NHK Network Eyes World Market
Inside the Century Room at the Century Plaza Hotel & Tower, video cameras were aimed at a set with a living-room scene. The cameras transmitted the picture to a number of newly developed high-definition television sets being exhibited by Ikegami, a Japanese electronics maker, to invited guests.
But the real action was with Keiji Shima, who sat placidly on one of the pink sofas outside the meeting room.
The general managing director of the executive board of Japan Broadcasting Corp.--universally known as NHK, the initials for its Japanese name--was here for the exhibition of the TV sets, the technology for which was developed by NHK researchers. But perhaps a more important part of his mission was to explain the radio and television network’s new strategy, which includes importing as much as 30% of its future programming, a world marketing program and aggressive development of new technology.
Shima, who was on a visit to Los Angeles this week from his Tokyo headquarters, said the new direction at NHK reflects changes in broadcasting and the need for the network to seek new sources of revenue. Speaking through an interpreter, Shima said: “Japan cannot stay within itself. It has to communicate with the world.”
New Funding Sources Needed
NHK is entirely supported by the Japanese public through voluntary monthly fees and is commercial-free. It operates two channels--one with the emphasis on general interest programming and the other on cultural and educational fare. It employs 16,000 people and competes with other commercial networks.
Shima said that NHK’s revenue is growing more slowly than in the past and that the annual increase is now about 10%. “Because of (the) slowdown in the increase in revenue, we have to secure new resources in funding,” he explained.
“We are moving into the international market and co-production (projects) not only for the money but because we believe in the international community.”
NHK now produces about 97% of its programming. Shima says the goal is to acquire about 30% of it from abroad. The foreign programs, some of which NHK will co-produce, will be mainly sports, movies and worldwide news.
Until now, NHK has found a minimal foreign market for its own programming. In the United States, for example, its Japanese-language general programming has found a very limited audience, primarily among Japanese-speaking people in Los Angeles and New York. To help broaden its marketing efforts, NHK has hired the consulting services of the international development arm of ABC Video Enterprises, a unit of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. Some of its programs will be shown on ABC-TV, helping the Japanese network to expand beyond the small ethnic audience it has in this country.
“What you’re seeing is a transitional NHK,” said Phil Boyer, vice president of international development at ABC Video.
Documentary on China Scheduled
“It’s a company saying that, with all its activities and employees but being not able to raise . . . fees much, they have got to be ‘commercial’ without going to commercials. They have to be more businesslike.”
“Yellow River,” a film documentary about China, is one of NKH’s first co-production projects with ABC and Central China Television. It will be shown in Japan in April and later in the United States (on ABC), China, Britain, France, Italy and West Germany.
Shima said NHK will earn about $2 million from the international sales of “Yellow River.”
The network is also in the process of trying to sell “Miracle Planet,” a documentary about the origins of the Earth. Canada, Australia and the Public Broadcasting System in the United States have expressed interest in the program, he said.
Meanwhile, NHK has created two new marketing companies.
NHK Enterprises was formed a little over a year ago to develop production projects. Sogovision was created two months ago to obtain the new programming from overseas, which NHK plans to transmit to Japanese viewers over a new satellite channel made possible by the network’s recent placement of two new direct-broadcast satellites.
Sogovision was formed by NHK Enterprises and Dentsu, Japan’s largest advertising company, and other investors include 20 other leading Japanese firms, including feature film distributors, trading companies and banks.
NHK’s own research institute developed a new generation of high-power direct-broadcast satellites that are capable of transmitting to a dish one meter in diameter (a little more than three feet), compared to the conventional six-foot dishes used in the United States.
The NHK research lab also developed the technology for the high-definition television sets featured by Ikegami. The new sets offer sharper pictures because they have more than twice the 525 scanning lines of a conventional television screen.
Shima said NHK will earn royalties from the patent for the high-definition technology, in contrast to the situation with the portable video cameras that it developed years ago. lthough NHK developed the technology for the TV camera, it earned little profit, allowing the electronics companies that actually manufactured and sold the product to gain the economic benefits.
ABC’s Boyer said NHK’s attitude is much like that of the old Bell Laboratories. “It is always active in developing technology to support broadcasting,” he said.
