- Out of the 1,300+ employees of FujiTV, about 1,100 had attended the staff briefing - around 500 were at the venue while the rest dialed in remotely.
- FujiTV's labour union had submitted a letter to the company's president Minato Koichi to request that the upcoming press conference on 27 Jan 2025 should be attended by him, the chairman Kanou Shuuji and the advisor Hieda Hisashi who is also the chairman of Fuji-Sankei Communications Group. However, the request for Hieda's attendance was rejected with the reason that he is "just an advisor".
Hieda is said to be an "untouchable figure" in FujiTV and a key reason for its corporate culture. While it is hard to imagine the possibility that he can be removed or leave the top management due to this current scandal, getting him to face the media is seen as a critical move to show FujiTV's resolve in solving the problem and changing its internal culture and practices.
- Usually, the news reporting department would tend to gloss over or spend very little time covering negative news about its own company. However, there was extensive coverage this time on FujiTV's own news programmes and no lack of harsh words about the management's handling of the matter. It was revealed by insiders that the news department refused to listen to the management's request to be lenient in their coverage. Another reason cited for FujiTV's news department being so insistent with their coverage this time was that A-san, the executive who reportedly set up the fateful meal gathering for Nakai and X-san had exerted pressure on the department not to report negative news about Nakai on multiple occasions in the past.
Traditionally, the news reporting department has significant power in a TV station. One example of its influence can be seen by NHK's documentary covering the Kitagawa Johnny scandal in Oct 2024 which was produced by the news department. Despite the entertainment department's intention to resume their collaboration with artists from STARTO ENTERTAINMENT, the timing of the release was seen as a move which derailed the entertainment department's efforts.
- During FujiTV's staff briefing on 23 Jan 25, the chief of the compliance department revealed the following statistics.
- There is an annual compliance e-learning course which all staff members have to take.
- In 2024, while as many as 85.6% of the employees completed this module, only 35.3% of the executives did the same.
- Of the 17 executives who completed the course, only 6 of them passed it.
Upon seeing these figures, the chief questioned the top management as to whether they think they are still fit for their jobs which was then met with applause from the audience.
- There was someone who spoke harshly about the individual(s) who had leaked footage of the staff briefing to rival TV stations like TBS. As their coverage was less than positive, this employee criticised whoever did this would "cause his salary and bonus" to be reduced as a result. He said that it was a crime to reveal business secrets that violated the Unfair Competition Prevention Act and wished that the person who leaked the information would never be able to sleep well from now on for doing such a wrong thing.
One of the employees who leaked the audio to the media commented that this felt like a direct threat against them for speaking up and questioned the double standards displayed here. Since news reporters also make use of leaked information from sources such as the government, police or prosecutors for their exclusive scoops, it is hypocritical to accuse others of committing a criminal act in this instance. As such, it felt to some that the company and some of its employees are still most concerned about protecting their own interests rather than doing what's supposed to be right.
- Slightly after the staff briefing passed the third hour mark, one employee commented that the company did not actually have the intention to protect its employees. It was pointed out that there was hardly any mention of the victim X-san and that apologies for the mishandling of the incident were directed largely at the viewers, sponsors and FujiTV employees. First and foremost, the apology should have been directed to X-san who used to be an employee as well.
It was also revealed that the culture of not speaking out for fear of retaliation is strong and evident in FujiTV such as during the recent new year's party. During that event, one of the managing directors asked if anyone had questions to ask but a female employee who had summoned the courage to speak up while in tears was effectively silenced and not allowed to say anything else after raising her question.
- An employee from the sports department was furious about how the TV station continued to engage Nakai for various sports programmes for a good 1.5 years after the incident happened. It was infuriating to realise belatedly that the staff had continued to work with Nakai with a smile without knowing what he did. While FujiTV had its reasons as to why they continued to let Nakai host "Dare to Nakai", there was simply no justification for the string of sports programmes FujiTV made during the past 1.5 years with him including the Paris Olympics special coverage in July 24 and the feature on Ohtani Shohei in September 24 as well as the World Series coverage last year.
In response, the top management couldn't give a clear answer and said that they will leave it to the third-party investigation committee to ascertain if there was any mishandling and misjudgment involved in these decisions.
- An employee working in a department which receives feedback from viewers, revealed how they were inundated with calls and complaints about FujiTV's excuse of protecting the victim's privacy when they refused to answer questions from the media during the press conference. This was simply not acceptable to the public at large and the employees were simply unable to answer to the sponsors nor viewers with this kind of reason.
- Despite the bad press surrounding FujiTV's press conference on 17 Jan, the share price of its parent company i.e. Fuji Media Holdings saw a surge this week with an increase of more than 5% to JPY 1,785 when compared to the previous week. Potential reasons cited for this include:
- The TV station business accounts for less than 20% of the parent's profits. In fact, 53.9% of the parent's operating gains comes from the real estate business as compared to 46.5% for TBS and 9.9% for NTV. As such, it can be said that Fuji Media Holdings is more of a real estate company than a media company.
- Some investors see the share price as hitting rock bottom and that it should be going up if FujiTV goes through a management change and corporate reforms
- People want to attend the shareholders' meeting which will most likely be held in Jun this year where they can raise questions to the management and speak during the event
- With the revelation that FujiTV's management had known about the incident as far back as Jun 2023, there is a possibility that some sponsors may sue them for concealing such a material fact when signing the advertising contracts. As such, this was said to be a key reason for FujiTV offering to refund the advertisement fees from Jan 2025 onwards in order to placate the advertisers for the time being.
Estimated losses from the advertisers' exodus are said to be above JPY 50 billion. Using the timed-CM scheme as an example (sponsors for specific programmes), such contracts usually last for 6 months and are signed about 2 months beforehand. As such, even though the negotiation for the April cycle is currently in progress, many advertisers are not committing for now at least until the investigation report's findings are out. The revenue for the April to September 2024 cycle was JPY 71.2 billion.
- While news of the advertisers pulling their CMs out from FujiTV have hogged headlines, FLASH's investigation shows the other side of the coin where more than 55 companies' CMs were shown on 22 Jan. It approached these companies for the reason why they have continued to show their CMs on FujiTV and their plans going forward - 28 of them responded to FLASH by 24 Jan.
- Of these, some said that they will replace their CMs with those from AC Japan from a later date or are already in the midst of doing so e.g. AirTrip (next week), Dwango Gakuen (from 23 Jan), Rohto Pharmaceutical and ArtNature Inc.
- Some companies are not commenting on this issue for now e.g. DINOS CORPORATION, Ryukakusan and Nitori
According to a FujiTV employee interviewed by FLASH, the advisor Hieda Hisashi has strong ties with the corporate world thus this was said to be a key reason why some companies are still staying with FujiTV despite what's going on.
- FujiTV's second press conference will be held from 4pm on 27 Jan 2025. Learning from its mistakes in the first press conference on 17 Jan, there will no longer be any restrictions on the media representatives attending the event nor the number of questions they can ask.
Past examples of "long" press conferences:
- The Johnny's Jimusho press conference in Sep 2023 to address the sexual assault issue of Johnny Kitagawa had lasted more than 4 hours. Despite the host asking for each media representative to keep to one question each so that everyone could have their turn, there were some reporters who asked multiple questions thus leading to the press conference going on for longer than expected.
- Yoshimoto Kogyo's 5.5 hours press conference in July 2019 (10 minute break included) to address the issue of its artistes doing business or having association with anti-social forces. This did not have restrictions on the number of questions nor the time of the event. About 300 representatives from 100 media outlets came for the press conference which was broadcast live on various TV stations and via the Internet.
In view of these examples, it is expected that FujiTV's press conference would most likely go beyond 4 hours.
- FujiTV's resistance to showing its press conference live and via the Internet is said to be due to a longstanding practice in the TV industry. With regard to its first press conference on 17 Jan which was heavily criticised, it was reported in the media that despite some executives expressing concern over the closed-format of the event, Hieda and Minato both decided to go ahead with a no-go for the live broadcast and online streaming.
While some had pointed out that this was due to the concern of having such footage being used in less-than-positive reporting and archives in future, this practice of addressing scandals and negative news in "regular press conferences" or closed events is not exactly new and certainly not restricted to FujiTV. This is in stark contrast to the Japanese corporate world where most top executives are expected to come out to face the media in specially arranged press conferences aired live and shown to the world via the Internet:
- Female pro wrestler Kimura Hana committed suicide in 2020 due to criticism and defamatory remarks left by viewers over her scenes in "Terrace House" that were heavily edited to project her in a negative and untrue manner. FujiTV only offered an apology for their role in this matter more than a month i.e. 3 July after Kimura's demise on 23 May and that was during their regular press conference, not an event intended solely for this purpose. Back then, the press conference was hosted by then-president Endo Ryuunosuke and then-managing director Ohta Tooru. Footage of that press conference, be it video or photos, were not released. In contrast, Kimura's mother appeared in front of the media despite the potential risk of being subjected to further online bullying and defamation for speaking out.
- Ashihara Hinako, the author of "Sexy Tanaka-san" passed away in January 2024 due to a suspected suicide after revealing her controversy with NTV over their real-life adaptation drama of her work. NTV only commented on this officially with an internal investigation report that was released more than 4 months after her passing. Its president Ishizawa Akira apologised at their regular press conference another 2 months later on 29 July 2024. Similarly, no photos and videos of this event were released.
- In the investigation report about the Kitagawa Johnny scandal last year, the media was singled out as an accomplice under the section "The silence of the mass media" for keeping quiet and not reporting on the matter despite being in the know for decades. In response, the 5 key TV stations and NHK released similarly-worded statements on their websites which had the common theme of expressing their stand of no tolerance for sexual violence but stopped short of admitting any liability and responsibility in the scandal. None of the management or those involved from the TV stations have come forward in public to talk about this issue.
