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Nippon TV – Japan

SCHEDULE WATCH CHANNEL PROFILE: Japan’s Nippon TV is revving up its non-linear content and distribution plans as it eyes further global growth. Gün Akyuz reports.

Kimio Maruyama

Kimio Maruyama

Overview
There’s a slow but perceptible decline in live linear TV viewing in Japanese homes.

Although free TV is still big in Japan, non-linear consumption is rising fast, and Japan’s ageing population and declining birth rate means no further growth prospects from linear TV. PCs, tablets and mobiles now account for 44.8% of average daily media contact time, with smartphones leading the charge.

“We at Nippon TV have responded well and are providing time-shifting viewers access to our content,” says Kimio Maruyama, board director and senior executive operating officer at Nippon TV. “We have even begun tracking data on this trend.”

Nippon TV has been steadily building up its presence across channels and platforms since 2014. It was Japan’s first commercial broadcaster to provide AVoD catch-up viewing through a service called Nittele TADA, and is now a leading player in the SVoD market with Hulu,

“We want our highly appealing programmes to reach as many people as possible, so it is important to continue strategically expanding the total reach of our content,” says Maruyama. “The challenge is how to deliver our content to time-shifting viewers while maximising our monetisation,”

Last fall also saw the arrival of TVer (pronounced ‘teever’), a shared streaming initiative between commercial broadcasters Nippon TV, TV Asahi, TBS, TV Tokyo and Fuji TV. Launched on October 26, the free streaming service, available on different devices, carries all their drama and entertainment programmes available on demand, with episodes of shows accessible for a week after their terrestrial broadcast.

“While each one already has their own content streaming platform, this is the first time all five commercial broadcasters got together to put up this particular website,” Maruyama explains. “By joining forces, we can collectively aim to promote a TV viewing habit and prevent illegal online streaming of our content.”

In the linear world, Nippon TV was the top-rated broadcaster for two consecutive years, winning the coveted Triple Crown title in 2015 and continuing that run up to March this year. It also remains on track to clinch it for a third consecutive year, says Maruyama, describing the victories so far as a “remarkable accomplishment” that have made Nippon TV “a regular habit and indispensable part of Japanese life.”

Line Up Law Office

Line Up Law Office

A 2016 Media Consumption Report by Hakuhodo DY Media Partners reported a significant increase in media contact time via tablets and smartphones visible from 2014, while media contact time through television sets decreased slightly over the same period (down from 40.7% to 38.9%). “This trend is particularly evident in the younger age groups, most notably in the younger female age groups,” Maruyama says.

“Although the Nippon TV Group has various businesses that rely on the power of television and obtains the majority of its income from advertising, we are well aware that it is difficult to expect television as a medium to maintain its dominant position going forward,” he says.

Meanwhile, SVoD service Hulu has enjoyed solid subscriber growth since joining the Nippon TV group in March 2014, rising from 600,000 subscribers in April 2014 to one million a year later. By April 2016 it had reached 1.3 million.

While Hulu’s viewer profiles vary depending on the content, Maruyama says the service attracts similar numbers of male and female subscribers overall, mostly aged between 20 and 40, and notably, growing numbers of younger members. “As the younger generation shifts away from terrestrial TV, timeless, deviceless and placeless media platforms play a greater role in responding to their needs,” he says. “Hulu aims to bolster its line-up of TV programmes available for catch-up viewing, and by doing so become a key platform that adds value to all of Nippon TV Group’s content.

“As for our viewers, we want to make sure that the time they spend watching our content is truly enriching. We will do this by leveraging both terrestrial broadcasting and internet streaming to deliver content from all genres at all times of the day, through various platforms.

“Indeed, we’re creating dramas that are so grand, and whose stories are so involved, that you do not conventionally see them on terrestrial TV. Hulu has its eyes set on becoming a key pillar for the Nippon TV Group, just like the terrestrial advertising business has been over the years.”

Maruyama says the Nippon TV Group considers its “viewers as partners, and we strive to understand what it is they truly want to watch so that we can produce captivating content that meet their needs. The entire group is united in the mission of maximising the value of our content, as well as our organisation as a whole.”

Shabekuri007

Shabekuri007

Alongside the group’s expansion into SVoD with Hulu, it has also diversified into lifestyle and health with the purchase of fitness club chain Tipness. Last year it launched pay channel GEM TV Asia, a joint venture with Sony Pictures Television Networks Asia in South-East Asia and Hong Kong that carries around 500 hours of new Nippon TV content annually.

“We plan to continue diversifying our business portfolio and expanding into more countries,” says Maruyama. “By not limiting ourselves to television and domestic borders, we seek to create content appropriate for various forms of media and distribute them in order to increase both our advertising and non-advertising income. Our aim is to grow our internet streaming business and international business so that they become key income drivers for the entire group.”

Nippon TV’s most recent management plan for the 2016-2018 period, released in March, reveals its mission to maintain its position as the largest group in TV advertising revenues terms over the next three years and expand its SVoD and lifestyle- and health-related businesses. It has also outlined ambitious plans to roll out Nippon TV content globally, share production capabilities with partners around the world, enter M&A deals and launch new businesses, says Maruyama.

As for new international JV channels, he adds: “We intend on focusing on GEM TV for the time being. GEM airs our dramas and entertainment shows shortly after their telecast in Japan, something that had never been done before. Our drama Your Home is My Business! airs just one hour after our telecast, and our new one-off drama Guard Center 24 will air at the same time as our telecast. This is a first in the history of Japanese TV programme international sales.”

Current schedule
Nippon’s strongest day throughout 2015 remained Sunday, featuring a primetime line-up of ratings drivers like entertainment show The Tetsuwan Dash (18.3% rating) at 19.00, followed by travel adventure show The Quest (19.2%) at 20.00 and by Line Up Law Office (on 15.5%) at 21.00. Strong lead-ins, like evergreen comedy variety show Shoten at 17.30 and In-Depth News Bankisha at 18.00, attract large audiences and provide a strong audience flow into primetime.

Shoten

Shoten

That line-up delivers a “rock-solid Sunday timetable that undoubtedly overwhelms the other broadcasters,” Maruyama claims.

In fact, 50-year-old family-skewing Shoten is Nippon TV’s highest-rated programme, with a whopping 18.6% average rating in the first half of 2016, against an average 7.6% rating at 17.00 and 12% in primetime. Other regular schedule drivers include entertainment shows like Shabekuri007 and World Great TV, both airing on Mondays in primetime.

The aim is to continue attracting a wider audience to its flagship general entertainment channel in pursuit of the triple crown title and to strengthen and rebrand regular programmes. But there are no plans to prioritise one particular genre or content, Maruyama says. “Our strategy as a general entertainment channel includes rolling out our content across all available platforms, including internet streaming.”

Original production, entertainment, factual, formats
Almost 90% Nippon TV’s content is produced in-house, spanning entertainment, drama, comedy, news, factual and documentaries and sport, and Maruyama says this strategy remains unchanged.

This April saw Nippon TV implement programming changes to bolster its Friday evening line-up, including extending its evening news into the afternoons at 16.00 to strengthen audience flow into the primetime. It also launched Burning Questions! as a regular fixture in the 20.00 slot – the first such quizshow for Nippon TV.

“By diversifying our timetable and targeting the viewership of the younger age groups, we succeeded in strengthening our Friday line-up,” says Maruyama. “We continue to aim for an unbeatable overall programming schedule.”

Similar tweaks will continue this fall. “Our fundamental programming philosophy is to take our timetable diversification to the next level in the October 2016 season, while also continuing our strategy of keeping our viewers tuned in to our channel by having them flow from one programme to the next, which is an improvement we implemented in April.”

New developments for this fall include bringing some of the channel’s most successful special programmes into primetime. “We plan to have new programmes account for 12.5% of our primetime line-up and 9% of our golden time line-up in the October 2016 season,” says Maruyama.

While that’s not a big change from Nippon TV’s April line-up, he notes: “We continue to make improvements to our top-performing regular programmes while replacing the weaker areas of our timetable with new shows in order to drive viewer ratings up and entice people to stay on the channel and flow from one show to the next.”

World Great TV

World Great TV

Most of Nippon TV’s new programming details remained under wraps at time of writing, but Maruyama reveals that talk-variety show Been Around The Block But Still Clueless is now lined up for an October launch, airing on Wednesdays at 19.00. The show takes “topics that seem so matter-of-fact that nobody even questions them anymore. We ask viewers directly about things they don’t know,” says Maruyama. “It has a great track record as a special programme and, as a result, was selected to become a regular primetime programme in order to boost our Wednesday ratings for the 19.00 slot and create an audience flow into 20.00 and later programmes.”

On the formats side, Nippon TV’s fact ent business format Dragons’ Den (aka Shark Tank) remains its biggest hit to date, having spawned 29 international versions. Recent additions include a Chinese version that launched on Shenzhen TV in May. Its other unscripted format export successes include adventure studio gameshow Pharaoh!, classic gameshow Train of Thought and ‘science-tainment’ studio gameshow Ultimate Brain. New formats Burning Questions! and The Animakers, both currently airing on Nippon TV, will join that list at Mipcom.

Nippon TV is also expanding into coproduction and co-development of formats. It already has a co-development venture with Sony Pictures Television in London, which has spawned three shows, including Diet Village and #Love. Last year it struck a format co-development partnership with Red Arrow Entertainment.

And Nippon TV’s opportunities for international collaboration are growing. “We provide licensing opportunities in all genres, such as animé, drama, variety, formats, sports and news,” says Maruyama. “We seek to provide production consultation services. International collaboration in co-development of formats, both scripted and non-scripted, will also be pursued.”

Drama
In April 2015, Nippon TV launched a new local drama slot on Sundays at 22.30, targeting men and women aged 20-49 with “mature entertainment that even men can enjoy,” says Maruyama.

The new slot kicked off with drama series Wild Heroes, followed by Death Note in July and Angel Heart in October. This year it continued with Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa in January; We’re Millenials, Got a Problem? in April; and Lost ID in July.

All the series were made available on Hulu following their terrestrial broadcast. Additionally, following the final episode of Criminologist Himura and Mystery Writer Arisugawa in January, three spin-offs titled Another Story were streamed on Hulu.

Meanwhile, a second season of Nippon TV’s successful local remake of German crime drama The Last Cop (Der Letzte Bulle), from Red Arrow, launches this fall. The drama, which launched in June 2015, was Hulu’s first original drama coproduced with Nippon TV. Cheapigfollowers The first episode aired terrestrially on Nippon TV, with the rest streamed on Hulu. “Even in the terrestrial viewer ratings, it captured the top spot and went on to obtain stellar viewership and new subscribers on Hulu,” says Maruyama. This fall’s second season will be supported by “joint projects with Hulu that will be featuring and promoting the programme,” he explains.

A new series, Pretty Proofreader (10×60’), set in the world of fashion journalism, has also joined Nippon TV’s drama slate and will be heading to Mipcom.

Acquisitions
Nippon TV’s acquisitions strategy for the linear channel remains largely unchanged. One acquired slot is its regular 21.00 Friday Road Show slot for movies, “where we present films that we believe more viewers will want to watch right away, exactly when we broadcast them,” says Maruyama. “We take season into consideration, as well as news that’s making headlines around the world in order to provide our viewers with plots that are of interest and relevant to the times.”

However, over on Hulu, the group is strengthening its premium content strategy “to stream the world’s most popular dramas before anyone else in Japan,” says Maruyama, citing terrestrial TV, broadcasting satellite, communications satellite and DVD windows. “This is one of the biggest strengths of Hulu in Japan, which has a lot of subscribers who are fans of foreign dramas.”

Recent international hits include Under the Dome, Heroes Reborn, Ash vs Evil Dead, 12 Monkeys, Outlander and Wentworth. “We will continue to create a line-up that our subscribers will find exciting and entertaining,” says Maruyama.

Nippon TV top 10 shows Jan 4-July 3 2016
(Rank, title, type, day, slot, viewer rating %. Regular shows only, excludes one-offs and specials, household viewing. Kanto region)

1. Shoten, comedy, Sun, 17.30, 18.6
2. The Quest, entertainment, Sun, 19.58, 18.4
3. The Tetsuwan Dash, entertainment, Sun, 19.00, 17.7
4. Line Up Law Office, entertainment, Sun, 21.00, 14.9
5. Dancing Sanma Palace, Tues, 19.56, 14.2
6. In-Depth News Bankisha, news, Sun, 18.00, 14.2
7. Shabekuri 007, entertainment, Mon 22.00, 13.4
8. The Most Useful School in the World, Sat, 19.56, 13.4
9. World Great TV, entertainment, Mon, 19.56, 13.3
10. The Most Difficult Romance, drama, Wed, 22.00, 12.9
Source: Video Research

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