My opinion of this week(515):

NHK should accept 20% cut of viewer payments

"The communications ministry abandoned plans to make viewer payments to Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) legally mandatory after the public broadcaster refused to slash the fees by 20 percent, officials said Thursday." Yomiuri March 2

Almost 30% of households of NHK viewers reject to pay viewing fee now and it is serious situation for NHK at the moment. It started to happen after series of scandals by NHK workers had been observed in recent years.

There is another reason why so many rejection of payments have been observed. Under the present Broadcast Law, households with television viewers must sign a subscription contract with NHK. But there is no clause in the law which require viewer to pay the fee mandatory.

Under such situation, NHK must have asked the communications ministry to revise the law so that they can collect the fee without so many troubles. The communication ministry agreed with it. But top officials of the ministry decided to ask NHK to cut 20% of viewer fee to exchange the action to revise the law to collect the fee mandatory.

The Government authorities including the communications ministry must have thought that such request to NHK to reduce 20% of viewing fees is necessary to obtain consensus from people and to pass the law at the diet. It seems that there is no concrete reason why reduction must be 20% or so. It may be 20% or more or less.

There exists a number of complaints about management of NHK among general public of Japan. Some believe NHK is not necessary any more. Some say NHK is necessary but their current management should be improved in many ways. I personally support the latter stance. I agree with the necessity of existence of public broadcasting media such as NHK. But I also agree with the idea that management of NHK should be improved drastically in many ways. I believe that majority of Japanese people think that way as well.

The request of 20% cut of viewer fee against NHK from the communication ministry seems to be a kind of very minimum one. There are a lot more requests to be included for the new law to pass the diet.

But President Hashimoto was very negative about the plan proposed by Communication Minister Suga.

He said he should be very careful about such big reduction of revenue which may give serious effects on the operation of NHK. That's for sure, of course. Minister Suga expressed discomfort with it saying that they would not submit the new law at this time. He said the plan to revise broadcasting law is realized only when NHK agrees to reduce viewer fee by 20 %.

I agree with this stance of the communication ministry. It seems that there are a lot of rooms for NHK to improve their management of their organization, although I don't point out it in some concrete way. President Hashimoto should at least send more positive sign against the plan shown by the communication ministry.

2007/3/3
Tadashi HAYASE