JOAX-DTV (channel 4), branded as (NTV) or Nippon TV, is a Japanese television station serving the Kantō region as the flagship station of the Nippon News Network and the Nippon Television Network System. It is owned and operated by the , a wholly owned subsidiary of the certified broadcasting holding company Nippon Television Holdings.
Nippon Television's studios are in the Shiodome area of Minato, Tokyo, Japan, and its transmitters are in the Tokyo Skytree. Broadcasting on channel four since its inception, it was the first commercial broadcaster in Asia, and broadcasts terrestrially across Japan. Nippon Television is the home of the syndication networks NNN (for news programs) and NNS (for non-news programs). Except for Okinawa Prefecture, these two networks cover the whole of Japan. Nippon Television is one of the "five private broadcasters based in Tokyo".
With 14.45% of the company's shares, Nippon Television Holdings is partially owned by The Yomiuri Shimbun HoldingsJapan's largest media conglomerate by revenue domestically, and second largest worldwide behind Sony. It forms part of Yomiuri's main television broadcasting arm alongside Kansai region flagship Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation, which owns a 6.57% share in the company. It owns Hulu Japan, formerly part of the US-based Hulu streaming service, and has shares in animation studios Madhouse, Tatsunoko Production and Studio Ghibli, and in the film studio Nikkatsu.
History Early stages In 1951, US Senator Karl Mundt (known as the key proponent of Voice of America) announced that commercial television would be set up in Japan, then under United States-led Allied Occupation of Japan. According to Japanese-Canadian writer Benjamin Fulford, Mundt recommended Matsutarō Shōriki to the CIA, which later hired Shōriki as an agent under the codenames "podam" and "pojackpot-1". With executives of The Asahi Shimbun and Mainichi Shimbun, Shōriki persuaded Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida to form a commercial television network in Japan.
On July 31, 1952, Nippon Television was granted the first commercial TV broadcasting license in Japan. The Nippon Television Network Corporation was established in October of that year. After obtaining the broadcasting license, Nippon Television purchased land for the construction of its headquarters building (now the Kojimachi branch office) in Nibanchō, Chiyoda, Tokyo, and began preparations for the broadcast of TV programs. Due to equipment delivery delays, broadcasting trials were significantly delayed, resulting in NHK being first to broadcast TV programs. On August 24, 1953, Nippon Television started broadcast trials, and four days later, began to air programs as Asia's first commercial broadcaster. It used an animated dove spreading its wings in the logo on its first sign-on. The first TV commercial (for Seikosha clocks) was aired at that time; reports say it aired upside-down by mistake.
Due to high prices, television sets were not widely available at the launch of NTV and NHK. In an effort to broaden advertisement impact, NTV installed 55 street TVs in the Kanto area. This program was a huge success, attracting 8,000 to 10,000 people to watch sports broadcasts such as professional baseball and sumo wrestling.
Plans for expansion to the whole of Japan were halted, as NTV's license was restricted to the Kanto area. As a result, the Yomiuri Shimbun Group filed for a separate license in Osaka under the name Yomiuri TV.
In 1955, Shōriki stepped down as president of NTV after being elected to the House of Representatives. The election was the first to be covered by commercial TV in Japan.
Nippon News Network and launch of color broadcasts
With the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issuing a large number of new TV licenses in the late 1950s, Yomiuri Shimbun and Nippon Television began to establish stations outside the Kanto area. On August 28, 1958, Yomiuri TV started broadcasting, marking the start of expansion into the Kansai area. Due to the close partnership between Nippon TV and the Yomiuri Shimbun, the network's expansion was opposed by local newspapers, and slower than that of the Japan News Network affiliates, which were less newspaper-oriented. Before 1958, NTV's programming was seen on CBC and OTV, whose television broadcasts began on December 1, 1956. The four commercial television stations that existed at the time broadcast a special program called The Coming Year, which ran until the end of the Shōwa era. Until the last edition, production rotated between the main Kanto stations.
On the fifth anniversary of NTV's launch, Yomiuri TV and Television Nishinippon started broadcasting; Nishinippon Broadcasting, which started earlier, created a precursor of the Nippon News Network. In December, when Tokai Television started broadcasting in the Tōkai region, NTV programs moved to the new station.
Following TBS Television's establishment of the Japan News Network in 1959, Nippon Television founded the second Japanese television network, Nippon News Network, on April 1, 1966, with a 19 affiliated stations as founding members. Nippon Television founded the Nippon Television Network System in 1972 to improve collaboration among network stations in non-news programming. On September 15, 1959, Nippon Television's stock was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, becoming the first media company in Japan to list its stock.
Nippon Television applied to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in April 1957 for a color television broadcast license, which it received in December of that year. Matsutarō Shōriki returned to Nippon TV as president after resigning as the minister of state in 1958. He increased investment in color television. In December 1958, NTV introduced videotape recording in a one-off drama series using American RCA 2-inch quad tape.
The first color live coverage broadcast in Japan was the wedding of the crown prince (now Emperor Emeritus Akihito) on April 10, 1959, together with the first TV program with commercials broadcast in color. In December, NTV aired Japan's first color VTR broadcast, Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall from NBC (United States). NTV later obtained a license for broadcasting programs in color on September 10, 1960. In one year, NTV aired a total of 938 hours of color programming. Programs produced in black and white steadily decreased.
In October 1963, Nippon Television successfully trialed overnight broadcasts. On November 22, 1963, using a communication satellite relay, NTV conducted the first black-and-white TV transmission experiment between Japan and the United States during coverage of the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. On July 1, 1966, The Beatles' concert at the Nippon Budokan, part of their Japanese tour, was shown in color on NTV (prerecorded on tape); the viewing rate reached 56 percent.
After the death of Matsutaro Shoriki on October 9, 1969, NTV and NHK agreed to integrate signal transmission facilities in the Tokyo Tower.
1970s–1980s
When Kobayashi Shōriki (son-in-law of Matsutarō Shōriki) took over Nippon TV in 1969, he continued progress in color broadcasting. In April 1970, color programs accounted for 76.4% of total broadcast time, ahead of NHK which was second with 73%. In October 1971, all Nippon TV programs were in color.
During this period, due to economic depression and the discovery of the falsification of financial reports by the Ministry of Finance, Nippon TV was in recession. Ratings of other Japanese commercial TV stations also declined during that period, from competing with Fuji TV for second place in the core bureau for most of the 1960s to competing with Fuji Television and NET TV (currently TV Asahi), and then being pulled away from TBS. This led Kobayashi Shōriki to launch business reforms to promote the outsourcing of program productions and to build a new headquarters, enabling the company to turn a profit in 1972.
The non-news counterpart of Nippon News Network, Nippon Television Network System, was formed on June 14, 1972. NTV had also been successful in exporting its programs around the world; programs such as The Water Margin and Monkey aired on the BBC in the UK. On January 14, 1973, NTV aired the live satellite relay in Japan for Elvis Presley's concert in Hawaii. Shown in two parts on October 8 and 15, 1975, the classic film Gone with the Wind made its world television premiere on NTV, 13 months before NBC aired it in North America.
Nippon TV started diversifying its operations, opening subsidiaries such as Nippon TV Music, Union Movies, and Nippon Television Services in the early 70s.In the following years, Nippon TV participated in cultural events, such as the restoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in 1984,which took 13 years and cost to ¥2.4 billion; it also held two special exhibitions at the Vatican Museums. On March 9, 1984, Dan Goodwin used suction cups to climb the 10-floor Nippon Television Kojimachi Annex in Chiyoda in a paid publicity event.
On the 25th anniversary of Nippon Television's first broadcast in 1978, the broadcaster launched 24 Hour Television: Love Saves The Earth. It was the only telethon on Japanese TV, and achieved high ratings; it continues to be aired today. In the 1980s, ratings continued to decline as Fuji TV and TBS promoted their primetime programming. This prompted NTV to increase the airtime of news programs and baseball events. Multichannel television sound broadcasting began in December 1982, using the EIAJ MTS standard. In 1987, NTV launched NTV Cable News (now known as Nippon TV NEWS 24), the first news channel in Japan.
At the end of 1989, it teamed up with TVNZ's Dunedin unit to provide assistance for the coverage of the first sunrise of the 1990s, at Manukau Point in the Chatham Islands of New Zealand. An estimated ten million viewers were expected to watch the live broadcast on the network.
1990s Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli, Inc. designed Nippon Television's mascot character to commemorate the channel's 40th anniversary in 1993.
Although ratings of Nippon TV affiliates increased, advertising revenue decreased in 1992 due to the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble. After Seiichiro Ujiie, a former journalist at the Yomiuri Shimbun, became president of Nippon TV, the broadcaster carried out major changes in its programming to boost ratings, such as airing late night news programs earlier than competitors and ending certain primetime variety shows. These changes helped NTV become number one in ratings from 1993 to 1994, overtaking Fuji TV. It previously had attempted to replace its afternoon 'wide shows' with comedy programs to compete with rival networks. The number of affiliates increased to 30 after Kagoshima Yomiuri Television started broadcasting in 1994.
In 1996, Nippon TV launched its first cable-exclusive channel, CS Nippon TV.
2000s–present At the start of the 2000s, Nippon TV and its 29 affiliates won the triple crown ratings. In December 2000, Nippon TV launched the satellite-exclusive channel BS NTV. On April 30, 2003, to celebrate its 50th anniversary, Nippon TV held a completion ceremony at its headquarters in Shiodome, Tokyo, which had taken seven years to build. In October 2000, employees of the network bribed surveyed households to increase their ratings, especially impacting ratings for baseball games. Fuji TV took advantage of the incident when, becoming number one in ratings. Nippon TV started digital broadcasting on December 1, 2003. It moved to Shiodome in February 2004, and also started high-definition production. With the rising trend for internet services, Nippon TV launched Dai2 Nippon TV, the first video-on-demand service from a commercial broadcaster in Japan.