For those in Singapore and subscribe to Starhub's cable TV offerings, you might have seen this channel 149 recently which offers subtitled Japanese shows. This latest channel was launched by Japanese ad agency Dentsu and J Food & Culture TV (JFCTV) on 25 February and is said to show a range of programmes including variety, drama, music and movies. Here is an excerpt of the article which talks about this channel:
The ad-funded channel will broadcast 24 hours per day via StarHub CATV’s Channel 149. At launch, it has the potential to reach approximately 50% of the total TV population in Singapore (570,000 households).
Following its debut in Singapore, Hello! Japan will be distributed to 10 other countries across the Asia-Pacific region including Indonesia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Vietnam, India, Korea and Taiwan.
Dentsu and JFCTV partnered with JFCTV investors Nippon Television Network, TV Asahi, Tokyo Broadcasting System Holdings, TV Tokyo Holdings, Singapore Media Alliance, Imagica Robot Holdings, Hokkaido Television Broadcasting and Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions on the project.
In a statement, Dentsu said that Japanese content currently being broadcast around the world is either purchased individually by overseas broadcasting stations or the NHK World TV (English) and NHK World Premium (Japanese) programmes. It also noted that there are no channels broadcasting over a wide area that have a Japanese company or companies at their core.
As a result, Dentsu and JFCTV launched the project in a bid to increase the market for Japanese content and enhance the presence of Japan in other countries.
It is still early days to see if this channel can really achieve what it hopes to do but my first thought when news of this channel's launch came out was: isn't it a bit too late and a tad weak? Of course, I do hope that the J-culture boom will come back again like what it enjoyed during the 90s but efforts to promote anything related to Japan have been rather half-hearted and it was very disappointing at times to see this. Not that I'm trying to praise K-culture to the skies but I think the fact that they are doing well for so long had a lot to do with foresight and government support. Soft culture can no doubt bring about a ripple effect to other industries. Just look at the number of people with Samsung handphones these days, the number of Korean restaurants around and how people buy skincare products in boxes whenever they go to Korea!
I find it very frustrating to see that the J-entertainment world doesn't seem to want to open up while Korea is exploiting all means possible to spread their influence in the form of Facebook, Twitter and even live music programmes on YouTube. Every channel you switch to would have a Korean drama showing from time to time and the dedicated channels for each TV station e.g. KBS World and ONE offers new dramas which are just weeks later than their broadcasts in Korea. Japanese drama DVD boxes are so expensive and local TV doesn't show many Japanese dramas so it is always a struggle to watch a drama even if you want to. Trailers from TV stations cannot be viewed outside of Japan (what is the Internet for if there are geographical restrictions like this!), PVs of new songs get taken down as soon as they get uploaded (aren't they supposed to exist to promote the songs and should be seen by as many people as possible? That's why there is no PV in Japan at the moment which can match what Gangnam Style achieved!) In this age, there are numerous channels to exploit in order to boost awareness and reach but it really makes me wonder if anyone is willing to go out of the box and try new ways to expand the market or they are content to stay within the domestic market.
Coming back to this new channel, I watched a few programmes yesterday but was quite disappointed. The variety shows aren't even new! Mind you, those are from the years 2010 and what irked me most was that there was this broadcast of Guguguru 99 which was incomplete because it didn't show the ending since it was past the allocated timeslot. I mean, if the timeslot was 1 hour and your programme was longer than that, can't they actually practice some flexibility in the timing? I checked the programme guide as well and saw that variety programmes seem to form the bulk of the offerings, no dramas yet as far as I can see and the only movie I found was ALWAYS for which its three instalments were to be shown over three Saturdays. I haven't checked out the Music Station broadcast today so if it turns out to be an old episode, I really doubt that the J-music lovers would be keen to tune in. Is it too expensive to get new episodes? Otherwise, I simply don't understand why the channel is showing programmes from 3 years ago.
If this channel continues to dish out such outdated content, I can safely say that most people won't be interested in it for a long time. There must be something done to keep the content current and engaging so that it can gain a foothold in the array of options on cable TV. By the way, do you notice that FujiTV seems to be missing from the list of content providers in the lineup? For those who want to see FujiTV programmes, I guess that means that this channel won't give you what you want until the day that FujiTV decides to come into the picture.
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