Updates related to the Nakai Masahiro & FujiTV incident - 28 Feb 2025

Since there would probably not be many significant developments in this incident prior to the release of findings by FujiTV's third party investigation committee in late March 2025, the frequency of these updates will be less frequent until then. Besides developments and information directly related to FujiTV, it is expected that the other TV stations will also share their own investigation findings in due course.

- The background story of FujiTV's shift to Odaiba and its love for the number 8: 

• FujiTV was the ratings king for 12 years from 1982 to 1993. Its HQ used to be in Kawada-cho, Shinjuku Ward.
• Construction on the new HQ in Odaiba began in May 1993 and the move was completed in March 1995.
• However, this also marked the beginning of its decline and by the time president Kameyama Chihiro was at the helm in 2015, its annual average rating was No.4 out of the 5 key Tokyo-based private TV stations. In November the same year, its primetime weekly ratings position was even overtaken by TV Tokyo which was usually in the last spot.
• The site of FujiTV's new HQ was part of the Waterfront Sub-capital Development Plan which began in the midst of the bubble era in 1989 and the goal was to create a huge business district in Odaiba. However, with the election of Aoshima Yukio, the Tokyo governor in 1995, the World Cities Expo scheduled to take place from March to October 1996 was cancelled. As such, FujiTV's plan to showcase its unique globe-shaped observatory in the air through this expo failed to materialise.
• To begin with, the employees themselves were not so convinced by the need to move to Odaiba. Part of the reason was that there were many production companies which worked with FujiTV located around Kawada-cho and that its proximity to Shinjuku Nichome made it a convenient area to hold business meetings. However, Odaiba was lacking in entertainment options back then and you had to cross the Rainbow Bridge as the sole means to access the area. As such, employees were concerned that nobody would want to come to Odaiba if they had no specific purpose to do so.
• While some affiliated companies and production staff did move together to Odaiba, the environment was also said to be not so conducive for work with the area positioned as a tourist attraction and the space design not optimal due to the mid-air corridors linking the buildings.
• Some also cited the poor location in terms of fengshui and fortune telling as a reason why employees were not enthusiastic about the move. It was believed that the direction in which the HQ moved from Kawada-cho to Odaiba was seen as the most inauspicious.
• In order to remove such poor perceptions of the area, FujiTV deliberately incorporated the Rainbow Bridge in many of its productions so as to give it an image overhaul e.g. the 1997 drama "Love Generation" starring Kimura Takuya & Matsu Takako and the 2003 movie "Odoru Daisousasen THE MOVIE 2 Rainbow Bridge wo fusa seyo!". Many other FujiTV shows also kept showing footage of the new HQ building and the Rainbow Bridge.
• FujiTV and its executives seem to have a strong attachment for the number 8. During the shift to digital terrestrial broadcasting in 2011, other TV stations changed their channels but FujiTV stuck to the number 8. This was seen as putting it at a huge disadvantage due to its positioning on the TV remote control and the TV program listings in newspapers. Besides this, the date when Hieda Hisashi became the president was 8 August 1988 so this became the annual FujiTV Day. Its listing on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange was 8 August 1997 and the countdown to this was started at a time which lined up a string of 6 eights i.e. Heisei 8th year (1996) 8 August at 8.08am 8 seconds. The big meeting room where the regular president's press conference is held has a huge painting of Mount Fuji which has 8 peaks at the top nicknamed as "8 Leaves" and symbolises the 8-leaf lotus flower of Buddhism and the number 8 in Kanji.

- Despite the headwinds against FujiTV's shows, "119 Emergency Call" seems to be doing relatively well in various aspects:

• As of 14 February 2025, the number of TVer subscribers who added this drama to their favourites exceeded more than 930,000 thus making it within shot of making it to the top 3 for this season. In contrast, the other FujiTV primetime dramas are outside of the top 10. While this may be due to individual preferences pertaining to these dramas, the potential impact of the anti-FujiTV sentiment as a result of the ongoing scandal cannot be discounted as well.
• The drama managed to keep its household rating above 7% up to Ep 4. 
• Feedback about the drama on social media is largely positive with praise centered on the increasingly interesting storyline and its realistic portrayal.
• Its inclusion of popular voice actors in every episode so far seems to have gathered their fans as well to tune in to the drama.
• While there had been a tendency to rely on famous actors and scriptwriters for the Mondays 9pm timeslot, the changing of generations within FujiTV has brought about a higher willingness to give relatively unknowns or up-and-coming people a chance. In Seino Nana's case, this is her first leading role in a Mondays 9pm drama. 
• Especially since FujiTV's reputation has taken a hit because of the Nakai incident and there has been an increasing reluctance to be associated with their shows, this might open up more opportunities for those who haven't made it big yet.

- Doing the right thing at the right time?: With the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Tokyo Sarin Attack caused by Aum Shinrikyo on 20 March this year, FujiTV intends to air a special review programme on this case in the same month as reported by Sponichi on 7 February 2025. However, response to this piece of news has been somewhat critical due to FujiTV's handling of its own scandal and whether their priorities are misplaced i.e. they should review their own case first before doing the same for other things. As such, this has led to speculation if this is a move by FujiTV to deflect attention and criticism away from itself.

On the other hand, it was pointed out that this topic has been on FujiTV's radar for a long time since they had done similar features after 2000 when media attention on this matter was already waning. The issue though is, the timing of this 30th anniversary special may be considered inappropriate and in turn diminish the impact and meaning of their original intention to remind viewers about this important case in history.

- The first meeting of Fuji Media Holdings' Management Reform Subcommittee was held on 3 February 2025 but the composition of this subcommittee was cast into doubt as whether the company really has the intention to conduct reforms to its heavily-criticised corporate structure and governance systems:

• The committee is made up of 7 external directors of FMH. Considering that these directors were almost non-existent since Nakai's incident first came to light at the end of last year, it is doubtful as to whether they will be able to do anything to bring about the necessary changes.
• Among them, the inclusion of Yamada Makiko who used to be a former Prime Minister's Secretary/Cabinet Public Relations Officer is seen to be especially problematic. As the TV stations' broadcasting licenses are given out by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the fact that Yamada came from this ministry and the amakudari practice (high-ranking government officials taking a lucrative job in a private or semi-private corporation) has already been criticised as one of the contributing factors to the crisis, makes her eligibility and willingness to lead reforms questionable. Adding on to the suspicion that she did not perform her duty to check on FujiTV's management was the statement made by former president Minato Koichi when asked by reporters during the second press conference on 27 Jan 2025. He confirmed then that the decision not to allow live broadcasting and video recording of the first press conference had nothing to do with her since she doesn't come to FujiTV regularly and wasn't at the TV station when they made this decision.
• The remaining 6 members of this committee are also seen as reflective of advisor Hieda's preferences and easily influenced by him. 2 of them are from key corporations within Fuji Sankei Group - Sankei Shimbun and Bunka Housou while 1 is from Daiwa Securities Goup which is FujiTV's lead underwriter securities firm. Kikkoman's honorary chairman is widely known to be Hieda's close friend and the company even sponsored a programme on FujiTV for more than 50 years to date. The children of two of the committee members are also employees of FujiTV (one had already left). 
• With regard to the selection criteria of the committee members and transparency of its work, FujiTV's PR department did not want to provide details. However, it stated that the selection was done based on requirements for outside directors stipulated in the Companies Act and the independence standards stipulated by financial instruments exchanges.

- Economic magazine "Shuukan Diamond" pulled off its latest issue due to be published on 17 Feb 2025 due to a mistake in its article based on a survey of FujiTV's sponsors. The editorial department found a mismatch in the company names and responses just before the publishing date. As of 14 Feb, although the copies were already delivered to bookstores, they would not be sold to the customers. Subscribers would have already received their copies with the wrong information by post. The publisher will follow up with a correction notice and upload the updated information on its homepage on 17 February.

The survey was conducted on 436 companies which placed ads on FujiTV and about 300 responses were received by Diamond. This is the first time in the magazine's history to suspend an issue. According to the Japan Magazines Publishers Association, the circulation figure of "Shuukan Diamond" was 72,000 per issue as of the last quarter of 2024.

- WOWOW announced on 14 Feb that it will no longer show nor provide the 2008 movie "Watashi wa kai ni naritai" starring Nakai on its streaming platform. The film was originally scheduled to be shown at 2.20pm on 21 Feb. In its statement, WOWOW apologised for the last-minute decision and explained that this was a move made in line with its corporate guidelines and in view of the current situation and customer feedback.

- Asset management company Rheos Capital Works Inc. has become a major shareholder of FujiTV's parent company Fuji Media Holdings with 5.12%. The holding of the latter's shares is said to be for investment purposes. While Rheos intends to use its rights as a shareholder, it has no plans to get involved in FMH's management. This is not the first time that Rheos has acquired shares of parent companies which own TV stations as it also had 5.31% of shares in TV Tokyo Holdings as of Oct 2024. 

• According to a Bloomberg interview with Rheos' president Fujino Hideto, he pointed out that FMH's problems are due to its management being dominated by elderly men and their corporate culture which ignores human rights. He felt that if these factors are eliminated from the company, FujiTV will then have a chance at reinventing itself and change its future.
• Rheos was reported to have started buying FMH's shares since 20 Jan which was three days after FujiTV's first press conference. On that day, the share price was JPY 1,785.5. At the time when Nakai's incident first came to light on 19 Dec 2024, the share price was JPY 1,858. By the time it was known that Rheos had become a major shareholder on 7 Feb, the share price had already surged to JPY 2,516.
• What's interesting this time is how former "enemies" are seemingly banding together now. Rheos is a consolidated subsidiary of SBI Holdings whose chairman and president is Kitao Yoshitaka. Back in 2005, Kita was a white knight of Nippon Housou which was facing a takeover bid by Livedoor led by Horie Takafumi. Since FujiTV was a subsidiary of Nippon Housou at that time, this move effectively prevented FujiTV from being taken over. This led to Horie holding a grudge against Hieda and Kitao but he and Kitao reconciled after that. SBI Investments even invested JPY 1 billion in Horie's rocket development venture "Interstellar Technologies" in 2022. Since Horie had already declared openly that he will be buying FMH shares so as to attend the upcoming shareholders' meeting and pressure the management to carry out reforms, it is speculated that he may be teaming up with SBI Holdings and Rheos this time even though Fujino denied this collaboration.
• According to the Companies Act, as long as more than half of the shareholders agree to remove the elderly management team at the general shareholders meeting, the motion can then be passed. As such, this is comparatively easier to execute vs. implementing fundamental changes to FujiTV's corporate culture. For example, at FujiTV's 533rd Program Council in Jan 2024, the chairman Tadaki Keiichi said that being overly mindful of human rights would restrict the creative space and liberty needed to make TV programmes which will then become so boring and rejected by the viewers eventually.
• Unlike the Broadcasting Ethics & Program Improvement Organisation (BPO) which has no legal power on TV stations, the program council in each TV station has the authority to drive programming decisions. As such, the stance of the council will shape the TV station's production values and direction more so than BPO.

- President Online's article provides a review of FujiTV over the years and examines whether there is a likelihood of it becoming a "normal" TV station again:

• It is important to note that at this stage, FujiTV has not committed a criminal offense under the Broadcasting Act or the Companies Act yet. As such, its relation to Nakai's incident has more to do with its moral and social responsibilities as a TV broadcaster.
• It is probably more accurate to say that the problems with the TV station lies in its management's poor awareness of human rights especially for women and not sharing information with stakeholders when a portion of senior management members came to know about the Nakai incident and continuing to hire Nakai as a host after that. 
• As such, to use the term "poor governance" to describe these problems as a whole does not seem entirely correct since the company itself and its parent are actually operating soundly from a business perspective.
• To regain the public's trust, the most important point is probably how the TV station will revamp itself to something which matches the public's expectations. It is clear that a radical change in management and executives is the way to go of which attention is centered on its advisor Hieda Hisashi who has been controlling FujiTV for almost 40 years.
• If the era of the founding family's control is included, FujiTV's history has been dominated by that and Hieda's era for about 60 years since its opening in 1959 as the 4th key station based in Tokyo.
• Back when FujiTV was established, since the financial sector was the key driver, it was regarded as the mass media outlet for the financial world. Initially, it was chaotic until the Shikanai family took total control for close to 30 years. Subsequently, the Hieda coup took place in 1992 which led to Hieda becoming the president at the young age of 50.
• Looking at the 8 FujiTV's presidents who succeeded Hieda, it is clear that the stints of the presidents got shorter to about 2 years per person after 2010. This coincided with the timing of FujiTV's decline in various aspects and was reflective of the difficulties faced by these short-term presidents to do anything significant during their stints. It was also obvious that those who were former producers were actually unfamiliar with the corporate management side of things and their ages at the time of their appointment were mostly on the higher side i.e. 60 years old and above. While reasons for their departures varied, it didn't appear as if they quit voluntarily so it was obvious that the appointment decisions were beyond their control.
• In terms of the chairman, Hieda hogged the seat for a long 16 years before his successor Kanou Shuuji took over for just 2 years between 2017 and 2019. The latter was then "transferred" to affiliated Kansai TV to be its chairman before being restored to the same position in FujiTV 4 years later.
• Another problem area cited in the Hieda empire is its overly close ties with the political world especially with the late Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. In addition, the practice of amakudari as seen from the appointment of multiple former key government officials (some of them even plagued by scandals) to take on senior executive positions is viewed unfavourably.
• Currently, Fuji Sankei Group has become a massive organisation with 78 companies, 4 corporate bodies, 3 art museums and about 13,000 employees.
• Even if Hieda is out of the picture, his influence in the organisation can still be seen from the appointment of key officials who are seen to be those in his favour. As such, conducting a total revamp of management is likely to create huge chaos and not so easy to do as people may imagine it to be.

- While FujiTV was said to be the pioneer in starting the joshiana (female announcers) boom in Japan back in the 1980s, it was actually during Hieda's era as the company president when the TV station started giving nicknames ending with "pan" to its female announcers and promoting them as if they were also TV talents. Looking at the 10 generations of "pan" announcers in their history, 5 of them had already left FujiTV i.e. first generation Chino Shio (Chino-pan), second generation Takashima Aya (Aya-pan), 4th generation Kato Ayako (Kato-pan), 7th generation Mita Yurika (Mita-pan) and 10th generation Kuji Akiko (Kuji-pan). In addition, looking at the number of female announcers who left FujiTV since 2000, there were as many as 20 of them in total.

On the other hand, while TBS had 16 announcers who left, none of them were those who joined from 2018 onwards. Over at TV Tokyo, it doesn't hire new announcers annually due to its size and lower number of news reporting programmes and has a smaller team to begin with so it had only 9 announcers who left during the same period.

As for NTV and TV Asahi, due to the strong power that their parent companies hold i.e. Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun respectively, it is said that their compliance standards in the announcer department are comparatively higher than that of the other key stations. And since they have a higher number of female management in the announcer department, these TV stations are said to be better at protecting their staff against unwanted advances or unnecessary entertainment functions. In NTV, 18 announcers left since 2000 while TV Asahi had only 11 who left.

- NTV released the results of its internal survey during its regular president's press conference on 17 Feb 2025:

• The survey had 161 respondents mainly from the programme production side. These included 12 executives and producers from the content production, news reporting and sports reporting teams. A total of 25 female announcers were also interviewed in person.
• The theme of the survey was to investigate if there were any meal gatherings where inappropriate sexual contact or advances were made.
• Due to the urgency of trying to establish this, the survey was limited to a small group of people.
• While there were no reported instances of such meal gatherings, 12 respondents mentioned that the purpose of some gatherings were indeed ambiguous.
• As some respondents did not give clear answers or could not answer for sure about some instances and some had felt uncomfortable about speaking in person, there will be an anonymous survey about human rights to be conducted in March so as to identify possible sexual and power harassment issues.

During the press conference, the president also revealed that Nakai had informed NTV on 17 December 2024 about being interviewed by a magazine which was 2 days before the publication and followed up with them again on 6 January 2025. However, he didn't divulge any details about what the issue was about citing the reason as due to a confidentiality agreement. He also apologised for any potential inconvenience that would arise. Eventually, Nakai left the show "The! Sekai Gyoten News" after news reports about his incident came to light.

- While the TV industry is enveloped in a moody state due to the recent spate of bad news, NTV's upcoming Sports Fest at Ryogoku Kokugikan National Sumo Arena on 15 March 2025 looks likely to be a massive event for the entire group's companies. As many as more than 10,000 employees and their family members from about 50 companies under NTV Holdings including NTV, BS Japan, Ax-on Inc., Hulu and Studio Ghibli are expected to attend this. Although some have wondered if the timing of this event meant as a show of unity and positivity in NTV Holdings is to contrast against the state of things over at FujiTV, the event was actually decided more than 6 months ago and seen as important to garner support from the affiliated companies for NTV's annual charity event "24 Jikan Terebi" in August.

- Mainichi Shimbun's public opinion poll conducted on 15 and 16 Feb 2025 included 2 questions pertaining to FujiTV in relation to its role in the Nakai incident. While such opinion polls tend to focus on political issues, there are sometimes questions about societal issues included:

1) Was it appropriate for companies to pull off their CMs from FujiTV: 

Yes: 58% 

No: 16% 

Neutral: 25%

2) What do you think FujiTV should do in order to regain public trust?

Investigate and clarify the suspicion over FujiTV's employees' involvement in the matter: 45%

Investigate the real situation about how female announcers and employees were reportedly made use of for entertainment functions: 42%

Revamp the management team: 52%

Come up with preventive measures: 48%

Others: 8%

Not Sure: 10%

- FujiTV's poor public perception seems to be something which has been going on for some time:

• Back in Jun 2015 when three of its female announcers appeared on FujiTV's talk show "Bokura no jidai", they commented on how the TV station seemed to be pursuing a negative image on purpose and that the dislike towards it seemed to be more about its image rather than the content it made.
• Leaving out TV Tokyo which is comparatively smaller in size, FujiTV has been the TV station with the worst household ratings among the 4 Tokyo-based key TV stations since 2016 for 8 consecutive years. In terms of individual ratings, it has been in the last spot since 2020 after measurement criteria for this parameter was standardised.
• In All About's favourite TV station survey conducted in April 2024 (500 people from their teens to 70s), FujiTV was no.4 behind NTV, TBS and TV Tokyo. Interestingly, while TV Asahi was last in this favourites ranking, it had good household ratings because its content is mainly targeted at older audiences who are said to watch more TV than the younger generations. This is probably why TV Asahi continues to include the household ratings figures in its annual reports despite other TV stations stopping this practice since the individual ratings measurement standard was finalised in 2020. Their reluctance to phase out household ratings measurement is also believed to be one of the key obstructions to the streamlining of ratings reporting from households to individuals. Just like FujiTV, TV Asahi's chairman who is about the same age as Hieda of FujiTV, has been hogging the position for 16 years.
• Another survey conducted by J-CAST News in May/June 2018 asked 1,014 respondents which TV station they disliked. FujiTV won the top spot with 32.7% of the votes.
• FujiTV's first golden era was between 1982 and 1993 where they won the triple crowns i.e. No.1 in average ratings for the three time belts - all-day (6am to 12 midnight), golden (7pm to 10pm) and primetime (7pm to 11pm) for 12 consecutive years. Even for the period between 2004 and 2010, there was a time when they got this title for 3 consecutive years. However, the ratings decline came and persists till today.
• Despite their poor performance, FujiTV still felt that it was the leader among the private networks and even came up with a programme which positioned itself as one which considered the future of the industry which was not a welcomed move by its competitors. As it got more anxious about its poor performance, FujiTV made a series of programmes which were either heavily criticised or exposed to have fake or made-up content. Even so, there were hardly any proper investigations nor explanations about the problems which led to a huge distrust and dislike for the TV station that built up over the years.

- FujiTV announced on 21 Feb 2025 that their annual summer special programme "27 Jikan Terebi 2025" has been cancelled. 

- TBS released the findings of its investigation about the relationship between its employees and those in the entertainment industry on 21 Feb 2025 which was initiated following the Nakai incident:

• There was indeed a TBS announcer who had attended the meal gathering organised by a FujiTV executive in May 2023 which Nakai also appeared at. However, there were no sexual advances made to this announcer and she did not notice any of the same made to other women at that gathering. In addition, she made it clear from the start that she could not stay late so had left before the gathering ended. As for having a meal with Nakai, that was the only time it happened.
• As for the barbecue at Nakai's home on 31 May 2023, it was also confirmed that 2 male employees had attended it as they were invited personally by Nakai himself. There were other individuals from the entertainment industry and FujiTV's programming department at the event. These two employees left when the barbecue ended and did not see nor hear any inappropriate behaviour during the event.

- TV Asahi revealed some information about how the Nakai / FujiTV incident had an impact on them:

• There was a sense of crisis for the entire TV industry in terms of compliance issues so TV Asahi also did their own investigation on whether there was a similar situation internally. Although they did not identify any instances, they are currently in the midst of doing a second round survey on about 70 employees. 
• As for the sponsor pullout at FujiTV, some companies did come to TV Asahi since they had freed up a portion of their budgets originally meant for FujiTV. However, timing-wise, most of the CM slots were already taken up for February and March 2025 so it was difficult to absorb about 20% of the original CM market share at one go.
• In particular, March is a period when sponsors typically need to use up their remaining budgets so it was hard to tell if the spike in advertising income was due to this reason or what happened at FujiTV.

- During TBS' regular president's briefing on 26 Feb 2025, it was revealed that Nakai had contacted TBS just before the article on his incident came out on 19 Dec 2024 but he did not give any details on the matter. As such, the TV station had no choice but to cancel the recording sessions of his shows "Nakai Masahiro no kinyoubi no sumairutachi e" and "THE MC3" scheduled in the remainder of Dec 2024 while waiting for updates on the situation and conducting its internal investigation. Subsequently, TBS managed to speak to Nakai directly. One of the shows was eventually cancelled while he left the other as decided on 20 Jan. 

The president Ryuuhou Masamine expressed regret at this incident since Nakai had worked with them extensively over the years. As for when they will get Nakai to attend a hearing for their internal investigation, this is likely to happen within this year. It had approached both Nakai and the victim in question through their representatives since the end of last year and is trying to confirm their stances towards assisting in TBS' investigation given their existing confidentiality agreement.

- The Fuji Sankei Ladies golf tournament has been cancelled as announced on 27 Feb 2025 due to the withdrawal of the organiser Fuji Sankei Group. The event was scheduled to be held from 25 to 27 Apr and has been held 42 times to date since 1982. However, following the sponsor fallout and criticism towards FujiTV for its alleged involvement in the Nakai incident, the fate of the tournament hung in the balance before the decision to cancel was made 2 months before the event date. As for the Fuji Sankei Classic tournament for male golfers in Sep, it is still unclear if it will take place as planned.