A couple questions about Japanese Television

[Dylonius Funk]

There's been a couple things i've been curiousa bout reguarding tv stations in Japan.

1. How exactly are channels owned? A friend of mine told me that there is a mix of governement owned channels, and public channels. The only one i know off the top of my head is TV Tokyo. Would they be considered similar to the BBC?

2. Are there actual seasons for anime shows? I've noticed that there seem to be new Naruto episodes coming down the pipeline for the lasts several months now. Is there anything like a fall/summer season setup like US tv
3.What channels would anime shows actually air on? Would they be on the larger channels or the Japanese equivalent of basic cable>? Or would they air on a large volume channel, something similar to NBC perhaps?
Anyway, i guess that's all of them. Thanks for helping me become more educated. /images/graemlins/sdsmiley.gif

[philnicau]

on memory there are about 9-11 free to air channels in Tokyo, but only 3-4 show anime mainly its on
TV Tokyo
TV Asahi
Fuji Tv
and some on NHK-E
most TV Channels are private, with the NHK Channels being Government owned, (NHK, NHK-E, NHK-BS1, NHK-BS2, BS1&2 are sattelite).

[tomo]

[ QUOTE ]
Dylonius Funk said:
There's been a couple things i've been curiousa bout reguarding tv stations in Japan.

1. How exactly are channels owned? A friend of mine told me that there is a mix of governement owned channels, and public channels. The only one i know off the top of my head is TV Tokyo. Would they be considered similar to the BBC?

[/ QUOTE ]

The "free" tv (non-cable, non-satellite) are all affiliated with newspapers, i.e.

TBS with Mainichi,
YTV with Yomiuri,
Fuji with Sankei,
Asahi with Asahi,
TV Tokyo with Nikkei
(Nikkei is like the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal, the rest are regular newspapers.)

[ QUOTE ]

2. Are there actual seasons for anime shows? I've noticed that there seem to be new Naruto episodes coming down the pipeline for the lasts several months now. Is there anything like a fall/summer season setup like US tv


[/ QUOTE ]

Most series run for 6 months, the others 3 or 12. Very popular series like NARUTO or Pokemon just keep on continuing. A lot of series start in April or October.

[Skywise]

Actually a year is now divided up into 4 "seasons" as far as anime goes. That means that while a full length season is 26 episodes (6 months), there are shows that run only half length - 13 episodes (3 months). Example of the latter is Tsukihime for instance. What that means is that every 3-4 months or so there's a lot of new anime shows coming out on TV since not everything ends at the same time of the year.

[JohnThacker]

I have a further question I'd like answered. My understanding is that Japanese television stations operate somewhat more similarly to North American television stations than those of Europe. That is, rather than a chain of over the air stations all belonging to the same network and airing identical centrally produced programming at the same time, stations are affiliated with networks and receive quite a bit of programming from them, especially national news programs, but retain some differences and perhaps control over their own broadcasts. Some programs associated with the national network may be run at different times or not at all depending on the station, and the individual stations may run various other shows in syndication. Also, there are independent stations not affiliated with any national network.

Is this correct?

[wrex]

[ QUOTE ]
JohnThacker said:
I have a further question I'd like answered. My understanding is that Japanese television stations operate somewhat more similarly to North American television stations than those of Europe. That is, rather than a chain of over the air stations all belonging to the same network and airing identical centrally produced programming at the same time, stations are affiliated with networks and receive quite a bit of programming from them, especially national news programs, but retain some differences and perhaps control over their own broadcasts. Some programs associated with the national network may be run at different times or not at all depending on the station, and the individual stations may run various other shows in syndication. Also, there are independent stations not affiliated with any national network.

Is this correct?

[/ QUOTE ]

You may be right. The following is the TV guide for tonight's airing in Tokyo (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/tokyo/2005080319.html?g=). Compare that to tonight's airing in Fukuoka (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/fukuoka/2005080319.html?g=), which is quite far away. You'll notice that the station names are different (except for NHK), but they air the same shows. However, in each city, there may be independent stations, such as Kanagawa TV (http://www.tvk-yokohama.com/tvktable/index2a.html) which show their own stuff.

In regards to the original poster's question about which stations air anime: pretty much every station airs some anime. Anime line-ups for: NHK (http://www3.nhk.or.jp/anime/), NiTere (Nihon TV) (http://www.ntv.co.jp/movie-anime/index.html), TBS (http://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/), Fuji TV (click on the "anime" button) (http://www.fujitv.co.jp/index.html), TV Asahi (click on the "anime/hero" button) (http://www.tv-asahi.co.jp/), TV Tokyo (click on the "anime" button) (http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/), and Kanagawa TV (http://www.tvk-yokohama.com/anim/). In addition, you can get anime stations on cable or satellite TV. I have Skyperfect TV (satellite), and my basic package includes Animax and Kids Station (along with American stations Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon); there is also ATX, but I didn't want to pay extra for that.

[JohnThacker]

[ QUOTE ]
wrex said:


You may be right. The following is the TV guide for tonight's airing in Tokyo (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/tokyo/2005080319.html?g=). Compare that to tonight's airing in Fukuoka (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/fukuoka/2005080319.html?g=), which is quite far away. You'll notice that the station names are different (except for NHK), but they air the same shows.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ah-ha, that's helpful. You'll notice that if you go to those links you provided and then click on 23-4 to get the 11pm to 4am TV listings, the non-NHK pairs of corresponding stations stop showing the same shows around midnight. After midnight, the stations in Tokyo (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/tokyo/2005080323.html?g=) and in Fukuoka (http://tv.yahoo.co.jp/vhf/fukuoka/2005080323.html?g=) which were showing the same programs earlier in the night are showing completely different things. The same is true if you click on 12-19: TNC in Fukuoka and Fuji Television in Tokyo both show "waratte ii to mo!" at noon, but while Fuji TV shows One Piece and GTO at 3 and 4, TNC is apparently showing a program on astronomy. They also show "Super News" at times different by an hour. Similarly, while TV Tokyo and TV Q both show Duel Monsters and Naruto at 6:30 and 7:00, they have different soap operas and movies on around noon and 1:30 pm.

That explains why some of the Japanese web pages I've visited for shows have listed such wildly varying start times on different stations. Those anime which show in the extremely late hours are the type of show that are on at different times.

So it seems very similar to US television. "Prime time" lineups tend to be the same, and many of the same shows appear on the same networks, but some of the minor shows are not always the same or may appear at different times.