TV Asahi

• 1. Introduction

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  TV Asahi broadcasts from a sleek building in Roppongi, Tokyo, designed by architect Fumihiko Maki, a structure that would have seemed impossible to the founders who launched the channel with at least 6.5 hours of programming per day back on the 1st of February 1959. The station began life not as an entertainment powerhouse but as an educational experiment - a channel bound by law to devote at least half its airtime to instructional content. How a broadcaster built on textbooks became home to Kamen Rider, a partner to CNN, and a player in a Cold War Olympic gamble is the story this documentary will trace. What does it take for a television station to escape its founding identity? And what gets lost in the process?

• 2. Born From a Critic's Insult

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  Sōichi Ōya, one of Japan's most prominent cultural critics, declared in a broadcast that television had turned the Japanese population into "a nation of 100 million idiots." His words stung, but they also planted a seed. The argument that television needed to be improved, not abandoned, drove a coalition of applicants toward the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications when it issued frequency allocations on the 17th of February 1956. The Kantō region received three licenses. One went to NHK Educational TV; the remaining two went to open bidding. Among those who put their hands up were film studios Toho and Toei Company, radio broadcasters Nippon Cultural Broadcasting and Nippon Broadcasting System, and an educational publishing group. On the 4th of July 1957, the Ministry consolidated the competing applications into a single entity called Tokyo Educational Television. Just four days later, that name was formally assigned. By the 10th of October 1957, the first shareholders meeting convened, and the organisation changed its name to Nippon Educational Television Co., Ltd., abbreviated NET. After rival Fuji Television set its own launch for the 1st of March 1959, NET moved fast, advancing its own start date by a full month to February 1. On Christmas Eve 1958, test transmissions began, and test broadcasts continued every night through January of the following year.

• 3. The Education Trap

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  At 9:55 in the morning on the 1st of February 1959, NET signed on the air. Its broadcasting license carried a strict mandate: at least 50% of airtime had to be educational, with at least 30% specifically aimed at children's educational content. The first live program NET broadcast was the wedding of Crown Prince Akihito, later Emperor Emeritus, and Empress Michiko, aired on the 10th of April 1959. The prestige of that broadcast, however, did not translate into audiences. By July 1959, average ratings for the network sat below 5%. The for-profit educational television model was failing. The response was not to push harder into education but to pivot toward general programming. By 1960, NET was airing anime and foreign movies. To stay technically compliant with its education license, the network applied creative justifications: American western series Bonanza and The Virginian, both airing on rival channels, were labelled educational for depicting the history of the United States, compared in turn to NET's samurai dramas. In December 1960, the channel quietly dropped the "Nippon Educational Television" name in common use and became NET TV. Ratings climbed to around 10% after 1963, still ranking last among the major broadcasters but narrowing the gap. In April 1961, primetime programming was added. Two years later, NET announced its entry into the anime race with Wolf Boy Ken, produced by Toei, beginning a relationship with animated programming that continues to the present day.

• 4. The Man Who Brought Rawhide

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  Kenichiro Matsuoka was born in America and fluent in English, qualities that set him apart from his colleagues at NET's board. He secured the rights to license American series Laramie and Rawhide for Japanese broadcast, and the high ratings both shows pulled in gave NET its first real competitive advantage over NHK and Fuji TV. Matsuoka would eventually serve as an Executive Vice President of the broadcaster, and later founded Japan Cable Television. In November 1963, NET took another landmark step, joining forces with NHK General TV to air Japan's first live satellite telecast. Behind the scenes, the transition to entertainment programming was cracking the management. President Hiroshi Ogawa, who came from Toei Company, championed entertainment. Yoshio Akao, representing the publishing group Obunsha, believed the pivot betrayed the station's educational founding mission and objected strongly to what he saw as vulgar programming. In November 1964, Akao gathered enough shareholder support, excluding Toei and Nikkei, Inc., to force Ogawa out of the presidency. The removal was a turning point. Toei's grip on NET TV began to loosen, and The Asahi Shimbun moved into the vacancy. The following year, Asahi Shimbun placed Koshiji Miura, a former Deputy Minister of Political Affairs, into the post of station director.

• 5. Tokusatsu and the Soviet Olympics

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  Himitsu Sentai Gorenger debuted on NET in April 1975, the latest in a line of superhero productions made by Toei that the network had been building since April 1971, when Kamen Rider first aired. Those Toei productions - Kamen Rider, Metal Hero Series, and Super Sentai - broke what the source describes as the long-standing tokusatsu duopoly held by TBS and Fuji TV with the Ultra Series franchise. TBS had been airing tokusatsu productions since 1958. NET's entry into the genre forced a genuine three-way competition and established the station as a serious presence in the field. Gorenger launched the Super Sentai franchise on its own. Amid these programming wins, an unusual diplomatic manoeuvre played out in 1977. Koshiji Miura used a close relationship with Ivan Ivanovich, head of the Japanese Section of the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to arrange a meeting with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. The result was remarkable: TV Asahi secured exclusive Japanese broadcasting rights to the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, the first time any private Japanese television station had been granted exclusive Olympic rights. The achievement quickly turned costly. Japan followed Western nations in boycotting the 1980 Games. TV Asahi aired only the most high-profile events and reported significant revenue losses as a result.

• 6. The Name Changes and the Move

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  November 1973 brought a regulatory decision that finished what NET had been quietly doing for years. The Ministry of Posts revised its framework for broadcasters, abolishing the requirement for education-focused television entirely. NET applied for and received a general purpose broadcasting license, as did Tokyo Channel 12, now known as TV Tokyo. By March of the following year, both stations had ended their remaining educational programming blocks. The Nikkei newspaper group transferred its stake in NET to The Asahi Shimbun, completing the newspaper company's rise to majority shareholder. On the 1st of April 1977, the corporate name changed from NET TV to TV Asahi, a name that acknowledged in full who now controlled the broadcaster. The move to Roppongi Hills followed on the 29th of September 2003, returning the station to roughly the same neighbourhood it had originally chosen. The Ark Hills studio, where TV Asahi had been temporarily housed during the Roppongi redevelopment, became TV Asahi Center, and still houses some subsidiaries. The new Roppongi Hills headquarters was designed by Fumihiko Maki. On the 1st of October 2003, the company renamed itself TV Asahi Corporation, marking the 45th anniversary of the broadcaster's founding. In 2004, TV Asahi's ratings reached 7.5% in the Kanto Region, placing it third among commercial broadcasters for the first time in 32 years. Between April and June 2012, the station claimed the Triple Crown, posting 12.3% in primetime, 12.7% in evening time, and 7.9% for the whole day.

• 7. Brand, Design, and the Murdoch Moment

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  In June 1996, media magnate Rupert Murdoch and investor Masayoshi Son moved to acquire a large stake in TV Asahi, a step that threatened to displace Asahi Shimbun as the dominant shareholder. TV Asahi's then-president Toshitada Nakae flew to the United States to meet Murdoch personally and asked him to hold back from increasing his shareholding. The following year, Asahi Shimbun bought out Murdoch and Son's shares entirely. That same period saw TV Asahi add a second major logo: in October 1996, following the launch of Iwate Asahi Television which completed the ANN national network, the station commissioned a new special mark designed by Tim Garvin, at the time recognized for his work on the Hollywood films Dances With Wolves and Unforgiven. By 2003, TV Asahi overhauled its visual identity entirely. British design collective Tomato, whose members also perform as the electronic music group Underworld, created the current branding: computer-generated white sticks on a changing background, with movement and colour driven by accompanying music. The sign-on and sign-off videos use two Underworld tracks: Born Slippy.NUXX 2003 and Rez. The company prints its name in lower-case letters, tv asahi, and uses the fonts Akzidenz Grotesk Bold for English text and Hiragino Kaku Gothic W8 for Japanese. The station's official abbreviation, EX, derives from its callsign JOEX and has been used in that form since the 1st of October 2003. The mascot Go-chan, designed by Sanrio, launched on the 10th of May 2011, and currently appears in the station's opening sign-on.