Empirical Analysis of the Efficiency of the Broadcasting Industry:

Verification of Regionalism and a Proposal

Abstract

Reforms in the broadcasting industry have recently been discussed and proposed, and deregulation and the revision of the Broadcasting Law have already been implemented in such a way that restructuring the market through establishing holding companies and M&A of broadcasting stations have already take place. However, these changes are insufficient for a thorough going reform of the private broadcasting industry. This paper based on rigorous theoretical analysis discusses possible reforms and provides fundamentals for the realignment toward more adequate systems. In so doing, this paper examines the efficiency of middle-sized so-called “main broadcasting stations” in the six major regions using DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) and empirically identifies factors which determine efficiency by the Tobit model. Based on these empirical analyses, raising the in-house production ratio and the deregulation of the limitation for broadcasting services within one prefecture are required in order to fulfill requirements such as plurality, diversity and locality in the age of convergence.