Public service broadcasting and the challenge of new technology: A case study of Japan's NHK

Abstract

The decade of 1980's was characterized by multiplying challenges to public service broadcasting in many countries. The threat to the financial viability of public broadcasting, which had originated with the stagnation of receiver fee revenue in the face of rapidly escalating production costs, was compounded by the economic-ideological chal lenges posed by the advent of new media technologies. By the end of the 1980s, public broadcasting systems everywhere appeared to be either crumbling or managing a slow decline. As a system operating in a uniquely different, and little-studied, policy environment, Japan's public service broadcasting system, NHK, presents a sharp contrast to this grim picture of decline. In contrast to many of its Western counterparts, such as the BBC, for example, NHK has succeeded in adapting new technologies to its own advantage and has grown tremendously in power and prominence as a broadcasting institution since the early 1980s. Based on extensive personal interviews conducted with Japanese media scholars, commercial broadcasters, and NHK representatives in the course of a four-month field study in Japan (January 1991-April 1991), as well as library research, this study analyzes the reasons behind this contrast in terms of 1) the elements in the Japanese policy environment which have given NHK an advantage over its counterparts and 2) the management strategies pursued by NHK itself in response to new technologies.