Some TV Links
肥留間正明の芸能斜め斬り フジは制作費5%カット テレビ局の大不況
(“Hiruma Masaaki’s Slanted Take on the Entertainment World: Fuji has cut production budgets 5%, TV’s Great Depression”)
If you thought that Japanese TV could not get less ambitious, I beg you to flip the switch and take a look at what passes for Prime Time. The beloved “variety show” hinges on its stable of “personalities,” and TV stations evidently can no longer afford anyone approaching funny. Dandy Sakano seemed like a low point a few years ago, but he’s Oe Kenzaburo in comparison to today’s hooligans.
But enough of my objective commentary. Professional TV critic Hiruma’s got some facts for us:
• TV stations are having a hard-time finding sponsors, and program sponsors want more on-air time for their products
• A decade ago, program success meant a 20% share. Now a passing grade is 12% and dropping.
• Hiruma blames low quality of TV for the drop in viewership. (Maybe Japanese networks should, I dunno, consider reforming their conception of “programming” that has not changed since the late 1950s and filming in Beta-cams that have not changed since the late 1980s…) But here we get the negative feedback loop: lower viewers means lower budgets, lower budgets means worse talent, worse talent means worse shows, worse shows means lower viewership, und so weiter.
• Variety shows are using “announcers” to host shows, since they are salaried and cost less than hiring talent from production companies.
• Youth are not watching TV.
• Television station salaries are still some of the highest in Japan, while programming production is being fished out to companies that only pay employees ¥2 mil a year.
Recently, I have taken to watch a lot of Discovery Channel programming through cable. Mythbusters and Man vs. Wild seem like perfect models for Japanese network TV, but I guess you would have to actually find individuals with interesting skills and Japanese talent agencies don’t really do the “skill” thing. Oh wait, they have that girl that eats a lot and that other guy who is half-Japanese…
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus
Many may have read this essay by now, but I wonder how much its lessons apply to Japan. J-youth are watching less and less TV, but is there a concrete place where that energy is going besides 2-ch? Japanese Wikipedia isn’t bad, but has yet to reach a peak of activity. Is the idea of “creating public content for free” with your leisure time even an idea that exists within Japan? How could something that doesn’t cost money be worth anything?
Also:
“Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. “
This is certainly not true in Japan. You have to be a 40 year-old white-collar employee to have ever seen a real-deal personal computer. I have come to the conclusion that the cell phone in Japan is not a sign of advanced technology, but a “patch” to bring internet functions to those who cannot get access to computers. That is how it works in the Third World, why not with the “refugees of affluence” (豊か難民) of Japanese Gen-Y?
May 1, 2008 at 11:18 am
You have to be a 40 year-old white-collar employee to have ever seen a real-deal personal computer.
What do you mean by this?
That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it…
May 1, 2008 at 11:22 am
Yes. I was exaggerating for literary effect.
May 1, 2008 at 11:41 am
Well played, Mr. Marx.
So you meant it literally!
But really, the notion behind it being that most of the “refugees of affluence”of Japanese Gen-Y? don’t have personal computers. That’s surprising.
May 1, 2008 at 11:45 am
Obviously a lot do. I just wouldn’t say that computers are the main medium of internet access for non-corporate working young 20 year olds and teenagers. Or at least that’s the tech-moral panic going around (that I am latching on to)…
May 1, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Here is some awesome comic material from the latest and greatest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIcANrVZgXE&feature=related
I wonder why this hasn’t become an instant classic of international humor.
May 1, 2008 at 9:14 pm
You’re just mad he ripped off your bit.
May 2, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Been a while, gents!
“How could something that doesn’t cost money be worth anything?”
Unfortunately another attitude I seem to face is “How could something that doesn’t make money be worth doing?”
May 3, 2008 at 12:03 am
Apparently TBS has yanked the “counting” clip from YouTube. I’d make a joke here, but I doubt that TBS (or any other Japanese TV network) has any conception of “public service.”
May 3, 2008 at 9:49 am
Here’s something for Golden Week:
Astarte and Amaterasu – The Diverging Destinies of Europe and Japan
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3203
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3222
May 4, 2008 at 10:22 am
Re:Astarte and Amaterasu.
First of all,Ishihara Shintaro is NOT a Keio graduate,but of Hitotsubashi University.(His film sutar brother Yujiro was student in Keio,but never graduates.)
Secondly,this paragraph”The Orientals have no interest in and do not allow such rubbish. Let the stupid gaijin flock to Western Universities on the taxpayer’s subsidy to take academic courses with titles like The Phallus, Queer Musicology, Blackness, Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism, and Drag: Theories of Transgenderism and Performance.”reveals the author’s total ignorance on Japanese academia.
Maybe I should send a copy of the year 2005 issue of”The Journal of the Association for Mongolian Literature in Japan”which includes a title like “The introduction of queer reading to Mongolian Literary analysis”….
May 8, 2008 at 2:32 am
If you enjoyed that Clay Shirky piece, he did a presentation at Berkman in March that is also worth watching, which I posted to MetaFilter.com:
http://www.metafilter.com/70218/organizing-without-organizations
May 19, 2008 at 3:02 am
This is worth reading for those interested in the subject.
From TBS media research institution’s webpage.
http://www.tbs.co.jp/mri/media/media080401.html