Japanese TV: Fundamentally different
Japanese TV has become synonymous with its gameshows. They are often crazy and some of them even a bit brutal, but almost always quite funny and entertaining.
We all know America’s Funniest Home Videos but few people are actually aware that ABC’s longest-running primetime entertainment program is based on the format Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan. Other shows like Ninja Warrior (Sasuke), Takeshi’s Castle, and Happy Family Plan have seen numerous adaptations around the world. All of them were born at Tokyo Broadcasting System Television (TBS).
TVBIZZ Magazine’s Yako Molhov talks with TBS’s VP of Global Business Makito Sugiyama about their new shows, current trends and the fundamental differences between Japanese TV and the rest of the world.
Sleepeeer hit! (c) TBS
Mr. Sugiyama, Japan is the Country of Honor during this year’s MIPCOM. What are the biggest opportunities for the modern Japanese TV market and their partners today?
We are happy that Japan has been named “Country of Honor” at this MIPCOM. The Japanese companies started to participate at both MIPTV and MIPCOM from the early years. We launched the first major collaborative efforts with ‘Treasure Box Japan,’ to introduce the latest formats from Japan, five years ago. The “Country of Honor” marks probably the biggest collaborative effort between the private sectors and the Japanese government. This certainly would be a perfect and biggest opportunity to present and showcase the attractiveness of Japan, Japanese entertainment and culture as a whole.
As for the environment surrounding the entertainment industry, the situation is more or less the same as in the rest of the world as literally everything has been drastically changing due to technological advancements including digitization, increase in media outlets, diversification in entertainment, etc. We take them as new opportunities and challenges.
What are the current programming trends on Japanese TV? Are broadcasters, and TBS in particular, relying only on locally produced content and is the Japanese market opening for more international formats?
The majority of entertainment programs, in particular the primetime shows, in Japan today consist of multiple numbers of themes, which are often times segmented as ‘corners’ in one show. A lot of shows are depending on personalities, characteristics of MCs and their skills and interaction with the audience. These corners often are subject to modifications and alterations if the per minute rating of the corner is not performing well. This way, the show itself can go on and be ‘improved’ without needing to immediately cancel it. And, yes, foreign contents is widely accepted among the satellite broadcasters and cable broadcasters. But, not just TBS, almost all of the terrestrial broadcasters, are relying on locally produced content, therefore I cannot say that the Japanese market is opening for more international formats.
To what do you attribute the success of the Japanese creative TV industry? How do you explain the worldwide success of Ninja Warrior?
In short, I would say creativity, originality and uniqueness. Multiple numbers of reality formats in the West are based on competition in various forms and most of them are based on a win or lose type of ‘elimination’ at the same time. Ninja Warrior is an obstacle based sports-like physical entertainment. Ninja Warrior is about the human achievement and if there were a competition - participants are trying to ‘conquer’ the monstrous obstacle course. As a matter of fact, there are far more times when there is no winner at the end as there are only 4 contestants who have conquered the course out of more than 3.000 who tried; even limited to the Japanese original Sasuke.
In the beginning, most of the foreign TV executives strongly objected to the idea of not having a winner at the end saying a competition format like that would not work in the West. Ironically, however, not always having a winner at the end raised viewers’ anticipation whether there will be a winner and also the expectation to have a winner the next time.
So, as much as Sasuke/Ninja Warrior looks like a conventional reality competition format, it is significantly different and unique as it is about human achievement rather than competition against the others, conquering the obstacle rather than beating and eliminating others and not necessarily having a winner at the end rather than always having a winner at the end. These differences resulted in bringing enthusiasm, encouragement, motivation and inspiration, in addition to entertainment values, almost all of them positive feelings, to the viewers.
While Western TV is still dominated by cooking and talent formats, Japan always seems to come up with innovative, original ideas. How is this creativity packaged into a format, what is the process of creating a hit show like Ninja Warrior, for example?
I see some major differences in market (viewer) needs and fundamental differences between the foreign formats and Japanese formats. First, foreign formats have structures under one topic (singing, cooking, quiz, etc.) that are repeatable for a multiple numbers of episodes by professional MCs plus the amateur participants. Japan did have this trend but it was over 20 years ago. This doesn’t necessarily mean we are 20 years ahead of the rest but nevertheless the patterns that died down in Japan a long time ago appear popular now elsewhere. As Japanese viewers are so picky and easily get tired of the same pattern, regardless how successful the foreign format is elsewhere, I see most of those under a single theme/topic not working in Japan. Also, multiple numbers of global hit titles do not seem anything new to the Japanese TV audiences as there were programs very similar to the titles considered a global hit now over several decades in Japan.
TBS is one of the leading broadcasters in Japan and also one of the leading distributors of Japanese content worldwide. You sell formats, fiction, animation, documentaries. What is the best-selling genre for you?
While TBS formats are well known around the globe, our animation titles sell around the globe as well. In addition to these two genres, TBS drama is a hot seller among the Asian countries.
What are TBS’ hit titles that you will present during this year’s MIPCOM?
Among the new shows, 99.9 Criminal Lawyer and Sleepeeer hit! are particularly strong in the drama lineup. There are multiple numbers of new animation titles such as Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto and handa-kun with a strong merchandising potential. We are also bringing the long running documentary The World Heritage in a 4K premium version this time.
The Pyramid Derby is from a new hit primetime show which also will be presented at Treasure Box Japan as a part of the Country of Honor events. Also, we are bringing a new Sasuke/Ninja Warrior spin off titled Team Ninja Warrior which has been doing well in the US.
Our Top 3 selling formats include the ‘Funny Video’ corner of Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan which has turned into America’s Funniest Home Videos in the US and You’ve Been Framed in the UK, both of which are still going strong after 20 some years, and elsewhere around the globe. Takeshi’s Castle (known as MXC in the US) still goes on strong around the globe, and Sasuke which turned into Ninja Warrior is currently storming the world and growing.
Your company has been selling formats internationally longer than other Japanese broadcasters. How has your distribution business changed in the last few years?
TBS started program distribution back in the 1960’s and format distribution back in the 1980’s. The situation unique to Japan is that due to the intricate copyright clearance rules we are currently unable to make quite a few visual products available for global internet distribution. As almost all animation titles are now available for global internet distribution within a few days after the initial broadcast in Japan and doing extremely well, we are working hard to somehow make our other visual content available for global internet distribution as well.
You have a number of international partnerships with companies like Bellon Entertainment and the line producer Eccholine on Ninja Warrior in Europe. Are you looking to forge similar partnerships in the future?
We have been working with Bellon Entertainment for decades. TBS’s successes in making some of our titles globally successful in formats heavily owe to having the long lasting and trusted partnership with them. At the same time, we partnered with Dentsu, a major global commercial agent, for Ninja Warrior’s format distribution in Europe. We also have been working with both Eccholine for most of the European Ninja Warrior productions and ATS for the US production and others. As Ninja Warrior’s local productions are on the rise and the popularity of the title may expand to other areas, such as merchandising, we may expand our partnership on case by case basis.
On the Asian fronts, even limited to the recent years, we have partnered and have done co-productions with VTV (Vietnam), RCTI (Indonesia), MediaCorp (Singapore), Media Prime (Malaysia), MRTV (Myanmar), Formosa (Taiwan), etc. So, TBS has been very aggressive on international partnership and co-productions not just limited to Asia, but also around the globe.
We are happy that Japan has been named “Country of Honor” at this MIPCOM. The Japanese companies started to participate at both MIPTV and MIPCOM from the early years. We launched the first major collaborative efforts with ‘Treasure Box Japan,’ to introduce the latest formats from Japan, five years ago. The “Country of Honor” marks probably the biggest collaborative effort between the private sectors and the Japanese government. This certainly would be a perfect and biggest opportunity to present and showcase the attractiveness of Japan, Japanese entertainment and culture as a whole.
As for the environment surrounding the entertainment industry, the situation is more or less the same as in the rest of the world as literally everything has been drastically changing due to technological advancements including digitization, increase in media outlets, diversification in entertainment, etc. We take them as new opportunities and challenges.
What are the current programming trends on Japanese TV? Are broadcasters, and TBS in particular, relying only on locally produced content and is the Japanese market opening for more international formats?
The majority of entertainment programs, in particular the primetime shows, in Japan today consist of multiple numbers of themes, which are often times segmented as ‘corners’ in one show. A lot of shows are depending on personalities, characteristics of MCs and their skills and interaction with the audience. These corners often are subject to modifications and alterations if the per minute rating of the corner is not performing well. This way, the show itself can go on and be ‘improved’ without needing to immediately cancel it. And, yes, foreign contents is widely accepted among the satellite broadcasters and cable broadcasters. But, not just TBS, almost all of the terrestrial broadcasters, are relying on locally produced content, therefore I cannot say that the Japanese market is opening for more international formats.
American Ninja Warrior, David Becker/NBC | 2016 NBCUniversal Media, LLC
To what do you attribute the success of the Japanese creative TV industry? How do you explain the worldwide success of Ninja Warrior?
In short, I would say creativity, originality and uniqueness. Multiple numbers of reality formats in the West are based on competition in various forms and most of them are based on a win or lose type of ‘elimination’ at the same time. Ninja Warrior is an obstacle based sports-like physical entertainment. Ninja Warrior is about the human achievement and if there were a competition - participants are trying to ‘conquer’ the monstrous obstacle course. As a matter of fact, there are far more times when there is no winner at the end as there are only 4 contestants who have conquered the course out of more than 3.000 who tried; even limited to the Japanese original Sasuke.
In the beginning, most of the foreign TV executives strongly objected to the idea of not having a winner at the end saying a competition format like that would not work in the West. Ironically, however, not always having a winner at the end raised viewers’ anticipation whether there will be a winner and also the expectation to have a winner the next time.
So, as much as Sasuke/Ninja Warrior looks like a conventional reality competition format, it is significantly different and unique as it is about human achievement rather than competition against the others, conquering the obstacle rather than beating and eliminating others and not necessarily having a winner at the end rather than always having a winner at the end. These differences resulted in bringing enthusiasm, encouragement, motivation and inspiration, in addition to entertainment values, almost all of them positive feelings, to the viewers.
While Western TV is still dominated by cooking and talent formats, Japan always seems to come up with innovative, original ideas. How is this creativity packaged into a format, what is the process of creating a hit show like Ninja Warrior, for example?
I see some major differences in market (viewer) needs and fundamental differences between the foreign formats and Japanese formats. First, foreign formats have structures under one topic (singing, cooking, quiz, etc.) that are repeatable for a multiple numbers of episodes by professional MCs plus the amateur participants. Japan did have this trend but it was over 20 years ago. This doesn’t necessarily mean we are 20 years ahead of the rest but nevertheless the patterns that died down in Japan a long time ago appear popular now elsewhere. As Japanese viewers are so picky and easily get tired of the same pattern, regardless how successful the foreign format is elsewhere, I see most of those under a single theme/topic not working in Japan. Also, multiple numbers of global hit titles do not seem anything new to the Japanese TV audiences as there were programs very similar to the titles considered a global hit now over several decades in Japan.
TBS is one of the leading broadcasters in Japan and also one of the leading distributors of Japanese content worldwide. You sell formats, fiction, animation, documentaries. What is the best-selling genre for you?
While TBS formats are well known around the globe, our animation titles sell around the globe as well. In addition to these two genres, TBS drama is a hot seller among the Asian countries.
Pyramid Derby (c) TBS
What are TBS’ hit titles that you will present during this year’s MIPCOM?
Among the new shows, 99.9 Criminal Lawyer and Sleepeeer hit! are particularly strong in the drama lineup. There are multiple numbers of new animation titles such as Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto and handa-kun with a strong merchandising potential. We are also bringing the long running documentary The World Heritage in a 4K premium version this time.
The Pyramid Derby is from a new hit primetime show which also will be presented at Treasure Box Japan as a part of the Country of Honor events. Also, we are bringing a new Sasuke/Ninja Warrior spin off titled Team Ninja Warrior which has been doing well in the US.
Our Top 3 selling formats include the ‘Funny Video’ corner of Fun TV with Kato-chan and Ken-chan which has turned into America’s Funniest Home Videos in the US and You’ve Been Framed in the UK, both of which are still going strong after 20 some years, and elsewhere around the globe. Takeshi’s Castle (known as MXC in the US) still goes on strong around the globe, and Sasuke which turned into Ninja Warrior is currently storming the world and growing.
Your company has been selling formats internationally longer than other Japanese broadcasters. How has your distribution business changed in the last few years?
TBS started program distribution back in the 1960’s and format distribution back in the 1980’s. The situation unique to Japan is that due to the intricate copyright clearance rules we are currently unable to make quite a few visual products available for global internet distribution. As almost all animation titles are now available for global internet distribution within a few days after the initial broadcast in Japan and doing extremely well, we are working hard to somehow make our other visual content available for global internet distribution as well.
You have a number of international partnerships with companies like Bellon Entertainment and the line producer Eccholine on Ninja Warrior in Europe. Are you looking to forge similar partnerships in the future?
We have been working with Bellon Entertainment for decades. TBS’s successes in making some of our titles globally successful in formats heavily owe to having the long lasting and trusted partnership with them. At the same time, we partnered with Dentsu, a major global commercial agent, for Ninja Warrior’s format distribution in Europe. We also have been working with both Eccholine for most of the European Ninja Warrior productions and ATS for the US production and others. As Ninja Warrior’s local productions are on the rise and the popularity of the title may expand to other areas, such as merchandising, we may expand our partnership on case by case basis.
On the Asian fronts, even limited to the recent years, we have partnered and have done co-productions with VTV (Vietnam), RCTI (Indonesia), MediaCorp (Singapore), Media Prime (Malaysia), MRTV (Myanmar), Formosa (Taiwan), etc. So, TBS has been very aggressive on international partnership and co-productions not just limited to Asia, but also around the globe.
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