Abstract
For about 30 years in the Heisei Era (1989-2019), with the convergence of broadcasting and telecommunications progressing, institutional revisions of broadcasting were intermittently conducted. This series divides the institutional reforms into (1) the reorganization of the legal system and the revision of regulations regarding the broadcasting business structure and (2) the revision of the system concerning the rules on programs, to examine the revising process in two parts.This month’s issue focuses on the legal system and the regulations regarding the broadcasting business structure. In the 1990s, debates on these agendas were based on a major amendment to the Broadcasting Act that had been carried out right before the Heisei Era, and therefore, the debates did not develop into fundamental reforms. Although this period saw the gradual emergence of services in the intermediate area between broadcasting and telecommunications, institutional reforms were still led by the traditional policy community consisting mainly of broadcasters and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications in a step-by-step manner.In the 2000s, however, amid the continued policymaking led by the Prime Minister’s Office, institutional revisions linked to regulatory reforms also became the main subject in the information and communications sector, in which the discussion was spearheaded by the IT Strategic Headquarters of the Cabinet Secretariat that presented reform proposals including that the traditional legal system vertically divided by the industry should be shifted to a layer-type one. Nevertheless, partly because the broadcasting industry cautiously responded to this, the direction of the reform was gradually changed in the course of the discussion at the expert panel organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Subsequently, the legal system was reorganized in 2010, but it did not have a major impact on the operation of traditional broadcasters. Likewise, later legal reforms in the 2010s remained as partial fine tunings of conventional systems.As seen above, in the Heisei Era, new agents advocating regulatory reform entered the discussion and proposed drastic institutional reform in the 2000s. At the same time, the traditional policy community exercised its influence at the stage of concretely shaping the system, which made the reform return to the gradual one.
