With challenges in the digital space increasing, one can argue that broadcaster, which have been providing accurate information and diverse types of content under the Broadcasting Act, should play more and more significant roles. Recognizing this, “Study Group on the Ideal Broadcasting System in the Digital Age”—a committee of experts organized by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC)—has advanced the discussion. Particularly, NHK is expected to play the leading role, and “Working Group on Public Broadcasting” was established in the Autumn of 2022 for discussing the ideal status of NHK and its source of revenue and institution that support the public service broadcaster of Japan. The discussion has been divided into four areas: (1) the role of public service broadcaster in the internet age, (2) the range of NHK’s remit, focusing on internet-based operations, (3) the rule of competition with private entities (commercial broadcasters and newspapers), and (4) the source of revenue and receiving fee system. Subsequently, in response to the explanation by NHK as the party concerned and the statements made by the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association and Nihon Shinbun Kyokai (NSK, The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association) that expressed concerns over the expansion of NHK’s internet-based operations, the discussion is deepened and planned to be put together in the summer of 2023. This paper is a re-publication of four blogs on the policy deliberations concerning NHK from March through June 2023. For each blog, the author organized the ongoing development and identified challenges. While these blogs were written based on the discussion of “Working Group on Public Broadcasting,” this paper also touches upon governance-related issues of NHK that arose during this period so that the progress of the discussion can be confirmed in the context of the current situation surrounding NHK as much as possible.

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February 24th, 2023 marked the first anniversary of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. How has the Japanese media, especially television, reported the first year? To explore this, the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute conducted a quantitative survey of evening news programs to examine the amount of TV coverage. In addition, as an experimental attempt, articles on the internet were analyzed by computer. Furthermore, at the “NHK BUNKEN FORUM 2023”—an online event open to the public organized by the Institute—panelists discussed what the Japanese media could and could not do. The quantitative survey identified that the focus of news coverage has changed with the passage of time, from “war situation and damage” in the early stage, to moves “inside Ukraine” as well as “inside Russia.” In the meantime, at the “BUNKEN FORUM, panelists exchanged thoughts on how to maintain people’s interest as the war protracts, what the media could do to accomplish this, and the meaning and challenges of on-the-spot reporting and studio commentaries. This paper presents the findings from the quantitative survey as well as an overview of the discussion at the forum. Although this is the second review of media reports on the invasion of Ukraine, no clear path to the end of the war was seen even at the time of drafting this paper, with the war situation still unfolding.

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This paper examines the relations between people and international sporting events from two perspectives: their actual TV viewing and attitudes, based on longitudinal and cross-sectional analyses of the results of surveys conducted by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute including the “Nationwide Survey on Individual Audience Ratings” and the “Public Opinion Survey on the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games.” In terms of TV viewing, it is found respondents watched international sporting events on TV more than “domestic sporting events.” This tendency was most evident among women in their 40s and 50s: for example, a 2022 survey shows an international soccer competition earned high audience rating of 18% while they rarely watched domestic competitions such as athletics and golf. This is partly due to a sentiment that “cheering for Japanese athletes who challenges the world and immensely rejoicing at their victories.” For example, when asked “what impressed you most in the Tokyo Olympic Games,” the largest portion (37%) of women in their 50s cited “Japan won the largest number of gold medals in the country’s history,” which outnumbered “young people performing well.” Likewise, many people cited “table tennis” and “judo” that brought Japan gold medals as “impressive games,” and as to “skateboarding,” although only 13% of people were looking forward to watching it before the Olympics, 37% found it “impressive” after watching Japanese athletes’ successful performances. Meanwhile, people’s willingness to watch the sporting events that had brought Japan medals in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games declined only about two years after the Games, and as many as 65% of respondents cited that the excitement of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics was “nothing but temporary,” which highlighted the aspect that the excitement of sports sparked by international competitions is “easily heated but cooled down just as easily.”

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This paper explores factors for declining real-time TV viewing in the morning by summarizing people’s media use in the morning hours based on the results of the 2022 Nationwide Public Opinion Survey on Attitudes Towards Media and remarks made in online focus group interviews. It is found that habitual media use in the morning hours is compatible with the needs in each situation of everyday life and that these needs comprise various elements such as mood, information, and time consciousness. In the morning, people use smartphones from the start of the day, access their smartphones before television, and view a wide variety of media content on smartphones immediately after they wake up. People’s moods change from moment to moment, from when they wake up to afterwards, according to each life situation: for example, many people do not want to be exposed to stimulating information when waking up but want to watch content that would make them feel positive after getting up. Some can feel uplifted by TV news programs, and others by YouTube videos, which shows that people have come to get the utility that they want to feel in the morning not only from television but also from diverse media. Furthermore, there is a possibility that “acquiring information while doing something”—an advantageous feature of real-time TV viewing—is being substituted by other media. It is also suggested that real-time TV viewing’s characteristic utilities for “using as a clock” and “getting a daily rhythm” are no longer sought after because nowadays fewer people check the time with television and, in the first place, few young people use media habitually. These circumstances may explain the decline in real-time viewing in the morning.

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