NHK (Japanese: 日本放送 協会 Hepburn: Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, official English name: Japan Broadcasting Corporation) is Japan's national broadcasting organization.[2] NHK, which has always been known by this romanized acronym in Japanese,[3] is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee.
NHK operates two terrestrial television channels (NHK General TV and NHK Educational TV), four satellite television channels (NHK BS1 and NHK BS Premium, as well as two ultra-high-definition television channels; NHK BS4K and NHK BS8K), and three radio networks (NHK Radio 1, NHK Radio 2, and NHK FM).
NHK also provides an international broadcasting service, known as NHK World-Japan. NHK World-Japan is composed of NHK World TV, NHK World Premium, and the shortwave radio service Radio Japan (RJ). World Radio Japan also makes some of its programs available on the Internet.
Organization
NHK is an dependent corporation chartered by the Japanese broadcasting act and primarily funded by license fees. NHK World broadcasting (for overseas viewers/listeners) is funded by the Japanese government.[citation needed] The annual budget of NHK is subject to review and approval by the Diet of Japan. The Diet also appoints the 12-member Board of Governors (経営委員会 keiei iinkai) that oversees NHK.
NHK is managed on a full-time basis by an Executive Board (理事会 rijikai) consisting of a President, Vice President and seven to ten Managing Directors who oversee the areas of NHK operations. The Executive Board reports to the Board of Governors.
License fee
NHK is funded by reception fees (受信料 jushinryō), a system analogous to the license fee used in some English-speaking countries. The Broadcast Law which governs NHK's funding stipulates any broadcasting equipment able to receive NHK (i.e. all mass media broadcasting collectors) is required to pay. The fee is standardized,[4] with discounts for office workers and students who commute, as well a general discount for residents of Okinawa prefecture. For viewers making annual payments by credit card with no other special discounts, the reception fee is 13,600 yen per year for terrestrial reception only, and 24,090 yen per year for both terrestrial and broadcast satellite reception.[5]
However, the Broadcast law lists no punitive actions for nonpayment; as a result, after a rash of NHK-related Scandal including accounting one, the number of people who had not paid the license fee surpassed one million watchers.[citation needed] This incident sparked debate over the fairness of the fee system.[6] In 2006, the NHK opted to take legal action against those most flagrantly in violation of the law.[7]
NHK domestic broadcasting stations
Main articles: NHK General TV and NHK Educational TV
TV programming
See also: List of anime broadcast by NHK
NHK General TV broadcasts a variety of programming. The following are noteworthy:
News
NHK offers local, national, and world news reports. NHK News 7 airs daily and is broadcast bilingually with both Japanese and English audio tracks on NHK General TV and NHK's international channels TV Japan and NHK World Premium. The flagship news program News Watch 9 is also bilingual and also airs on NHK General TV and the international channels and NHK World Premium. World News is aired on NHK BS 1 with Catch! Sekai no Top News in the morning and International News Report at night, with the latter also airing on NHK World Premium. News on NHK BS 1 is aired at 50 minutes past the hour except during live sport events.
NHK also offers news for the deaf (which airs on NHK Educational TV), regional news (which airs on NHK General TV) and children's news. Newsline is an English-language newscast designed for foreign viewers and airs on NHK World.
In his book Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News, Ellis S Krauss states: 'In the 1960s and 1970s, external critics of NHK news were complaining about the strict neutrality, the lack of criticism of government, and the 'self-regulation in covering events'. Krauss claims that little had changed by the 1980s and 1990s.[8] After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, NHK was criticised for underplaying the dangers from radioactive contamination.[9][10]
Emergency reporting
Under the Broadcast Act, NHK is under the obligation to broadcast early warning emergency reporting in times of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. Their national network of seismometers in cooperation with the Japan Meteorological Agency makes NHK capable of delivering the news in just 2–3 minutes after the quake. They also broadcast air attack warnings in the event of war, using the J-Alert system.[11] All warnings are broadcast in five languages: English, Mandarin, Korean and Portuguese (Japan has small Chinese, Korean and Brazilian populations), as well as Japanese. The warnings were broadcast in these languages during the 11 March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.[12]
Sports
NHK broadcasts sumo wrestling, baseball games, Olympic Games, soccer games, and a range of other sports.
Music
The NHK Symphony Orchestra, financially sponsored by NHK, was formerly (until 1951) the Japanese Symphony Orchestra. Its website details the orchestra's history and ongoing concert programme.[13] Since 1953, NHK has broadcast the Kōhaku Uta Gassen song contest on New Year's Eve, ending shortly before midnight.
Drama
A sentimental morning show, a weekly jidaigeki and a year-long show, the ‘‘Taiga drama’’, spearhead the network’s fiction offerings. NHK is also making efforts at broadcasting dramas made in foreign countries as "Overseas Drama (海外ドラマ Kaigai Dorama)".
Children
The longest running children's show in Japan, Okaasan to Issho (おかあさんといっしょ, With Mother, 1959[14]), still airs to this day Monday-Friday 17:36-18:00 JST, Sunday 17:30-17:54 JST with rebroadcasts Tuesday-Sunday 5:00-5:24 JST on NHK World Premium. [15]
History
NHK's earliest forerunner was the Tokyo Broadcasting Station (東京放送局) founded in 1924 under the leadership of Count Gotō Shinpei. Tokyo Broadcasting Station, along with separate organizations in Osaka and Nagoya, began radio broadcasts in 1925. The three stations merged under the first incarnation of NHK in August 1926.[16] NHK was modelled on the BBC of the United Kingdom,[3] and the merger and reorganisation was carried out under the auspices of the pre-war Ministry of Communications.[17] NHK's second radio network began in 1931, and the third radio network (FM) began in 1937.
Radio broadcasting
NHK began shortwave broadcasting on an experimental basis in the 1930s, and began regular English- and Japanese-language shortwave broadcasts in 1935 under the name Radio Japan, initially aimed at ethnic Japanese listeners in Hawaii and the west coast of North America. By the late 1930s NHK's overseas broadcasts were known as Radio Tokyo, which became an official name in 1941.
In November 1941, the Imperial Japanese Army nationalised all public news agencies and coordinated their efforts via the Information Liaison Confidential Committee.[citation needed] All published and broadcast news reports became official announcements of the Imperial Army General Headquarters in Tokyo for the duration of World War II. The famous Tokyo Rose wartime programs were broadcasts by NHK.[3] NHK also broadcast the Gyokuon-hōsō, the surrender speech made by Emperor Hirohito, in August 1945.
Following the war, in September 1945, the Allied occupation administration under General Douglas MacArthur banned all international broadcasting by NHK, and repurposed several NHK facilities and frequencies for use by the Far East Network (now American Forces Network). Japanese-American radio broadcaster Frank Shozo Baba joined NHK during this time and led an early post-war revamp of its programming. Radio Japan resumed overseas broadcasts in 1952.
A new Broadcasting Act ("Hōsō Hō") was enacted in 1950, which made NHK a listener-supported independent corporation and simultaneously opened the market for commercial broadcasting in Japan.[18] NHK started television broadcasting in the same year, followed by its Educational TV channel in 1959 and color television broadcasts in 1960.
NHK opened the first stage of its current headquarters in the special ward of Japan's capital city Shibuya as an international broadcasting center for the 1964 Summer Olympics, the first widely televised Olympic Games. The complex was gradually expanded through 1973, when it became the headquarters for NHK. The previous headquarters adjacent to Hibiya Park was redeveloped as the Hibiya City high-rise complex.
Satellite broadcasting
NHK began satellite broadcasting with the NHK BS 1 channel in 1984, followed by NHK BS 2 in 1985.[19] Both channels began regular broadcasts in 1989. In April 2011, BS 1 was rebranded while BS 2 channel ceased broadcasting and was replaced by "BS Premium" which broadcasts on the channel formerly used by BShi. Both channels currently air in HD.
International satellite broadcasts to North America and Europe began in 1995, which led to the launch of NHK World in 1998. It became free-to-air over the Astra 19.2°E (Astra 1L) and Eurobird satellites in Europe in 2008.[20]
NHK began digital television broadcasting in December 2000 through BS Digital, followed by terrestrial digital TV broadcasts in three major metropolitan areas in 2003. Its digital television coverage gradually expanded to cover almost all of Japan by 24 July 2011, when analog transmissions were discontinued (except in certain areas affected by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami where it was discontinued on 31 March 2012)
