OREANDA-NEWS. August 18, 2011.
Press Conference by President Hiroshi Hayakawa (Outline)
Speaker:
Hiroshi Hayakawa, President
Ikuo Kamiyama, Senior Executive Director
Takashi Hirajo, Member of the Board in charge of Programming and Entertainment Division
Termination of the Analogue Broadcast: Mr. Hayakawa:
July 24th (Sun) was the day of the termination of the analogue transmission. All the board members and staff including myself related to the digitization projects were present at the "super master" room at the headquarters to witness the very moment of the termination. Before twelve o'clock noon when the termination was executed, "Sunday Front Line" featured the representative news of the analogue era such as the horse-drawn carriage procession of the Crown Prince and Princess, the current Emperor and Empress, after their marriage, in its "News Memories" segment, reported the press-centre of TV Asahi.

The segment consisted of comments taken from former live reporters and camera crew of TV Asahi. After that, 2 stories on the termination of the analogue broadcast were aired during "ANN News"; "Counting down to the termination of analogue broadcast" and "The last minute rush to buy digital TV". "Professional Baseball All Stars Game" started at 11:59 and the announcer proclaimed "the termination of analogue program broadcast", while the analogue transmission started to air "the count-down ticker" from 20 seconds to the termination. We terminated our analogue program broadcast at noon, and the analogue screen turned into "the termination notice" on blue background. The notice of transmission termination, "the analogue broadcast will be completely terminated except for the three disaster affected prefectures" was also made by the announcer of a soccer related program, "Yabecchi F.C.". The analogue broadcast transmitted its closing-broadcast from 23:58, followed by the termination of transmission at 23:59 which turned the screens into sandblasting blackout.

Our analogue transmission on Channel 10 was terminated to make us Channel 5 for good. At noon, when the termination took place, I made a speech to our staff members and colleagues that could be summarized as "TV Asahi is no longer Channel 10, let us all work with a mindset of being born anew from now on." Thanks to your efforts, we are now listed at the center of the radio and TV listing on papers. All we need to do now is to enhance and enrich the contents of our broadcast.

As for the reaction to the termination from our viewers, we received 380 calls on the very day of the 24th and 103 calls on the 25th, a total of 483 calls. Most calls were made between noon and the early evening of the 24th. Our affiliated stations received about 3,000 calls in total, of which about 2,700 calls amounting to 90% of the total were asking for advice on how to receive digital broadcast and complaints were only 10%. I think the transition of analogue transmission to digital went well. The total number of households with TV is said to be 50 million, which means 48 million when you exclude the households in the three Northeastern prefectures. Out of such amount of households, when you consider the figures, such as the 100 thousand households mentioned by the chairman of the National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan and 180 thousand calls received at the call center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, NHK, and commercial broadcasters, I would assume that we were able to achieve 99.7 to 99.8% successful transition from analogue to digital. Such figures are the reasons for my evaluation that the transition went well.

Once again tell us about your hopes as we actually step into the digital era:

Mr. Hayakawa:
Even after total digitization, televisions will remain to function as the central core of the media. We need to produce our programs that reflect the advantages of digital broadcast such as higher visual and audio qualities and interactive function, and especially, our data broadcasting needs to be accelerated. During the history of analogue broadcasting for the past 50 to 60 years, we have produced and broadcast a broad range of programs including trustworthy news programs, exciting sports coverage that can be best exemplified by the recent Nadeshiko Japan at Women's World Cup, variety shows that pursue laughter, healing comfort, and outright fun, and inspiring and heart moving dramas. And all the know-how that we have accumulated in the analogue era will be our strong driving force even in this Internet and digital era and keep us in a good position.

We are and will be quick in responding to the on-going changes in the media environment. One of our basic stances in developing our business is to keep our competitive edge in the audience rating race and to keep our place in the top group by creating attractive and innovative contents that only television can provide, which are backed up by all the know-how nurtured during our analogue era. The other basic stance is the importance of our business as a content provider to all kinds of devices including the Internet media. In order to do this, we will continue to pursue cooperation, partnership, and collaboration with IT communities. Our NewsEX catering to cell phone terminals is one example of such collaboration. The word "contents" used to mean those produced for television, but we must enhance our power in planning, producing, and developing contents catered to the Internet which has different characteristics from those in the terrestrial broadcasting. We need to be more than just a contents provider, but also at the same time be involved in some kind of platform via business partnership, collaborations, etc. We are now in the first year of our project, "Digital 5 Vision". The project calls for development and establishment of the foundation of our business model for the digital era by 2013, the year we will be celebrating our 55th anniversary, and we have already made some strategic moves with such goals in mind.

Audience Rating Update:

Mr. Hayakawa:
Before going into an update on our ratings, I would like to talk about our rerun of "Byakkotai" in Fukushima and Tokyo regions. The process in which such rerun has been made possible started as a proposal from its scriptwriter, Ms. Makiko Uchidate, at our Program Advisory Council meeting when she proposed a rerun of the drama she had written to pep up the people of Fukushima, the disaster stricken area. Our programming department started negotiating with the rights holders including Johnny and Associates and the successful negotiations have made it possible for us to rerun the drama. It is a feature-length drama of almost 5 hours, and we already have reactions from the people of Fukushima that they are very grateful to know that we have decided to rebroadcast "Byakkotai".

Mr. Hirajo:
The updates as of today on our audience rating since April are: 7.1% for all-day placing us 3rd, 10.9% for golden-time placing us 3rd among the commercial broadcasters, 11.4% for prime-time placing us 3rd, and 8.4% for prime-2 placing us at the top. The year-on-year figure has dropped by 0.2 point, but considering the fact that we had the World Cup soccer last year and the decrease in HUT, the difference against other broadcasters have not changed that much. All top three broadcasters have kept their competitive edges well.

The weakness we had on our regular programming on some of the days of the week has been improved successfully. The upward trend in the rating is continuing. HUT for the first and the second weeks of July for golden-time and prime-time recorded the worst figures of the year consecutively. Normally HUT drops in August during Obon (mid-August Festival of Souls), but what is happening this year must be due to the effects from the power-saving movement and other situations related to the disaster.?

We have three new dramas. And especially "New Tokyo Metropolitan Police First Investigation Unit" of which we have aired 3 episodes has done well and has acquired an average rating of 15.2%. It is at the top in ratings among all the dramas of the commercial broadcasters launched in this July-September season. And the drama "The Sun Also Rises" aired at 21:00 on Thursday is aired as a sequel to the special drama, "The Last Supper" broadcast on May 14th.

The script of "The Sun Also Rises" is by Yumiko Inoue with Koichi Sato and Haruma Miura playing the leading roles and it also kicked off well with the rating of 13.5 %. "A Woman Prosecutor: the Kyoto District Public Prosecutors Office" featured in The Thursday Night Mysteries has aired its first two episodes and achieved the average rating of 12.2%, which has surpassed last year's ratings. "Jiu Special Investigation Team" of the Friday Night Drama slot will begin this week. We have put a lot of effort into this drama and it has come out very well. It will start on July 29th.

For the July-September season, the three dramas have kicked off well and I think we can expect good results from the Friday Night Drama as well. We have lined up "Holy Battle in Couleur de Rose - the future is in our hands - (Barairo no Seisen )" for The Sunday Night Premiere slot, but the concrete date of its start is to be announced as it will depend on how the High School Baseball Game will turn out weather-wise.

As for our variety shows that started in April, the "Encyclopedia of Goose Bumpy Scoop Videos" which started on the Tuesday 19:00 slot had a difficult time at first as the slot was having difficulties in ratings as an animation slot, but it started to pick up this month achieving a double digit rating of 10.1% improving the average to 9.3%. On the 21:00 Friday slot, "Oh! Watch Them Toot Their Horns" produced by ABC has an average rating of 8.2% for the past 13 shows with ups and downs in its ratings, but it is gradually stabilizing. Last month I said our morning weekday regular program, "Morning Bird!" was having a difficult time, but it showed improvement in July. The average rating for the second and third week of July was 5.3% recovering the 5% line. The show achieved 7.5% rating at its start, and on July 19th Tuesday, it recorded its second best rating of 6.9% since its launch.

Sales Result:
Mr. Hayakawa:
The year-on-year results for the month of June were: time-sales 85.3%, spot-sales 101.5%, making the total-sales 93.0%. The decline of time-sales at 85.3% was due to a rebound effect from last year's "FIFA World Cup". Spot-sales in Tokyo region was 97.7% and our market share was 21.2%, up 0.8% year-on-year. So far, the year-on-year results for the month of July are: times-sales slightly more than 100%, spot-sales slightly more than 99%, making the total-sales slightly more than 99%.

We have a good chance of surpassing last year's figures. July was filled with many major events including "FINA World Championship-Shanghai", which finished very favorably with live coverage of "final matches of competitive swimming" aired in the golden-time slot making it the highlight of the month. We covered "MAZDA All Star Game 2011" on July 23rd and 24th. The game on the 24th played in Miyagi prefecture was a special game since it took place on the day of total digitization. The All Star Game was filled with warmth and goodwill, which contributed to the recovery of the disaster stricken Northeastern region.

The game has attracted attention from the advertisers and contributed to its sales. Year-on-year figures for the month of August so far are: time-sales slightly more than 97%, spot-sales slightly more than 50%, making the total-sales of slightly more than 75%. As for the time-sales, our main effort will be put into our steady efforts to increase our sales for regular slots which are still to be sold.?We are also about to reach the final stage of our sales for October reshuffle programming, and we are determined to make our very best effort during the whole month of August. To be frank, 50% for the spot-sales at this point of stage is a slow figure. Since August is generally considered as a low-season, I think it is going to be a rather difficult month for us.

However, I'm starting to hear of up coming plans for campaigns from our advertisers for the month of September, so I would think the drop in sales will be limited to August only. Now that we are digitized, the viewers are also becoming familiar with the digitization. We have received some inquiries from advertisers on the digitization, but we see no hints of negative influence on sales.

Revenues from Non-broadcasting Business:
Mr. Kamiyama:
As for events, "Fuji Rock Festival '11" will be held at the Naeba Ski Resort for three days, on July 29th, 30th and 31st. It was the 15th year of this event. Also, the annual "Super Sonic 2011" will be held on August 12th, 13th and 14th in Chiba QVC Marine Field and Makuhari Messe. "Summer Vacation at TV Asahi / Boe-Boe! Doraemon Park" is open from August 6th to September 12th.

This will celebrate the opening of "Fujiko-F-Fujio Museum in Kawasaki City" on September 3rd, which is Doraemon's birthday, and the atrium hall of TV Asahi will become a play area for Doraemon and his friends. As to movies, "Gokaiger Gosenger Super Sentai 199 Hero Great Battle" has achieved more than 885 million yen box-office revenue within 44 days as of July 24th, superseding its target by a large margin. "Masked Rider OOO" and "Gokaiger Goseiger Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger" will premiere on August 6th. "News EX" for web and mobile has now more than 1,373,000 subscribers. The online video service for "The Sun Also Rises", which started in July to September season, has been released immediately after the first show for those who missed watching it on TV.