04.18.05
Takeover Battle Ends in TV/Web Convergence Plan

From The Asahi Shimbun: Fuji TV will take control of Nippon Broadcasting System Inc. after a costly compromise with Internet portal Livedoor Co. on April 17. Sources said Livedoor will sell back its shares in radio broadcaster Nippon Broadcasting, which stand at more than 50 percent, to Fuji TV for 140 billion yen ($1.3 billion), an amount greater than the takeover price. The TV broadcaster will then own a 15 percent stake in Livedoor. The development apparently ends the controversial takeover battle between the companies. Although Fuji executives recoiled at the idea of allowing Livedoor a profit on the deal, they decided they had no other choice after a bitter battle. The two companies plan to create a committee in charge of planning an integration of Internet use and broadcasting. This convergence opportunity was the goal of Livedoor President Takafumi Horie in battling for Nippon Broadcasting.
— By Japan Media Review Managing Editor Shellie Branco
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04.17.05
Group to Post Controversial History Book on Web

From The Korea Times: The Japanese Society of History, a right-wing group, has decided to post a fully translated version of a controversial middle school history textbook online. The society said the Web site will carry the literature in Chinese and Korean to enable people to read it before denouncing it as misleading or incorrect. Fusosha, a middle school textbook, is named after its publisher, Fuso Publishing Co. The book, approved by the Japanese government, has been criticized as “[whitewashing] Japan’s colonial-era brutalities when it was first published in 2001.” The new version, which the Japanese government approved earlier this month, faces scathing criticism from South Korea and China for “justifying Japan’s colonial expansion and glossing over atrocities such as forced labor and sexual slavery.”
— By Japan Media Review Contributing Writer Aarthi Sivaraman
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04.12.05
PSP Users Enable Chat, Web Features

From The Daily Yomiuri: The Sony PlayStation Portable, newly released in the United States, is being used for more than just gaming and video features. PSP users are hacking their way onto the Internet directly through the system’s wireless technology. One user, Robert Balousek, wrote an open-source chat program that takes advantage of a PSP game, called “Wipeout Pure,” that uses a Web browser. Balousek is now devising a way for AOL Instant Messenger and MSN Messenger customers to use PSPs to chat as well. Since Balousek first put his project online April 1, the Web site has received more than 250,000 visitors. PSP users in Japan have used their devices for non-gaming purposes too, using the imaging capability to upload comics.
— By Japan Media Review Associate Editor Erica Ogg
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04.11.05
Web Site Seeks to Repair Japanese-Russian Political Ties

From The Asahi Shimbun: The Tokyo Foundation, a nonprofit Japanese policy advisory group, is attempting to bring Japanese and Russians together through a Web site devoted to divisive regional issues. The site promotes the Japanese perspective in the Russian language through expert analysis and opinion. One of the main issues the site highlights is the decades-long dispute over four islands taken from Japan by the former Soviet Union following World War II. The site has already received requests from Russia to increase the level of analysis. One of the site’s advisory editors, Shigeki Hakamada, wrote recently that he hopes the project will lead to an eventual treaty between the two nations.
– By Japan Media Review Associate Editor Erica Ogg
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04.10.05
Top Two NBS Officials Leave After Takeover

From The Japan Times via Asia Media: The president and vice president of Nippon Broadcasting Systems plan to leave the company in June, company sources said. President Akinobu Kamebuchi and his number two, Kunio Amai, will leave the radio broadcaster when their contracts expire in June, according to sources, taking the blame for the company’s recent hostile takeover by Livedoor Co. Livedoor, an Internet services provider, purchased a controlling stake in NBS last month after a protracted fight to acquire Fuji Television, NBS’s parent company. It is also expected that Livedoor will replace more than half of the NBS board of directors when Kamebuchi and Amai leave in June.
– By Japan Media Review Associate Editor Erica Ogg
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04.09.05
Online Media Pioneer Prepares Students in Aftermath of Digital Revolution

From The Asahi Shimbun: Tokyo-based Digital Hollywood University is turning students and professionals into digital content entrepreneurs. Founded by Tomoyuki Sugiyama 10 years ago, the school recently added new departments to train producers and directors to create and distribute online content, as Sugiyama says the Japanese media and entertainment industries need people who can work across all disciplines. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s and returned home to a Japan trying to embrace a vast array of new technology without anyone who could use it. “Back then, only a few talented people were able to use the Internet,” Sugiyama said. “I wanted ordinary people to learn how to become [Web] creators.” More than 30,000 of his students have entered multimedia production over the last 10 years, thanks to the explosion of digital content distribution avenues: cell phones, broadband, and vehicle navigation systems.
–By Japan Media Review Associate Editor Erica Ogg
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Imagine Peter Jennings or Brian Williams appearing in television commercials and newspaper advertisements, encouraging the audience to buy a product. Imagine they’re also teaching journalism ethics at a major university. How would Americans react?

Recently, some prominent figures in Japanese journalism have endorsed products in advertisements, with virtually no debate within the country on such an apparent contradiction.

In a country where many people are still obsessed with television programs even after the explosion of the Internet, major broadcast networks can continue to exert overwhelming influence. As a result, commercials exploiting TV celebrities and broadcast journalists work very well, say analysts and company officials.

Shuntaro Torigoe, an award-winning journalist at TV Asahi and other stations, probably one of the most well-known figures in Japanese journalism, has appeared in a TV drama and in commercials for insurance and the Mainichi Shimbun, a major newspaper where he formerly worked as a reporter.

Meanwhile, Torigoe, also a former reporter and editor for weekly magazine the Sunday Mainichi, discusses ethical problems in journalism in his books and also teaches journalism at Kansai University, a major university in Osaka.

Asked about roles of journalists and that apparent contradiction between what he says and what he does, Torigoe answered, “Do I have to answer such things all of the time?”

Torigoe then said he had no comment; Kansai University also declined to respond.

The Mainichi Shimbun responded, saying, “We don’t think his appearance in the ads impedes his journalistic activities. Mr. Torigoe also criticized us when we made mistakes.”

TV Asahi, on whose morning talk show Torigoe regularly appears, said the matter doesn’t concern them.

“That is what Mr. Torigoe decides,” said the major network. “Mr. Torigoe is a freelance journalist and not an employee of TV Asahi. We don’t have an exclusive contract with him.”

Seiichi Kanise, a fluent English-speaker who worked as an anchor for TV Asahi and Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), appeared in ads for Japan Telecom. Kanise is an anchor for a Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Inc. radio program and a professor of journalism at Meiji University in Tokyo. Before his broadcast jobs, Kanise worked as a reporter in Tokyo for The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Time magazine.

In an e-mail message, Kanise responded by conceding that his appearance in commercials is “certainly unfavorable by journalism standards. I take criticism on the chin.”

The journalism professor continued, “It is my personal choice in life. I don’t believe I’m doing anything that I’m ashamed of before God.”

The school of arts and letters at Meiji University declined to comment on the matter.

Probably no other company in Japan has used more former broadcast journalists in its ads than ALICO Japan, a branch office of ALICO (American Life Insurance Company), of Wilmington, Del. Lately, the Japanese public has been bombarded with a string of advertisements by the insurance giant. Some of the commercials imitate actual news reporting, with former journalists explaining the products. At the top of the screen a notice is inserted that tells the audience they are not watching a real news program.

A spokeswoman for ALICO Japan said the company actively promotes former journalists because of their visibility, credibility and “ability to express [themselves] in the clearest of terms within [a] limited time frame.”

Lasar Ishii, the stage name of comedian Akio Ishii, is an anchor on a morning news program at TBS and also appears in ALICO commercials.

TBS, however, doesn’t identify that show as a “news program,” instead the company calls it an “information program that deals with news.”

Asked about Ishii’s appearance in commercials, TBS said that when it comes to the program, Ishii is not involved in news production since the network has editorial control. Regarding Ishii and other TV celebrities appearing in the program, TBS said, “Their activities in show business never affect our news content.”

Although there is little discussion in general regarding journalists’ appearance in ads, some critics have spoken out on the issue.

The practice is “inexcusable,” according to Kenichi Asano, a journalism professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto. “I would say it would be impossible in a civilized country that journalists are appearing on commercials.”

In Japan, the U.S. media were widely and harshly criticized for being soft on the Bush administration after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and up through the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Some journalists and commentators went as far as to say American journalists were distributing “government propaganda.” However, when it comes to issues in journalism at home, Japanese news organizations and journalists are not often open to criticism.

Furthermore, close ties between media critics and reporters have stifled much-needed debate, some analysts say. There are many “experts,” including journalism professors, who are reluctant to criticize news outlets because of their connections to them.

Asano, of Doshisha University, said news organizations and journalism scholars downplay it even if they are aware that it’s wrong for a journalist to appear in commercials.

“Many prominent scholars — who often give comments on journalism issues to major networks and newspapers — fail to raise the question of it,” Asano said. “They don’t openly criticize the major media because they befriend them. If they did, they would not be on TV or their comments would not be in the newspaper.”

One prominent journalism professor at a prestigious university in Tokyo said he hesitates to comment on the appearances of Torigoe and Kanise in commercials because he is “well-acquainted with them.”

When Japan Media Review asked major news organizations whether journalists should appear in commercials or not, they seemed unaware of the issue.

The Mainichi Shimbun, which hired Torigoe for its ads, said the practice should be judged “on a case-by-case basis,” while the Sankei Shimbun stated clearly that it had no problem with it.

“We don’t think journalists should not appear on commercials just because they are journalists,” said the Sankei Shimbun. “We consider that our employees are basically allowed to appear as long as that doesn’t hurt our corporate image.”

The paper, however, said it had never had such a case before.

“For journalists, relationships with people and personal network[s] are treasure,” adds Sankei. “Appearing in commercials makes them aware of the world they have not stepped [in] … .”

Nippon Television Network Corporation (NTV) said, “Our company regulations read [that] our employees engaged in news programs are not allowed to appear in other companies’ commercials. But we are not in a position to comment on the appearances in commercials of freelance journalists.”

The Asahi Shimbun, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and TV Asahi declined to comment. TBS and NHK also had no comment, saying they are not in a position to answer the question.

TV Tokyo and The Yomiuri Shimbun also gave no comment, and Fuji Television Network, Inc. did not respond to the question.

Teddy Jimbo, CEO of Video News Network, an Internet TV station, said while he personally thinks journalists’ appearances in ads are wrong, another problem lies in the underdevelopment of media literacy among Japanese audiences. Very few viewers understand why it’s wrong, he said.

If a journalist appears in a company’s commercial, that means he or she “has to take a risk,” said Jimbo, who was a reporter for The Associated Press and TV Asahi. “That is because if that company creates a scandal, that hurts not only that journalist but the world of journalism itself.”

“Unfortunately, the level of media literacy among the public is low,” said Jimbo.

Even when the spate of recent scandals at Mitsubishi Motors Corp. came to light and the company was severely criticized for its defect cover-ups, nobody condemned the TV celebrities who had endorsed the company’s products in its advertisements, he pointed out.

The bottom line, Jimbo said, is that “the concept of conflict of interest has not really taken hold in Japan.”

When Takafumi Horie spoke to a packed room at the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents’ Club on March 3, the chair quipped that it was the best-attended press conference since legendary Argentine soccer player Diego Maradona visited the club. Horie is no sports hero, but the 32-year-old Internet entrepreneur is rapidly becoming a young superstar of a quite different playing field. Horie had come to discuss his takeover bid for part of Fujisankei Communications, Japan’s largest media conglomerate.

Following his company’s surprise purchase of a controlling stake in Nippon Broadcasting Systems, a radio broadcaster, Horie has quickly found the more austere sections of the media lambasting him as arrogant, greedy and “un-Japanese” for his aggressive business tactics. At the same time, other often younger commentators have showed admiration for his bold challenge to the established “old” media. But, regardless of what anyone thinks of his business style, to judge by the 300 people who packed out the press conference at the Correspondents’ Club, few would deny that Horie is a man to watch.

If Horie’s aim was to shock the established media out of their complacency and make them take notice of the Internet, he has surely already won. After a desperate, widely publicized legal battle between Fujisankei and Horie’s Livedoor Internet company, on March 23 Horie prevailed. Tokyo’s High Court ruled the radio station’s blocking tactics illegal, effectively allowing Horie’s takeover bid. The following day, Fuji TV made the surprise announcement that a Softbank (another Internet company) affliate had become the largest shareholder in the TV channel. Fuji TV has saved itself from the disastrous loss of face a takeover by Horie would entail, but in the process may have brought long-delayed synergy between old and new media in Japan a little closer.

The media have pitched their intense and sometimes emotional coverage of the legal battle as a battle between young and old generations. The iconoclastic Horie has done little to dispel that impression. Though the sober gray business suit is virtually the national costume, Horie doesn’t even bother wearing a tie. A regular on TV talk shows and news programs, he consciously flaunts the language and attitudes of Japan’s younger generations.

Having dropped out of Japan’s prestigious Tokyo University, an almost unheard-of thing to do, in 1996 Horie founded a small Internet startup, Livin’ On the EDGE Inc. At the time, he has said, he was the only person he knew with an e-mail address on his business card. By March 2004 the company, renamed as Livedoor Co. Ltd., had 1,087 employees, with an average age of 29.

The announcement on Feb. 8 this year that Livedoor had acquired a controlling stake in Nippon Broadcasting Systems, part of the conservative Fujisankei media conglomerate, came as shock news –- not least to NBS itself. Horie’s company had bought the shares during off-hours trading, which, if not against the rules, certainly stretched them to their limit. It was typical of Horie, who has built much his Internet empire through shrewd acquisitions of other companies. It is not, however, how business is traditionally done in Japan.

The move quickly had much of the Japanese media and business establishment spitting fire; Horie was denounced from on high. Kyodo News quoted Fuji TV’s chairman Hisahi Hieda virtually denouncing Horie as un-Japanese: “I wonder if this sort of thing is called American-style? I don’t know it because I am Japanese.” (As it happens, Livedoor had funded the takeover attempt by selling convertible bonds to foreign investment bank Lehman Brothers , something that was treated in the Japanese media with a “disturbing degree of reactionary xenophobia,” according to the London Financial Times.)

Horie was characteristically unrepentant, pledging — or threatening, depending on your point of view — to acquire a controlling stake in NBS. By doing so he would potentially be able to have a say in the operations of the Fujisankei Group, Japan’s largest media conglomerate. As well as the popular Fuji Television channel, magazines, radio stations and museums, the Fujisankei Group contains the highbrow and conservative Sankei Newspaper.

The latter has slammed Horie in a series of editorials. The newspaper accused Horie of “trying to build a media strategy just on the basis of economic rationality.” In other words, just having the money to buy into the media doesn’t give him the authority to run a newspaper or a TV station for the public good. With a palpable sense of horror, the Sankei imagined Horie imposing a new, presumably young and radical, editorial bent upon the publication: “Our readers, our columnists and history wouldn’t forgive him,” they shuddered. The conservative weekly tabloid Shukan Shincho’s attitude was less restrained. “Livedoor in the same class as Aum,” one headline sputtered. (Aum is the religious cult responsible for the Tokyo underground gas attacks).

Philip Brasor, writer of a media column in The Japan Times, is skeptical of the established media’s dash for the moral high ground. “They just don’t want to change. They don’t want anybody to come in and tell them that they can do something different or perhaps do something better,” he wrote. While public broadcaster NHK may lay some claim to serve the public good, the same can hardly be said of Fuji TV’s output of game shows and entertainment programs, Brasor suggested. “But what does Fuji TV do that is for the public good? For me, that is hypocritical, or at least self-important.”

At the moment, Horie is playing his cards pretty close to his chest. Despite his constant TV presence since the beginning of the takeover battle –- with the notable exception of Fujisankei’s channel — he has yet to reveal his exact plans for Internet and old-media synergy. “He has obviously got a strategy; he just doesn’t want to announce it on public television. We will just have to wait and see what it is,” said Tim Clark, analyst and author of the Japan Internet Report. In any case, Horie may have already achieved his first objective. Having failed in a recent attempt to buy into Japanese baseball, Horie could have been looking for an even bolder way to force his Internet company onto the offline consciousness. “It is definitely a symbolic gesture. It is a branding move,” suggested Clark.

Nevertheless, many analysts in Japan and abroad have been skeptical of Horie’s plans. He has had huge success as an Internet entrepreneur, but some doubt whether he has the business know-how or media sense to become a Japanese media mogul in the leagues of Rupert Murdoch or Barry Diller -– especially in a media world as resistant to newcomers as Japan’s.

“Arguably what we are seeing is an exercise in financial engineering rather than a revolution in the mediascape,” suggests Bruce Arnold of Caslon Analytics, an Australian Internet research, analysis and strategies consultant group. Others speculate that Horie may have his eye on the Fujisankei Group’s extensive entertainment assets, perhaps to move into online video and music.

Speaking at the Tokyo Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Horie argued that Japan has an opportunity to succeed in creating synergy between the Internet and traditional media where attempts like the AOL/Time Warner merger failed. He has argued that Japan’s extremely high broadband uptake and the success of subscription-based services offer an opportunity to build a successful online content business. Skeptics point to the limited success of similar attempts elsewhere and question whether Horie really has a new business model.

Whatever Horie’s ultimate aims, he is quickly becoming a popular icon of a new breed of young business leaders. The left-wing Aera magazine, perhaps indulging in a touch of schadenfreude at the expense of the conservative Fujisankei Group, has been enthusiastically touting Horie as a model for Japan’s youth. One recent feature on Horie’s early life was titled “I want to be a Horie.”

Horie has many supporters among those hoping to see change in Japan. “If Horie destroys the existing media structure, it is an opportunity,” says Kenichi Asano, a professor of journalism and mass communication at Kyoto’s Doshisha University. But Asano and others are disappointed that Horie has shown few signs of wanting to change Japan’s hidebound media in any fundamental way -– such as breaking up the press club system or introducing more diverse content. “I think Horie is trying to destroy [the existing setup],” said Asano. “We need such a person in this era -– but I don’t think he really understands journalism. It’s a pity.”

In the long run, the battle between Japan’s energetic Internet wizards and the gray-bearded mandarins of the established media has barely begun –- and the public is entranced. For freelance journalist Hiromichi Ugaya, the affair has opened the public’s eyes to who runs their media. “It is amazing that even Fuji TV, which makes programs for Japanese young people, is run by these old men,” he said. “The final result of Horie’s attempt will be that people realize how hard-headed the Japanese media [are].”

On March 12, not for the first time, the Fuji-Livedoor saga was covered by The Asahi Shimbun’s widely read and respected tensei-jingo column. Recounting Aesop’s fable of the oak and the reed, the columnist noted similarities with the ongoing battle between the established media and Horie’s new media. The column somehow neglected to say which of the two was the proud oak tree that broke in the gale, and which was the supple reed that survived, but then again, perhaps it didn’t need to.