has funded all Studio Ghibli productions since Kiki's Delivery Service, with the single exception of Earwig and the Witch, which was fully funded by NHK. NTV holds the exclusive Japanese broadcast rights to Ghibli's films. Spirited Away holds the top spot in NTV's all-time most-watched film list with a 46.9% rating, broadcast on the 24th of January 2003. Princess Mononoke is second at 35.1%, and Howl's Moving Castle is third at 32.9%. On the 6th of October 2023, Nippon Television went further still, purchasing a majority stake in Studio Ghibli itself. Under the arrangement, NTV handles management while the studio continues to focus on its creative work. NTV also made anime studio Madhouse a subsidiary in 2011 after acquiring about 85% of shares for approximately 1 billion yen, and announced the acquisition of a 54.3% stake in Tatsunoko Production in January 2014.

• 7. Networks, Logos, and Digital Transition

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  Nippon News Network, the news arm of NTV's affiliate system, was formally launched on the 1st of April 1966, with 19 founding member stations. The non-news counterpart, Nippon Television Network System, followed on the 14th of June 1972. Together, NNN and NNS cover all of Japan except Okinawa Prefecture. NTV listed its stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on the 15th of September 1959, making it the first media company in Japan to do so. Branding has evolved steadily across the decades. The original English acronym NTV served as the corporate logo from 1953, with a colored version adopted in 1972. In 2003, a new logo was introduced alongside the broadcaster's mascot Nandarō; its orange dot represented the sun and the gold kanji character "Nichi" stood for tradition. That logo was designed by Jun'ichi Fumura, a broadcaster employee. On the 1st of January 2013, as part of the network's 60th anniversary, NTV changed its logo again. The kanji was replaced with the number zero crossed by a diagonal line, inspired by the on-screen clock typically shown in the upper left corner of the broadcast. The change was meant to represent starting fresh. NTV began digital broadcasting on the 1st of December 2003. Analog transmission ended on the 24th of July 2011. The network had also moved aggressively into streaming: it launched Japan's first video-on-demand service from a commercial broadcaster, acquired Hulu Japan on the 27th of February 2014, and joined the other four major Tokyo broadcasters in launching TVer, a free on-demand service, in 2015.