TV Asahi


JOEX-DTV, branded as, and better known as 2=テレ朝, is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the, a wholly-owned subsidiary of, itself controlled by The Asahi Shimbun Company. Its studios are located in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo.

History

Pre-launch

After NHK General TV, NTV, and Radio Tokyo Television were launched in 1953 and 1955, TV has become an important medium in Japan. However, most of the programs that were aired at that time were vulgar which caused well-known critic Sōichi Ōya to mention in a program that TV made people in Japan "a nation of 100 million idiots"; those criticisms already gave birth to the idea of opening an education-focused TV station. On February 17, 1956, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications issued frequency allocations, and the Kantō region obtained three licenses in total. Among the three, one of them is used by NHK Educational TV, while the other two were open for private bidding. Among those bidders are film production companies Toho and Toei Company, radio broadcasters Nippon Cultural Broadcasting and Nippon Broadcasting System, and educational publishing group. On July 4, 1957, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications later decided to unify those applications into Tokyo Educational Television which was later obtained on July 8.
On October 10, 1957, Tokyo Educational Television held its first shareholders meeting and changed its company name to Nippon Educational Television Co., Ltd. . On November 1 of the same year, the broadcaster was later established. After Fuji Television obtained their broadcast licenses, they set an official start date of broadcast on March 1, 1959. NET advanced their start date of broadcast a month earlier. On Christmas Eve 1958, NET began its test transmissions. On January 9 of the following year, their broadcast license was approved, and test transmissions continued every night throughout the month.
At the time of founding, the following locations were considered for the building of its headquarters:
  • Ochanomizu Kishi Memorial Gymnasium
  • Adjacent to Hotel Okura in Toranomon
  • Land owned by a bank facing Aoyama Street in front of Jingumae
  • The site of the Fuji Television headquarters in Kawada Town
  • Toei Tokyo Studio Site
  • Toei site in Roppongi
NET took these considerations:
  • Convenient transportation
  • Possibility of future land expansion
  • Easy access to communication systems and electricity
  • Easy to build
After a careful consideration of these four conditions, a 9,100 square meter site at the location of the former Spanish embassy to Japan, was selected by Toei.

As Nippon Educational Television

At 9:55a.m. on February 1, 1959, NET signed on, airing at least 6.5 hours of programming per day. By April, this figure was extended to 10 hours. With the launch of the Mainichi Broadcasting System and Kyushu Asahi Broadcasting on March 1, 1959, NET programming started airing on those mentioned broadcasters. Shortly after the start of broadcasts, NET broadcast their first live program, which is the wedding of Crown Prince Akihito and Empress Michiko held on April 10 of the same year.
At the time, its broadcasting license dictated that the network was required to devote at least 50% of its airtime to educational programming, and at least 30% of its airtime to children's educational programming. However, the for-profit educational television model eventually proved to be a failure. In July 1959, average ratings of the network were less than 5%.
In 1960, NET began its transformation into a general-purpose television station. It began to broadcast anime and foreign movies. So as not to run afoul of the educational TV license requirements, NET justified the airing of these programs under the pretext of "nurturing a child's emotional range" and "introduction of foreign cultures". In December 1960, NET also changed its common name from Nippon Educational Television to NET TV. The change also made its ratings to reach about 10% after 1963. Although it still ranks at the bottom rank of other rival broadcasters, it has greatly narrowed the gap between it and the other three.
The station began adding primetime programming in April 1961. Two years later, NET announced its arrival into the anime race with the Toei produced Wolf Boy Ken. The first of many Toei Animation productions, its premiere began a long line of animated cartoons and series that the station has aired until today.
Kenichiro Matsuoka, born in America and fluent in English, joined the board of NET and was responsible for licensing Laramie and Rawhide from the US, gaining high ratings for the network. This would give them their first advantage over rivals NHK and Fuji TV. He would eventually go on to serve as an Executive Vice President and eventual founder of Japan Cable Television.
In November 1963, NET joined forces with NHK General TV for the first live via satellite telecast in Japanese TV history.

Transition from educational to entertainment programming

The switch to general programming also led to an infighting among the management. In contrast to the then-president of NET TV, Hiroshi Ogawa, who was actively promoting entertainment programs, Yoshio Akao thought that too many entertainment programs were against the original purpose of the educational TV station and was strongly dissatisfied with the vulgar programs that filled NET TV's program schedule at that time.In November 1964, Akao, together with shareholders other than Toei and Nikkei, Inc., succeeded in its major reorganization, forcing Ogawa to resign from the presidency.Since then, Toei's influence in NET TV has been gradually replaced by Asahi Shimbun.The following year, the Asahi Shimbun appointed to the post of station director Koshiji Miura.
In the 1960s, NET TV also started airing foreign films as part of its schedule. The NET TV premiere of The Morning Show in 1964 created a trend for a news-talk format on daytime Japanese TV, causing other networks to follow suit, it was the first Japanese morning program in its format. Hyōten, NET TV's drama in 1966, had a 42.7% ratings in its finale. The success of the drama made the network to adjust its target audiences to single and married females. Despite heavily focusing on entertainment programs, they continued to broadcast educational programs, albeit on a limited number of hours every morning. In 1967, NET TV launched to strengthen the production of educational programs. In April 1967, they started to broadcast in color TV, and by 1969, all of its programs were broadcast in color. After 1968, many regional broadcasters in Japan began to pop up. This led to the broadcaster launching the All-Nippon News Network on April 1, 1970, the country's 4th national network, with NET producing national news and other nationally produced programming for the regional channels that had joined the network. With the continuous network expansion, NET TV shifted its focus on its target audience again, this time from females, to being family oriented similar to the US PBS.
But the best was yet to come. One year after ANN was launched, ground-breaking superhero series such as Kamen Rider, Metal Hero Series, and Super Sentai were produced by Toei, premiering on NET TV and the ANN network in April 1971 with the original Kamen Rider making its television debut. These programs ended the long-standing tokusatsu duopoly TBS and Fuji Television held with the then hit Ultra Series franchise for almost half a decade ago on TBS. Since 1958, TBS and Fuji TV were the only Japanese TV stations to air tokusatsu productions. With its hit premiere, a rivalry began to start between the three, with TBS seeing NET's tokusatsu programming as a threat. Toei's successful pitch was seen by its staff as a resurgence of their influence following the removal of Hiroshi Ogawa as president in 1964.

As Asahi National Broadcasting

In November 1973, the Ministry of Posts revised its plans on how TV broadcasters would operate, including abolishing education-focused TV broadcasting. Therefore, NET's transformation into a general-purpose television station was complete by that same month, when NET, along with the educational channel "Tokyo Channel 12" in Tokyo applied and received a general purpose television station license. In March of the following year, both ended their broadcasts of educational programming, completing the transition. Japan's major newspapers are also sorting out their holdings in TV stations. The Nikkei transferred its stake in NET TV to The Asahi Shimbun, making the latter the largest shareholder of NET TV. On April 1, 1975, the ANN affiliation in the Kansai region changed hands, from Mainichi Broadcasting System, ABC Television assumed the network affiliation slot. Days later, the channel debuted another Ishinomori creation, Himitsu Sentai Gorenger, yet another Toei production, and it would be a stunning success. The series marked the beginning of the Super Sentai franchise and established NET as a force to be reckoned with regarding tokusatsu productions and anime.
On April 1, 1977, the corporate name of NET TV was renamed to, with the name of its channel changed to TV Asahi.This also symbolizes that the Asahi Shimbun has the right to operate TV Asahi both in name and in essence. Since December 17, 1978, TV Asahi has been broadcasting programs with stereo audio. The corporation also started entering into different ventures such as publishing in the late 70s to gain revenue other than advertising.
In 1977, thanks to his close relationship with Ivan Ivanovich, head of the Japanese Section of the International Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Koshiji Miura was able to meet with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and help TV Asahi obtain exclusive broadcasting rights for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. This was the first time that a private TV station in Japan was exclusively granted the broadcasting rights of the Olympic Games, but this was controversial as rival broadcasters including NHK opposed the move. Japan followed the Western countries in boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics. As a result, TV Asahi only aired high-profile Olympic events and the broadcaster had significant losses in its revenue.