In recent years, it has been said that many music shows are catering to the young people only which inevitably means that veteran singers face limited performing opportunities as a result. For example, NHK's Kouhaku Utagassen has been criticised for its dwindling number of enka and kayoukyoku (Showa era pop music) singers in its annual lineup as it focuses on relatively newer and more popular Japanese and Korean artists.
And so for those who have no idea about the so-called "hot" artists these days or K-POP groups, TV Tokyo comes to their rescue.
There is this program called "Toshiwasure Nippon no Uta" (literally meaning "the songs of Japan to forget about the past year") which is aired every New Year's Eve over the past 55 years. Viewers can watch familiar faces belt out songs which "everyone should know" over 6 hours from 4pm to 10pm.
Josei Jishin did an interview with the program's producer Hoshi Shunichi where he spoke about the show's stance and interesting titbits about what goes on behind the scenes. As such, I'm sharing the highlights of this interview so that you can know more about this show and how it tries to plug the gap in needs from viewers who seem to have been "forgotten".
- Hoshi joined TV Tokyo in 2000 and has worked on this show for a long time. Due to the fact that this program features a lineup of many big name singers, TV Tokyo which has a small workforce, mobilises its entire production staff to work on this program. Newbies would start off with being asked to call the singers to standby at the side of the stage and gradually take on more significant tasks.
- However, many young staff members do not know enka or kayoukyoku songs or the singers so they have to start off by learning about and remembering the faces of the singers. The funny thing is, it is difficult to remember everyone even with this pre-preparation and there have been many occasions where the staff is calling for a particular singer without realising that he/she is already standing beside the staff concerned!
- The show used to be broadcast live until 2014 but is now filmed in advance with a live audience and includes video inserts of past performances. This is in contrast with the Kouhaku or the Nippon Record Taisho which are broadcast live.
The main reason why the broadcast format was changed is due to ratings. The TV station did their best to boost ratings while trying to keep the "live" format but to no avail. Surprisingly, by doing a pre-recorded show with past footage to enrich the content, the ratings actually went up.
- Back then when all 3 shows were live on New Year's Eve, there would be unexpected incidents such as those who were appearing on multiple shows being delayed due to reasons like traffic jams. It was often that the younger staff would have mixed up the faces of the singers and later found out that those who were supposed to be on stand-by had actually not arrived. When that happened, the staff had to adjust to these challenges in a flexible manner and change the appearance order if needed.
- As the production team already expects that they won't beat the NHK Kouhaku Utagassen in terms of ratings, the aim of the show is to provide a place where those who don't know the latest artists or K-POP can enjoy New Year's Eve listening to classics which almost everyone should know.
- In the past, the criteria in deciding the songs to be performed was partly based on the Kouhaku's lineup i.e. as long as it isn't a new song to be performed there, they could do it on their show. However, as times changed, the number of hit songs per year isn't as many as before and they tend to be songs which the older generations do not know. As such, the focus of the program changed to songs which are widely known across generations. This is also in line with their policy of featuring songs which you don't get to hear often in daily life so you should get to hear these classics to wrap up the year.
- Ironically though, as I mentioned before in a post about TV Tokyo's size and broadcast reach, the producer himself is unable to watch the program live at his hometown in Fukushima when he returns home for the holidays. And his family has the longstanding habit of watching Kouhaku on that night. As such, he hopes that they can broadcast this show via the Internet as soon as possible to reach these places where TV Tokyo's programs cannot be seen so that he can finally watch the show with his parents.
Source: Josei Jishin
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