Abstract
NHK’s Tokyo Educational Television was launched in January 1959 as the first Japanese TV broadcasting service dedicated to educational content. It has developed into NHK Educational TV (ETV) and will celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2019. The service’s initial focus was telecourses such as school broadcast programs and language programs, but as the 1980s saw a growing aspiration for lifelong learning in Japanese society at large, programs for children as well as programs for adults and elderly people increased during this period. Then “block programming” was introduced in the 1990s.In the 2000s, while more diversified programs were produced, ETV, especially school broadcast programs and hobby and lifestyle programs, actively expanded its sphere onto the internet. In 2009, many special programs and events were organized for the 50th anniversary of the educational television under the theme of “ETV50 Adventures in Learning.” In 2011, ETV adopted “E-tele” as its nickname and reformed the programming to become a “future-oriented channel.” In 2017, various campaigns and events were unfolded with a catch phrase of “Discover with E-tele.”This paper traces the 60-year history of the educational television based on each fiscal year’s “Basic Programming Plan for Domestic Broadcasting” and with reference to studies and discussions conducted by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute as well as special programs produced for ETV’s anniversaries in the past.
