TV isn't Dead... It Just Smells Bad!

Just returning from a trip to the USA whereby I spent the last week trying to help out a primary caregiver with my very ill father on hospice. 


It was/is a terrible situation and I hope that you don't have to go through this with any of your parents soon. But many will, so before that, won't you take one minute to take a look at this short message concerning that subject?


While there, I made some observations about television. It wasn't hard to do. I was staying at a household with my now 80-year-old father and his 80-year old live-in partner and caregiver where the TV was on from the first thing in the morning to the last thing, besides the kitchen light, to be turned off at night before bed.


Observing these folks watching TV was painful. The primary caregiver was constantly talking to the TV as if the conversation were all hers (seriously) and my dad was constantly complaining about how idiotic the TV was... Yet, on the TV stayed.... 


The situation with the TV on forever drove me crazy!


That house is, in my opinion, the typical TV household of the year 2011 and beyond. It represents the core of who are TV's main viewers today and it also represents why TV, in its current configuration, is dead. I've written about it before in "Part Two: Why the Digital Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo and TBS":


These are folks who have seen TV all their lives. The Internet is still a new thing to them. My in-laws are the kinds of folks who turn on the TV when they wake up in the morning and leave it on all day whether they are watching it or not. They are terrestrial TV's prime audience.

Why are these people the typical prime target for a station like TV Tokyo or TBS? Think about it.

Who has the time to sit around and really watch TV for 2 or 3 hours a day, everyday (like people did 30 years ago)? Well, the only people who do have the time to do so are either:

1) Inactive
2) Poor
3) Retired or aged
4) Handicapped or ill

Think about that. Now, if you were a sponsor, would you spend money on TV advertising for people who fit any of the descriptions above? No. You wouldn't.

That's one huge problem for these dinosaur TV stations that have thousands of employees and a dropping revenue base.


This problem is universal. Perhaps countries like India or China haven't (nor will they???) face these challenges... (But I know that in India, people still use 45 rpm records and cassette tapes, so maybe they will someday soon!)


Japan and the USA are in the same boat, though, when it comes to TV. Here are some things I noticed while in the USA that just confirmed and consolidated my opinion on that:


TV in the USA is now playing a defensive strategy that I have seen stations play in Japan. It is a strategy doomed to failure. I have seen this with my own eyes and even argued this point against program directors and station managers as far back as 1998.


The strategy that these stations are trying can't possibly work in the long run. It goes like this: The audience of TV viewers is shrinking. So, instead of pursuing an aggressive policy to reach out to younger people and gather new viewers and a new audience, the stations pursue a defensive strategy to prevent erosion of their current audience (old people). The stations will, instead of making efforts to attract new viewers, will make efforts to keep their old veiwers and prevent them from switching channels to the other competing station (who is pursuing the same policies). This might be fine, but when you realize that your core audience is numbers 1 ~ 4 above, this is not an audience that is growing. This is an audience that is dying off and shrinking.


Now, it doesn't take a genius to realize that this sort of strategy is a sure-fire way to fail. Most promising new business plans attack new, growing markets; not old and shrinking ones.


A good piece of evidence for this is the many FM radio stations that are still playing Bob Seeger, Journey, Foreigner and Steve Miller Band; the same music they were playing 30 years ago! The current sad financial state of today's FM stations - in Japan and the USA - is a testament to the failure of this policy.


My conclusions about network TV in the USA pursuing this policy were reinforced by the commercials I saw. They were very heavily geared to an older audience. One particularly memorable commercial was for a boxed set of DVD's of Shirley Temple movies. Now, I like Shirley Temple as much as the next movie fan (OK, maybe not that much) but for lack of a better description, when I saw the commercial, I thought, "This is not 'cool'!" 


Now, who in the world would want to buy a Shirley Temple boxed set of movies? Anyone under 50-years-old? No? How about under 70? How about 75? 


One of the stations that my ill father and his caregiver watched constantly was ABC. I surmise that their favorite TV show is Good Morning America that has been on since before I moved to Japan in 1984. This show has definitely declined in quality and popularity (I could deduce that by watching shots of the audience). The main host Regis Philbin is retiring so he has good timing. These stations are trying to do anything to pump some life into their lifeless format but it fails miserably. 


It used to be only on late night TV like David Letterman that when the station returned from a TV commercial, would the audience scream and yell while clapping. But now, even on the morning TV shows, they do that. It used to be just polite clapping on morning shows. Now, it's a bunch of people yelping and screaming like a high school sports match or American Idol (which is the intelligence level of this nonsense).

It might have been OK to have these people screaming loudly like a bunch of junior high school kids excepting that one time, on Good Morning America, they foolishly showed the audience and there weren't twenty people standing there. Probably most people don't notice that, but I caught it immediately.


Twenty years ago, it would have been a few hundred people trying to gain their 15 seconds of fame. Now? 


In a related note, as I predicted long ago, many Japanese have turned away from TV. I predicted that the digital conversion would see Japanese TV stations voluntarily throw away 20 ~ 30% of their core audeince. Some people scoffed. I had written in Why the Digital Conversion Will Kill TV Tokyo and TBS:

It seems obvious to me that there's no doubt about it...  Basically:

1) People with money do not watch TV
2) The only people who do watch a lot of TV have either no money or too much time on their hands; they are not active
3) Advertising to people with no money and who are not active is a waste of money.
4) When digital goes online fully, then the only people who don't have the digital equipment are poor people
5) Poor people are the only ones who watch TV Tokyo and TBS now (see #2 above)

The countdown has begun. The digital TV conversion will kill TV Tokyo and TBS.

People aren't scoffing about what I predicted anymore. The TV people are panicking. It has happened and is happening right before your very eyes. The end of an era is upon us. TV, as we have know it for decades, is on its last legs and there is no one in that business (that I have met) who understands he problem enough to fix it. It is too late. The audience is gone.

Japan has lost a huge slice of existing viewers by cutting them off from digitial. They will not return. The USA still has the fashionable senior citizen crowd on Medicaid and Medicare....  

Japanese Are Turning Off the TVs.


Tokyo-- The Japanese, once one of the most TV-addicted people on the planet, are drifting away from the tube -- forcing networks to scramble for other sources of revenue, from pic production, satellite services, Internet streaming sites and other new technologies.

Daily TV viewing time, which averaged more than five hours in the 1970s, shrank to 3 hours and 28 minutes by 2010, according to figures compiled by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute.

Males aged 10 to 20 are watching less than two hours a day.

Meanwhile, program ratings have been trending downward for terrestrial networks, pubcaster NHK and commercial rivals TV Asahi, NTV, TBS, Fuji TV and TV Tokyo, despite spikes for major sport events and other special programming.

In June not one show on commercial TV in the 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. "Golden Time" slot won a rating of 10 or above -- once considered the minimum for survival.

Even long-running shows that once seemed immortal have either been axed or are on the brink. One that recently got the heave-ho after 43 seasons is period drama "Mito komon," which bowed in 1969. At its peak, the show's ratings reached as high as 43.7, but recently it has struggled to achieve double digits. Its last episode will air in December on MBS, an affiliate of TBS.

Various causes have been advanced for the ratings slide. Like other countries, Japanese families no longer sit around the TV watching the same show, as viewers did in the industry's 1960-to-1990s heyday. The Japanese now consume entertainment on a range of platforms, including PCs, smartphones and game consoles.

Also, an estimated 100,000 households, including a lot of elderly "Mito komon" fans, failed to make the switch from analog to digital in July, and have effectively given up TV entirely.

But the biggest cause, says Hiro Otaka, a media analyst for the Bunka Tsushin entertainment news services, is that "the programs have become boring."

Otaka blames network execs who have responded to falling ratings by cutting costs and hedging their bets.

There is no media in the world who can survive when the under 30-year-old crowd do not care about it. Can't be done. And under 30-year-old in Japan definitely do not care about TV... Come to think of it, why should they?


TV isn't dead... Yet. It just smells really bad.

Massive Anti-Government Protests in Spain Spreading to Italy! No Mention at all in Japanese Press

UPDATE! LIVE FEED OF PROTESTS IN SPAIN AT BOTTOM! 

IS THIS SITUATION IS FAST SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL? MUST SEE!

The demonstrations in Egypt weren't nearly this big! In Europe, first Greece then Iceland now Spain! Massive demonstrations and protests have broken out all over Europe. There's not a word mentioned about these huge protests in the Japanese media or in the US media either! See the live feed at the bottom of this post. These demonstrations are huge and the news about them seems to be blocked all over the world!

Twitter comment about the protests from Poland

The demonstration first started out in Madrid but have now spread to Barcelona, Valencia and other cities in Spain. The Spanish government cannot withstand this pressure. 

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE - WAKE UP

Elections are tomorrow but the protesters have said that they will continue to protest until they get what they want... I'm sure the elections will not satisfy their demands. What's next? This and events in Portugal and Italy bode ill for the Euro and the world economy. This will certainly hurt Japan's already faltering economy.

These massive demonstrations continue to grow and have turned quite ugly and violent in Greece and have now been banned in Spain (which has only served to increase their size). In Spain's case, the government has banned these gatherings, but absolutely cannot afford to send the police in and kick these people out. 


Ultimately, unemployment, taxes and austerity measures have caused these huge demonstrations that are, as one protester said, "... against the criminal behavior of the central bankers and IMF. Taking tax money from the people and giving it to rich bankers have finally made the people take to the streets...." 


Yet, this news is nowhere to be found in the Japanese news services in English or in Japanese.


I predict that this demonstration in Spain will collapse the Spanish government.


Hence this blog post.


Mish Shedlock has an excellent write up about it: 


"After passively submitting to the crisis, young Spaniards have finally taken to the street. Breaking out on the eve of municipal elections, the protests of recent days have been inspired by those in Iceland that led to the fall of the government in Reykjavik.

One morning in October 2008, Torfason Hördur turned up at what Icelanders call the “Althing”, the Icelandic parliament in the capital city, Reykjavik. By then, the country's biggest bank, the Kaupthing, had already gone into receivership and the Icelandic financial system itself was in danger of going under. Torfason, with his guitar, grabbed a microphone and invited people to talk about their dissatisfaction with the freefall of their country and to speak their minds.

A movement spawned by the Internet

But those voices calling for real democracy are not just being raised in Iceland, a country of about 320,000 inhabitants. Here in Spain, the umbrella organisation for various Spanish movements – Democracia Real Ya (Real Democracy Now) – already lists among its proposals some 40 points ranging from controlling parliamentary absenteeism to reducing military spending through to abolishing the so-called Sinde law (a law restricting on-line infringements of copyright).

Spain demonstration yesterday. This is not news in Japan!????

The demonstrations have broadened spontaneously, as was the case for those who rallied under the umbrellas of the "alternative globalisation" movements, and have evolved, one decade after the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on a more modest stage than the one demonstrators faced in the past at the World Economic Forum of the global elite in Davos, Switzerland.

All this is happening at astonishing speed via the Internet, which has amplified the echo of discontent and opened the lanes of cyberactivism to groups such as Anonymous, notable for intervening against companies like PayPal and Visa during the advocacy campaign for Wikileaks chief Julian Assange. Yet it was also there at the beginning of the revolts in the Arab world, to help people get round the censorship of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships.

“When we grow up, we want to be Icelanders!" cried one of the leaders of the organisation during the march on Sunday May 15 before a column of young – and not so young – parents and children, students and workers, the jobless and pensioners. Many Saturdays in Iceland were needed before citizens won the changes they had demanded. Spain’s first Sunday has taken place, and was followed by a Tuesday [May 17]- but there’s still a long way to go.


Protests have now spread to Italy and beyond.


Why these massive outpourings of discontent for government policies are being ignored in the Japanese press is a real curiosity. Here is a screen capture of NHK News English site. As you can see, not a word about it mentioned but there is a story of vital interest about Brazilian students sending letters to survivors of the Tohoku disaster!

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

And here's a screen capture of the Japanese language page. Nothing about protests in Europe:

CLICK ON IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW

Let's see: Something about the Hague Convention member states welcoming something called "the Buddha policy," Asia's largest exhibition of Naval Weapons, special trains, Japanese children in Brazil... Oh! There's demonstrations! No. No. Those are in Thailand. Nope. Nothing about demonstrations in Europe.

Quite odd, don't you think?

MISH SHEDLOCK posts this: "SOL TV has a continuous direct broadcast from Puerto del Sol in Madrid, where today's gathering has just started."

Madrid Spain time is 7 hours behind Tokyo, Japan time

More information and additional links (in Spanish) can be found here:http://www.soltv.tv/soltv2/index.html
Use Google Translate to translate any of the links. You can use a link, not just portions of text.

The summer of 2011 has started. It's going to be a very hot one too. Got gold?

Here's a map and more information about the global insurrection against banker occupation. There's even an event planned in Tokyo today!!! http://www.thetechnoant.info/campmap/ 

NHK Blows Away Other Media for Nuclear Updates. Watch Live on UStream!!

If you want to really see what's going on in Japan, you only need to watch NHK news.


Japan's NHK blows away the competition for reporting on the nuclear situation... Amazingly, the staid old school broadcaster is using U-Stream to get the news out to the public.


The other stations are trying to catch up, but it is way too little too late. Checkmate for NHK.



Webcam chat at Ustream
NHK on Ustream? Who needs a TV?


View NHK on Ustream here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nhk-gtv

NHK to Crack Down on Non-Payment? I Doubt it.

Ha! NHK has started claiming that it will crack down on people who do not pay the monthly subscription fees. I wrote about that before here.

NHKの正体：http://yhsvtex.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

From Variety:


Japan's giant public broadcaster NHK is getting serious about forcing scofflaws to pay TV license fees. As in the U.K. and Germany, all Japanese homes with a TV must pay to receive the pubcaster's two free-to-air channels, three satcasters and three radio networks. But an estimated million viewers or more are withholding the bi-monthly $32.21 fee -- unusual in the normally law-abiding country. Under Japanese law, TV households must sign receiving fee contracts with NHK and pay stipulated fees, but penalties for non-compliance are not spelled out.


The key part is this last sentence:

Under Japanese law, TV households must sign receiving fee contracts with NHK and pay stipulated fees, but penalties for non-compliance are not spelled out.

So, you can simply stop paying and tell them that you will accept the penalty.... There is none. Or, you can be very honest about it (like me) and simply throw away your TV and remove all antennas from your house and feel good about yourself when you honestly tell the NHK collector, "We don't have a TV, so we don't have to pay." That is what I recommend doing. 

TV is brain damage. I've written about that before at Lew Rockwell here and here.

NHK and Public TV are Criminal Enterprises - Don't Pay NHK

One can only guess what the government wonks are thinking about at NHK as to how to retain revenues but one thing is certain; they are not going to let us (the public) off easily. (Even though well over 50% of NHK employees do not pay the monthly fee! See below!)


As of today, NHK charges the public (that means everybody! NHK employees included) for just having a TV set even if they don't watch NHK. The obvious solution? I threw away my TV set. No TV? No charge. It's simple.

But, even after I threw my TV away, the NHK people came to my house and tried to collect fees. When I told them that I do not even own a TV set, they didn't believe me. One collector asked, "If you don't have a TV, then why do you have an antenna?"


I bought my house used and so there was an antenna on top of the house. Since I do not want to fight with these people, I paid for a house reform company to remove the antenna. Now, NHK collectors no longer bother me.


But now, these laughable crooks are considering charging everyone (the same as a tax) whether you own a TV or not. 


The headlines at News On Japan read: Will NHK's fee system survive? / Broadcaster looks to adapt as Net viewing rapidly changes the game


Facing a changing television environment due to the growing popularity of online programming and other factors, NHK launched a review of its viewing fee system last month through an expert panel. Is the long-standing belief that "Once you have a TV set, you have to start paying NHK," about to be changed? The panel, an advisory body to NHK President Shigeo Fukuchi, comprises eight specialists, including experts on law and economics. It will make recommendations on any necessary changes to the viewing fee system when TV broadcasts are fully digitized next July. The panel will work until around June next year, and the results of its discussions will be reflected in NHK's management plan for fiscal 2012 to 2014.


What the hell!? These advisors will recommend to the president of NHK for changes to the pay system and then the management of NHK thinks they have the power to decide to levy a tax on the Japanese public? Ha! There's no way in the world that this could be legal.


The president of NHK and their attorneys have no legal standing whatsoever to levy a tax on the public. 


Under current law, it says that if you don't pay the fees for owning a TV to NHK, you can be penalized. The problem with the law is that it doesn't specify what those penalties are. So if you are reading this, then I strongly suggest that you stop paying NHK fees immediately. Now, seeing as to how this was decided, it is obvious as to why there are no penalties stated in Japanese law: it is illegal to do so.


The article at Yomiuri continues:

NHK is paying close attention to reforms under way in Germany. As in Japan, a German public broadcaster collects viewing fees based on TV ownership.

To address the issues raised by the spread of the Internet, the German government is likely to revise its broadcast law so fees are levied from the public whether or not they own TVs, with the goal of implementing the new system in 2013.

The reform is based on the idea that viewing fees for public broadcasters should be shouldered equally among members of the public. The fee will be the same for every household, while it will vary depending on payroll size for businesses.

I do not watch TV and have no plan to. I will refuse to pay any sort of levied taxes for public TV too. I suggest that you consider doing the same.


This is not the Soviet Union. If public TV decides to broadcast without commercials then that is their choice. I didn't decide that policy and so I will not pay for it. The government forcing us to pay for public TV is illegal and a criminal act. 


I strongly suggest that you inform your family and friends about this and get ready to resist this attempt to increase our taxes without public debate.


As is pointed out above; the law doesn't state what the penalties are for non-payment of NHK fees. If you read between the lines of the Yomiuri article, it is obvious why there are no financial penalties for non-payment of NHK fees; those fees fall under "users fees" under the law and, if you do not want to pay them, you do not have to. Just do not use the service.


It is exactly the same as a users fee on the highway: You don't have to pay them; use another road.

The above is a comic that appeared in several major Japanese publications after it was reported that NHK employees themselves were not paying the fees.

Translation of the comic (from top left then down): 

1) The manager at NHK asks the collector "What percentage of homes did you collect NHK fees from?"

2) The collector hands the mgr. the report. The manager reads it and says, "Hmmm, you only got 71% of the houses paying. I hope you could get 80% payment!"

3) The manager says, "By the way, do you have the report on what percentage of NHK employees are paying?" 

4) The manager gets the report and says, "52% of NHK employees are paying the fees? Good work! Excellent results!"

With this blog, I hereby grant my permission to NHK and any other public broadcaster to start broadcasting TV commercials to pay for their services. We the public are taxed too much as it is. I refuse to pay another tax for this sort of nonsense.


I will write my intention to refuse payment - along with granting my permission to air TV commercials - to NHK.


This blog is my public statement that I will refuse to pay any sort of taxation for public TV and, if forced to do so or threatened with any sort of legal actions or penalties, I will seriously consider a class action suit and sue NHK if they try to pull this stunt (not that I would be the only one). If NHK collectors come to my house and threaten me or my family (as they have do so in the past) I will call the police.


Be forewarned NHK collector: if you insist upon coming to my house for collection, then I will consider you to be trespassing and will call the police.


Either way, a flat tax to everyone whether or not they watch TV is completely illegal. Don't be railroaded into paying it.


Consider: Will the sight-impaired be taxed for this? Of course not. Nor should they. 


Under the law of Japan, taxation must be levied equally (unless it is a user's tax such as highway tolls as shown above). Considering the legal ramifications of that point then it is obvious that a tax on everyone for public TV is illegal. If we are to start changing the rules for public TV - under the weak auspices that they are a "public service" and therefore taxable -like something akin to health insurance then this country is surely in more trouble than our public debt at 200% of GDP would indicate.