‘ Terebi banare ’: Historicising internet-distributed television and the ‘departure from television’ in Japan

Abstract

This article historicises and examines the implications of internet-distributed television for televisual culture and viewing in Japan. It challenges the simplistic media discourse of ‘terebi banare’ (i.e. the audiences’ departure from television), which overlooks the complexities of evolving viewing practices. It explains why, largely due to the dominance of major terrestrial broadcasters in the media ecosystem, online consumption of television was slower to take hold in Japan than in other developed countries. It also demonstrates how, while Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have popularised pay online viewing from the late 2010s, the content Japanese viewers consume online remains inclined towards local outputs from terrestrial broadcasters. By elaborating on how terrestrial broadcasters have continued to play an important role in shaping audience experiences with their evolving content, frames, and services, this article provides a critical account of the meaning of terebi banare in the age of streaming.

This article historicises the development of internet-distributed television and analyses the implications of such development for the changing televisual culture and viewing in Japan. The existing research on the ‘post-network era’ (Lotz, 2014), ‘online TV’ (Johnson, 2019), or the shift to a norm of on-demand access and plentiful content has tended to focus on the developed countries in the West, with North America, Western and Northern Europe, and Australia being the key focus. In comparison, there has been a lack of studies – both in English and in Japanese – on the historical development and configuration of post-network conditions in Japan. Given that any new media technology will be adopted differently in different cultural contexts, it is always necessary, as Evans and McDonald (2014: 159) point out, to ‘recognise and integrate how the digital media is deployed, organised, monetised, used, adopted, understood, and evaluated across local, international, or regional contexts’.

Jitsuzumi and Mitomo (2022) and Sugaya (2021) have addressed relevant policies and issues of business administration surrounding the development of Japanese internet television. This article instead focuses on how online television has gradually become integrated into an emerging audiovisual culture shaping audiences’ television experiences in Japan today – a critical agenda that has not undergone rigorous scrutiny. This historical account of Japanese internet-distributed television demonstrates how the notions such as ‘online TV’ (Johnson, 2019), ‘online viewing’ (Evans et al., 2016), or ‘internet-distributed television’ (Lotz, 2017) can be experienced and understood differently in diverse cultural contexts.

Despite long having a wealthy and technologically developed media market packed with numerous digital services, Japan's adoption of internet distribution unfolded at a slow pace prior to the mid-2010s. The first half of the article analyses how major terrestrial broadcasters established their long-term dominance in the media ecosystem that enabled them to maintain their resources, audience interest and high ratings throughout the multichannel transition and the early introduction of video-on-demand (VOD) in the mid-2000s. It also explains how, given the lack of competition challenging terrestrial broadcasters’ enduring dominance, they had been reluctant to actively develop their VOD ventures. As a result, online viewing of television had not taken root in Japan by the mid-2010s as it had in many other countries with advanced internet-distributed video sectors, such as the US and the UK.

The second half of the article then investigates how Netflix and Amazon Prime Video's entry into Japan in 2015, and the ongoing decline in television ratings, ultimately led to the key broadcasters’ aggressive adoption of internet distribution, and the rapid development of internet-distributed television in the second half of the 2010s. Specifically, it elaborates on the implications of such development for Japan's evolving televisual cultures by challenging a media discourse increasingly popular in the 2010s – the discourse of terebi banare, namely, audiences’ ongoing ‘departure from television’. The discourse often asserts an increasingly notable decline in audiences’ interest in television, resulting in reduced viewership.

Given its loose definition of ‘television’ in an era of abundant and varied video content, the discourse surrounding terebi banare has failed to explain clearly from what ‘television’ audiences have been departing. It tends to vaguely imply that audiences are spending less time watching live broadcast television on a TV set, an unsurprising development given the range of contemporary technologies, and asserts a frame that overlooks the independence of viewing cultures from technologies of display. This simplified view of television as tied to the set does not help us understand how audiences consume televisual content today. As Johnson (2019: 28–9) argues, television can be defined by five components, including technological infrastructures, viewing devices, services, content, and frames. Therefore, it is important to investigate critically what content audiences consume and what technological infrastructures, devices, services, and frames they use when they do so if we are to understand how the viewing culture has evolved.

By problematising the very meaning of ‘television’ in the terebi banare discourse, this article reveals the evolving roles the main Japanese terrestrial broadcasters have played in the age of internet distribution. It explains how audiences might be ‘departing’ from linear broadcast television and turning to on-demand streaming platforms, but what they watch remains inclined to the content terrestrial broadcasters produce. In this regard, the major terrestrial broadcasters, despite facing an ongoing decline in their ratings, have remained crucial in shaping televisual cultures and viewing practices, alongside the US-based streaming platforms such as Netflix.

Terrestrial, satellite and cable television: history and formation

Japanese broadcast television has been configured by a dual structure that combined both public and commercial broadcasting systems since its inception in 1953, when the public broadcaster NHK and the private network NTV launched. Given that the BBC served as the prototype of a public broadcaster for the founders of NHK, NHK shares the BBC's institutional structure and funding mechanism – its licensing fee system (Laurence, 2023: 3–4). On the other hand, the privately owned commercial system, led by the so-called ‘Tokyo-based key stations’, NTV, TV Asahi, TBS, TV Tokyo, and Fuji TV, were largely reliant and based on the techniques and the system in the US in their early years of operation (Ikuta, 1960).

The network era in Japan lasted approximately from the 1950s to the end of 1980s, with NHK and the five Tokyo-based commercial stations being the dominant broadcasters. As a public broadcaster, NHK is required to provide universal access to television across all households in Japan, including those remote areas with poor terrestrial signals. This legal framework underpinned the introduction of cable television and the early development of satellite television. With NHK's support, cable television was initially introduced in the 1950s to provide better signals to a relatively small percentage of areas and communities with poor terrestrial reception (Sugaya, 1995). NHK started to develop satellite broadcasting in the mid-1960s, aiming to further improve television coverage across Japan (Laurence, 2023); this goal was achieved in the mid-1980s, when NHK's first experimental transmission of satellite broadcasting launched (Kwak, 2008).

Meanwhile, it also became part of the government's policies in the 1980s to develop multichannel services, providing a wider range of programmes in response to the viewers’ increasingly diverse demands for information and television content, and satellite television was regarded as key to fulfil this mission (Yamakoshi, 2005). It was based on this background that NHK's satellite broadcasting, officially launched in 1989, offered programmes different from its terrestrial broadcasts.

Following NHK's move, WOWOW was launched in 1991 as the first commercial satellite service, offering premium domestic and international content (e.g. live sports). It is a consortium of over 200 Japanese companies led by the five Tokyo-based key stations. The second commercial satellite service PerfectTV! went live in 1996 and was renamed as SKY PerfectTV! in 1998; it has operated solely as a multichannel provider, offering diverse local and international channels. Both services have widened and internationalised the content offerings and serve niche markets, and they have since been the major commercial satellite television providers. Importantly, the key stations still play a central role in the commercial satellite business – they all joined WOWOW's business as the major shareholders and also serve as content and channel providers for SKY PerfectTV! (Kwak, 2008).

Given that cable television's initial purpose was to improve terrestrial reception for remote areas and communities, it was predominantly managed by local operators in its early years, many of whom also self-produced a small amount of low-budget, community-oriented content. It was gradually commercialised from the late 1980s, when new operators started to provide limited multichannel services in urban areas. Following a series of legislative changes, the first multiple-system operator (MSO) Jupiter Telecommunications (renamed as J:COM in 1999) was formed by a major Japanese corporation, Sumitomo Corporation, and the then-major American MSO TCI in 1995. J:COM subsequently became the largest commercial multichannel cable service in the following years. This development, alongside the launch of satellite television, marked the beginning of Japan's multichannel era.

Formation of markets and viewing cultures

A foremost feature in the formation of Japanese television is that NHK and the key commercial terrestrial broadcasters have long dominated the media landscape in terms of advertising revenues, budgets, and employment, and remain the most influential content producers and distributors to the present day. They have served as the primary clients of the production companies (Nishioka, 2020). Terrestrial television's long-lasting dominance is largely due to the high concentration of media ownership. All Tokyo-based key commercial stations are owned by media conglomerates that also run mainstream newspapers. While there are over 140 local terrestrial broadcasters in Japan, most of them operate as the local affiliates of the Tokyo-based key stations (Kwak, 2008). Local broadcasters heavily rely on the key stations for content and other resources. While the key stations self-produce over 90% of the programmes, the local broadcasters on average only produce 9% of their programmes. (Murakami, 2015). As Nishioka (2020) points out, the key stations, whose market is three times larger than the combination of cable and satellite TV markets, are ‘in the central position in the broadcasting industry ecosystem’ (2020: 259).

It is within this context that multichannel satellite and cable services in Japan have developed. While they have offered audiences wider viewing options since the 1990s, they have not challenged terrestrial broadcasters’ dominance as the major content producers and distributors in shaping the viewing cultures in Japan.

The first reason for terrestrial broadcasters’ continued dominance is that the penetration of satellite television, especially that of commercial satellite services, has been low, because satellite television's focus on foreign and premium content (e.g. American TV series, professional sports) fails to attract the general viewers, who prefer domestic programming. Moreover, the additional costs for satellite services also discouraged audiences’ consumption. Based on NHK's receiving fee system, anyone who owns any equipment capable of receiving the broadcasts of NHK is required to enter a contract with NHK and pay the receiving fee. Audiences whose viewing equipment can receive only terrestrial broadcasts are required to sign a Terrestrial Contract (¥14,205 annually, approximately US$114); those whose equipment can receive NHK's terrestrial and satellite broadcasts are required to have a Satellite Contract (¥24,740 annually, US$198). ¹ Between 2011 and 2020, on average, the number of households contracted with NHK was 42.9 million; among them only 47% (20.1 million) were on the Satellite Contract. Commercial satellite services reached substantially fewer households – neither WOWOW nor SKY PerfectTV! households exceeded 3.5 million households (roughly 5% of penetration) throughout the 2000s and 2010s (Japan Satellite Broadcasting Association, 2022).

Second, in contrast to commercial satellite services, cable television has been more strongly adopted in Japan. In a market where terrestrial television was overwhelmingly popular, the multichannel cable TV services did not take off promptly. The penetration of multichannel cable TV remained below 10% until the mid-1990s, which was significantly lower than in other countries, such as the US and Canada, that reached well over half of homes by that time (Sugaya, 1995). With the introduction of broadband services, cable TV providers diversified their businesses to package cable with home internet access, a service commercial satellite providers never offer. This strategy led to robust adoption. The percentage of cable TV households rose from 22% in 2000 to 50% in 2010, and it has since been consistent up to the present day (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Japan, 2022). Contrary to the cord-cutting phenomenon in the 2010s in North America (Strangelove, 2015), the same pattern has not taken place in Japan.

However, unlike many developed countries, where pay cable and satellite channels are significant content providers and producers, pay cable and satellite channels in Japan rarely exceed the popularity of terrestrial networks. On the one hand, the pay channels featuring foreign content serve niche markets but struggle to attract average viewers, who have strong preference for domestic content. On the other hand, the lack of originality of most channels featuring Japanese programmes also fail to attract viewers. Such channels mainly air lower-budget original content or archival programmes from terrestrial broadcasters, but rarely produce original content of a quality comparable to that of terrestrial programmes. As a result, to general viewers, especially cable television subscribers, the pay channels seem to serve as insignificant additions to their broadband packages rather than essential content providers with compelling programming.

Therefore, while audience fragmentation was widely observed in the multichannel transition in the US (Lotz, 2014), it did not take place during Japan's multichannel transition era, as neither cable nor satellite television challenged terrestrial broadcasters’ dominance as viewing options. Terrestrial television continued to enjoy high ratings, with popular dramas and programmes regularly generating ratings over 20%. The average time audiences spent daily on terrestrial broadcasting was consistently over 3 hours. This tendency remained largely the same through the 2000s, when Japanese television gradually entered the post-network era (Yoshida, 2022). The dominance of terrestrial broadcasters over cable and satellite services is also manifest in their reach among audiences in recent years. According to NHK's nationwide surveys between 2013 and 2022, the terrestrial channels’ real-time reach has consistently been over 87%, while pay cable and satellite channels have only had a 13% real-time reach (Hotaka et al., 2022).

Terrestrial broadcasters have established their long-lasting ascendancy in Japan's media ecosystem in a way that is rarely seen in other developed countries with affluent and media-saturated markets. This not only marks a crucial feature of Japanese television but also serves as the fundamental condition within which internet-distributed television has developed since the mid-2000s, as discussed in the following sections.

Slow adoption of VODs between the mid-2000s to 2014

The long-standing dominance of terrestrial broadcasters as the major content producers and distributors contributed to the slow adoption of internet-distributed television in Japan between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s. Given the lack of competition in the Japanese media ecosystem challenging the key terrestrial broadcasters’ dominance, these broadcasters had little incentive to pursue new ventures and industrial practices as their US and UK counterparts did during the same period. This allowed them to continuously prioritise their existing markets and run their VODs with limited resources and commitment during this period. While they launched their VOD services in the mid-2000s, they did not fully engage in building new business models and services for online viewing before the mid-2010s. At that point, their VODs offered only a small number of the current dramas and variety shows, and they rarely provided other popular genres (e.g. sports, music performances). They also offered little content from their back catalogues, partly due to the difficulties they faced in obtaining permissions from copyright holders for such archival content (Kim et al., 2010; Nishioka, 2020).

In comparison, video-sharing sites such as YouTube played an important role in cultivating online video viewing in Japan and have been popular platforms for unauthorised distribution and consumption of professional television content roughly from 2006. In the same time frame, time-shifted viewing with digital video recorders (DVRs) became a common viewing practice (Kojima et al., 2011), with over half of viewers using hard disc drives (HDDs) by 2010 (Shikata, 2007). Given the situation that informal and illegal online sharing and DVRs had been providing on-demand access to a wider range of content with cheaper costs, the key broadcasters’ VODs did not offer a compelling value proposition to consumers. Their usage remained under 5% in 2014 (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2015).

The public broadcaster NHK also did not spearhead innovation. Despite once modelling itself upon the BBC, NHK's adoption of online video services is significantly different from the BBC, which launched iPlayer in December 2007 as a free online TV portal whose access is covered by the licence fee. First developed as a catch-up service, iPlayer also began simulcasting BBC's live TV feeds from 2008 and has since played a crucial role in shaping audiences’ online viewing in the UK. NHK's first online video service, NHK On-Demand, launched in December 2008. Nevertheless, several conditions prevented NHK from making a parallel transition from public service broadcasting into public service media. As Laurence (2023) argues, although NHK executives initially wanted NHK On-Demand to be covered by the receiving fee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications insisted that NHK On-Demand develop as a pay service independent from NHK's receiving fee system. This decision was made in response to the key commercial broadcasters’ complaints, in which they claimed that their pay VODs would face unfair competition if NHK On-Demand were offered free of charge.

Moreover, the Japanese Broadcast Act classified any delivery of terrestrial programmes via telecommunications networks as a telecom service rather than broadcasting. Before the revision of the Act in 2018, NHK was prevented from simulcasting its TV feeds online unless the country was in emergency (e.g. earthquakes). These regulations required NHK On-Demand to serve as a stand-alone, pay telecommunication service providing on-demand access only to NHK programmes.

Upon its launch, NHK On-Demand offered a subscription plan costing ¥1470 monthly (US$12) for unlimited viewing, and pay-per-view (PPV) options for individual programmes at a cost of ¥315 or less per title (Nishihata, 2008b). ² With this new service, NHK aimed to provide audiences with access to its back catalogue, which it regarded as the national property of society. NHK On-Demand subsequently offered catch-up access to NHK's current programmes and also the public broadcaster's archival programmes, but at a cost (Nishihata, 2008a).

NHK On-Demand did not attract much interest from viewers who had not yet significantly adopted any on-demand services and tended to regard NHK On-Demand's pricing as expensive (Laurence, 2023; Nishioka, 2020). Its content offering was seen as limited both in quantity and quality. NHK had difficulties gaining copyright permissions from all copyright holders for many popular archival programmes (e.g. live music performances) needed for internet distribution (Nishida, 2010). Moreover, as NHK On-Demand's then manager Masamitsu Kohara argued in a 2010 interview, the platform had expected there would be a high demand for NHK's archival programmes such as Renzoku Terebi Shosetsu (commonly known as the Asadora Series, that is, the Morning Drama Series) – a 15-minute-per-episode drama series which airs five or six days a week at 8 a.m., with each series running for half a year. The Morning Drama Series usually had high ratings, and they were especially popular among female audiences. However, to the executives’ surprise, such old programmes were not popular among subscribers, who turned out to be mainly men in their 30s to 50s.

Additionally, as a VOD service run by the public broadcaster, NHK On-Demand's status as pay service was frequently questioned by viewers, who believed that use of NHK On-Demand should have been included in the receiving fee. To them, paying extra fees to access NHK's programmes, archival or current, seemed unreasonable (Nishida, 2010) and, notably, there was already dissatisfaction among some over the required receiving fee for the linear service. NHK On-Demand's inability to provide adequate value to justify its role as a fee-based business prevented it from gaining a substantial number of subscribers.

Meanwhile, the foreign ventures aiming to expand their business to Japan also failed to make a significant impact. Hulu US was the first US-based platform launching its subscription-only VOD platform in Japan in 2011. As a service featuring foreign (mainly American) TV series, Hulu Japan struggled to gain subscribers because the majority of Japanese viewers preferred domestic content. A key commercial terrestrial broadcaster, NTV, acquired Hulu Japan in 2014 and subsequently began featuring its own dramas and variety shows alongside other Japanese movies and animation. While this manoeuvre did not promptly attract subscribers, it marked the most notable indication of a growing interest in internet distribution by a key terrestrial broadcaster prior to 2015.

The early streaming video culture in Japan (in the first half of the 2010s) is thus marked by three characteristics. First, pay VOD services did not threaten the Japanese consumers’ preferences for DVRs and physical media as they did in other countries. A 2015 survey by NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute (BCRI) indicated that only 3.6% of the audiences used pay internet-distributed services to watch the content produced by broadcasters in a time-shifted manner – significantly fewer than those doing so through DVRs (46%) and Blu-rays and DVDs (11.3%) (Tsurushima and Hotaka, 2016). Second, pay VOD services did not challenge cable and satellite television's status as primary pay viewing services. According to an annual survey conducted by the Institute for Information and Communications Policy (IICP), although 19% of viewers subscribed to multichannel television in 2014, only 11% of viewers used VOD services. Third, free video-sharing sites featuring user-generated content largely defined the practices of online viewing. The same IICP survey indicates that in 2014, 73% of viewers used video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, but only 4.6% used terrestrial broadcasters’ VOD portals (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2015).

Overall, Japanese commercial broadcasters’ lack of interest in upsetting their dominant status and the limited aspirations of NHK's subscriber-funded, on-demand offering delayed the development of internet-distributed television. Lotz (2017: 11) argues that 2010 marks a turning point for US television, signalling that ‘television distributed by internet protocol could rival and surpass the experience of broadcast-or cable-distributed television’. Similar developments did not emerge in Japan throughout the first half of the 2010s, as internet-distributed television services did not disrupt the existing television market, industrial norms, and viewing practices. Online viewing of television, especially via fee-based platforms, remained far from a common practice among Japanese audiences before 2015.

‘The first year of online distribution’ and ‘terebi banare’: 2015

The advancement of internet-distributed television is widely considered to have entered a new phase in 2015. On the one front, both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video launched their services in September that year. On another, the key commercial terrestrial broadcasters (NTV, TV Asahi, TBS, TV Tokyo and Fuji TV), which had been reluctant to engage fully in internet distribution, launched their joint streaming platform TVer in October. Similar to Hulu US's early model, TVer is a free, ad-supported online TV portal that allows audiences to catch up with the broadcasters’ latest programmes – mainly dramas and variety shows – within a week after they air. It also provides older dramas from the broadcasters’ back catalogues. TVer's launch marked the first time the leading commercial broadcasters started actively providing a significant number of current programmes online. Given such notable developments, Japanese media critics often call 2015 ‘the first year of online distribution’ for televisual content or 'the first year of OTT’ (over-the-top) (Hasegawa, 2021; Yonetani, 2021). This media discourse provides fundamental contexts for understanding how internet distribution was eventually positioned as a transformative technology that brings new television experiences. The discourse is developed based on three interlocking rationales.

First, claiming that the era of internet distribution started from 2015 confirms a shared recognition that, although numerous local internet-distributed television platforms existed prior to the mid-2010s, they failed to take hold and make online viewing of television a common audience practice (Nishida, 2016).

The second rationale underlining the discourse was that 2015 was the year when the key commercial terrestrial broadcasters finally became aggressive in developing new viewing experiences with internet distribution. This change, specifically marked by the launch of TVer in October that year, was widely understood as a response to the possible impact of the foreign streaming players (Murakami, 2015).

Third, the discourse ‘2015 as the start of online distribution’ indicates how the foreign streaming platforms’ expansion into Japan – especially Netflix's launch – was seen as a force that might significantly change the configuration of internet-distributed television in Japan (Hasegawa, 2021). Such a view of foreign influence differs markedly from that in previous years, in which the impact of foreign players on the domestic market was seen as limited. This was especially manifest in the US-based Hulu's failure to gain popularity in Japan with its primary focus on American content. It was not until Hulu Japan was under NTV and began to feature domestic content that Hulu Japan experienced significant growth in the number of subscribers from the mid-2010s (Nishida 2015).

In contrast, on their 2015 entry to Japan, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video employed more aggressive localisation strategies unheard of in the local industry. Japan was the first and the wealthiest Asian market Netflix entered. For Amazon, whose online shopping site had been popular since the 2000s, Prime Video was an attempt to form a new business and identity as a media platform. Recognising the audience's strong preference for Japanese content, both Netflix and Amazon collaborated with the major Japanese media and entertainment players (e.g. Fuji TV for Netflix, TV Tokyo for Amazon, the leading talent agency Yoshimoto Kogyo for both) to produce a wide range of original content and secured a large collection of licensed Japanese dramas, variety shows and animation (Ohara, 2018). Upon their launch, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video libraries offered 40% and 70% Japanese content respectively. For both platforms, such percentages of local content are much higher than those in other overseas libraries (Brezeski, 2015; Hadfield, 2015). Given such localisation, Netflix and Amazon's 2015 launch in Japan was the first moment that the Japanese media industry started to regard foreign streaming platforms as both a potential threat and an opportunity for its own market that had to be taken seriously.

Terebi banare

Parallel to the discourse of ‘2015 as the first year of online distribution’, the discourse of terebi banare became more pronounced. Terebi banare discourse could be traced back to the 1970s. While television ratings were high during that time, television viewing was said to gradually start losing its role as a primary pastime among audiences following the increase of leisure options in society (Iida, 2022). This discourse was less evident from the late 1980s to the late 2000s as the overall television ratings remained comparatively high, and the average time Japanese audiences spent on television viewing in fact increased (Yoshida, 2022).

However, despite taking place later than other media-saturated markets, the ratings of many popular programmes in Japan started to decline in the late 2000s, with the trend becoming more pronounced by the mid-2010s. For instance, in the 2000s, the average of the annual ratings of Taiga drama, NHK's flagship and annual year-long historical drama series, was 19.8%. Its annual rating then dropped from 18.7% in 2010 to 12% in 2015 (Video Research, 2023). The discourse surrounding terebi banare therefore became increasingly popular and appeared more convincing than ever before.

The concept of ‘television’ in the mid-2010s terebi banare discourse remained predominantly centred around terrestrial television and TV sets, and the discourse commonly put forth three interconnected arguments to elucidate the audiences’ continuous ‘departure’ from the broadcasts and the medium. First, it suggested that audiences’ interest in television was waning and the reduction in the frequency of audiences’ viewing, and the time spent on doing so, was frequently brought up as further evidence alongside the decline in ratings (Kanamaru, 2015). This change in viewing habits is best revealed in the longitudinal Japanese People and Television Survey, which has been conducted by the BCRI every five years since 1985. The 2015 survey, often cited by the terebi banare discourse, found that the percentage of viewers watching television daily fell to 79%, down 5% from the 2010 survey and the first time it was below 80%. The most significant decrease came from viewers in their 20s to 40s. Specifically, while 79% of those in their 20s watched television daily in 2010, only 64% of them did so in 2015 (Kimura et al., 2015).

Second, the discourse claimed that audiences’ growing usage of and reliance on the internet indicated the internet was challenging television's long-lasting role as the most essential medium in the audiences’ daily lives, although it failed to explain clearly how the two media were actually used (Kanamaru, 2015). This indicates how, with internet-distributed television's limited popularity, the concept of television viewing remained strongly tied to terrestrial broadcasts and TV sets. The internet was not yet ‘conceptualised as a medium and technology that intertwines with television in the provision of audiovisual content’ (Johnson, 2019: 17).

The third common argument in the discourse regarded the mid-2010s terebi banare as posing significant challenges to the key terrestrial broadcasters’ long-term dominance as content providers – an idea not seen in terebi banare's previous phases. This argument centred on how terrestrial broadcasters were to respond to such challenges (Tohsaka, 2015). Within the discourse, TVer's 2015 launch was seen not only as key terrestrial broadcasters’ response to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, but also as their attempt to prevent viewers from further ‘departing’ from them. With TVer, the key broadcasters hoped that viewers would be more willing to consume their programmes. They also recognised that viewers had been using illegal video sites to access their programmes online and wanted viewers to give up using illegal access and make TVer their go-to channel for online viewing of their programmes (Yamamoto, 2015).

Overall, the discourse of ‘2015 as the start of internet distribution’ and that of terebi banare in the mid-2010s suggest how Japanese terrestrial television finally started to embrace internet distribution after managing to resist this move for years. Their endeavour to set up new online viewing services and their collaboration with Netflix and Amazon in content production were responses to the two US platforms’ entry to Japan and the audiences’ changing viewing habits. It was around this time that Japanese television gradually entered what Johnson (2019) calls the ‘internet era’ of television, in which the internet ‘began to be positioned as a means of delivering and experiencing television’ (13).

Internet-distributed television from the mid-2010s onward

How, then, has the streaming video culture in Japan changed following the launch of TVer, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video? To answer this question, this article examines the following developments' impacts on online viewing since the late 2010s. Specifically, the examination centres on how such developments have shaped the viewers’ experiences of ‘television viewing’ in Japan, and why such experiences continue to consist of distinctive attributes concerning terrestrial broadcasters’ changing roles in the media ecosystem.

Changing legislation

Difficulties in copyright clearance for internet distribution of broadcast content have long discouraged terrestrial broadcasters from making their programmes available online. The Japanese government has been revising the Copyright Act to make the process of copyright clearance easier in response to the growing demand for online distribution of television. Specifically, in the past, the broadcasters were required to obtain permissions for both broadcasting and online distribution from the copyright holders. After the 2021 revision of Copyright Act came into force in January 2022, the copyright holders who have granted their permissions for broadcasting are presumed to have also granted the same permission for online distribution (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Japan, 2022).

The government also revised the Broadcast Act in 2018 to allow NHK to simulcast its TV feeds online, which led to the launch of NHK Plus in 2020 – NHK's free simulcast and catch-up service whose usage is covered by the receiving fee (12 years after BBC iPlayer's simulcasts started). Currently, NHK Plus’s operation is separated from the pay service NHK On-Demand, which features content from NHK's back catalogue.

Online access to live TV feeds

For a long time, the key commercial broadcasters were reluctant to provide their linear broadcasts online as this move would likely lead to a decline in their ratings. However, by the 2020s, they gradually came to regard this move as a possible strategy to prevent viewers from stepping further away from them. They subsequently started simulcasting their live TV feeds during prime time on TVer in April 2022.

The launch of NHK Plus and TVer's prime-time simulcast service marks the first decoupling of live terrestrial television from the technological infrastructure of broadcasting. However, it is worth noting that, as of 2023, although both NHK Plus and TVer provide on-demand viewing and live TV feeds on smaller devices (e.g. smartphones, laptops), their apps for smart TVs do not offer live TV feeds; the smart TV apps only function as on-demand, catch-up platforms for TV screens. It is unclear why live TV feeds are excluded from these TV apps. One possible explanation could be that the linear advertising revenue and ratings remains the priority of their business models. Allowing viewers to access linear television through internet-based TV apps may pose a potential threat to their ratings and advertising revenue, as these metrics are predominantly generated and measured exclusively through traditional broadcast reach rather than online access.

It is worth considering the implications of the omission of live TV feeds from TV apps for television experiences in Japan. In the UK, the free-to-air broadcasters’ VOD players encompass diverse viewing options (e.g. linear TV, catch-up) into their one-stop online hubs that can be accessed across devices. Such development, as Johnson (2017) argues, indicates that the distinctions between linear/broadcast and non-linear/on-demand television are breaking down. By comparision, in Japan, the distinction of linear and on-demand is still clear on terrestrial broadcasters’ TV apps. The deliberate exclusion of linear television from these TV apps highlights that the ‘viewing of live television on a TV set’ continues to be strictly tied to the broadcasting technology. This form of television experience is the one terrestrial broadcasters strive hardest to prevent viewers ‘departing’ from.

Slow growth in overall VOD usage and NHK's failure to shape online viewing

Besides launching TVer in 2015, the key commercial broadcasters have also been improving their own VODs in the second half of the 2010s. Currently, all their platforms operate as SVODs without any live TV feeds, although they also allow free catch-up access to a small number of current programmes that usually overlap with their offerings on TVer. Other companies, including the major telecommunications providers (e.g. NTT Docomo) have also tried to operate SVOD ventures. Despite such rapid industrial changes, the growth of the overall VOD usage during this period remained comparatively slow. From 2016 to 2019, the percentage of audiences using terrestrial broadcasters’ portals (including NHK On-Demand and TVer) grew from 8% to 13% and the percentage of those using other types of VODs (e.g. Netflix) grew from 10% to 17%. The percentage of viewers watching multichannel services remained 18%. Not until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 did the usage of terrestrial broadcasters’ online portals and other types of VODs grow significantly, to 22% and 46% respectively (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2017, 2021). Online viewing of professional content in Japan has only been common since the early 2020s.

NHK, in particular, has fallen short in influencing online viewing as a public broadcaster. In 2021, only 2.0% of people used NHK On-Demand, while 2.7% of people used NHK Plus – NHK's new and free online simulcast portal. These figures are significantly lower compared to the usage rates of Amazon Prime Video (35.5%), Netflix (18.5%) and TVer (19.3%) in Japan (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2022). Whether or how NHK Plus could shape audiences’ online viewing with its simulcast service is yet to be observed.

The growing demand for free online access to terrestrial content

Compared to NHK portals’ low usage, TVer has been the most popular local platform and fulfilled viewers’ demand for free access to the latest television content. It offers over 600 programmes from the key commercial broadcasters and their affiliated networks. Although its library is much smaller than those of paid VOD services, it has the most comprehensive line-up of current Japanese dramas, variety shows, and anime among all free services. With a total 50 million downloads and consistent high monthly views (250 million per month), it is said to be one of the most frequently used local internet-distributed television services (Kinuwa, 2022). It has also attracted the younger viewers – in 2021, over 26% of people in their 20s and 30s regularly used its services, while 20% of those in their teens also did so (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2022).

TVer's rising popularity indicates how viewer demand for free online access to the terrestrial networks’ programmes continues to grow. This condition prompts us to reconsider what ‘terebi banare’ means in the early 2020s. To a certain extent, TVer's popularity suggests that although viewers are showing a general tendency for ‘departing from linear broadcast television’, they have not yet stepped too far away from the content the terrestrial broadcasters produce. At the same time, the fact that terrestrial broadcasters’ own SVODs have failed to attract viewers indicates that viewers expect terrestrial broadcasters’ online portals to be free of charge as their television flows.

Another intriguing new service is AbemaTV (renamed as ABEMA in 2020). Launched in April 2016, ABEMA is a joint venture between the internet advertising agency CyberAgent and a key broadcaster TV Asahi. It operates as a free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, offering more than ten live, curated channels that are similar to the linear practices and experiences of broadcast television. It includes drama and anime channels, with old reruns aggregated from TV Asahi and other providers, and channels featuring its self-produced news and reality formats, branded as ABEMA Originals. Different from the US-based FAST platforms such as Pluto TV, whose services are entirely free, ABEMA also offers SVOD options for comprehensive access to its catalogue and premium channels, and TVOD (transactional VOD) for some content (e.g. live concerts). Steinberg (2022) describes ABEMA as a ‘combination of Internet portals and a reboot of the linear television experience’ (2022: 350), which reflects ‘how crucial legacy broadcasting is to the shape of Internet television in Japan today’ (2022: 347). Intriguingly, terrestrial broadcasters, including NHK, strictly exclude linear flows from their own TV apps. This makes ABEMA's smart TV app, which offers its own live channels, much closer to legacy broadcasting than the TV apps of terrestrial broadcasters.

ABEMA's usage grew significantly during the 2022 FIFA World Cup, as it was the sole broadcaster to secure broadcast rights for all 64 matches of the tournament, which it provided free of charge. It is the first and only FAST service in the Japanese market as of 2023. It remains to be seen how the FAST model may shape Japan's video cultures in the 2020s.

US-based platforms’ role in popularising fee-based online viewing

Local commercial streamers have been constructing Japanese audiences’ free online viewing of television content in the late 2010s. However, it is Netflix and Amazon Prime Video that have been significant in popularising the fee-based online viewing of professional programmes; none of the Japanese SVODs has come close to the adoption levels of the two American services. The most used local SVOD was NTV's Hulu, with 7.5% of audiences using it in 2021 (Institute for Information and Communications Policy, 2022). According to the media consultancy firm Media Partners Asia, the Japanese market counted 49.4 million SVOD subscriptions in the third quarter of 2022. Amazon Prime Video topped the number of subscribers with 16.5 million, many of whom probably see it as an add-on to the Prime Membership's free shipping. Netflix's reported 7 million subscribers make it the second largest service. With 3.6 million subscribers, Disney+, which launched in June 2020, quickly overtook the NTV-owned Hulu (2.9 million in Q1) to become the third largest service. Another local player U-NEXT, which has a large catalogue of new Japanese and films, claimed the fifth place in the ranking of subscription number (2.65 million) (Frater, 2022a, 2022b; Schilling, 2022).

Meanwhile, while not significant, the increasing popularity of SVODs has challenged the market of local satellite operators. The current monthly fee for WOWOW is ¥2530 (US$20). The monthly cost for SKY PerfectTV!, which offers diverse packages, can range from ¥1980 to over ¥ 10,000 (US$16 to US$80). Both services have recorded a roughly 10% decline in their number of households since 2016. They attributed the decline to the emergence of SVODs, as SVODs also offer diverse content but often with lower costs (mostly between ¥900 to ¥2200, US$7 to US$18) and better suit the viewers who do not own TV sets (Hatamoto, 2022).

Audience preference for local content

Although the top three most subscribed streamers are all US-based, the content consumed by Japanese subscribers remains largely domestically produced. Media Partners Asia’s (2022) analysis from Q3 2022 found Japanese anime was by far the most popular content, accounting for 44% of the total consumption across the top five most subscribed platforms mentioned above, followed by Japanese live-action (18%). US and Korean content accounted for 17% and 14% of the total consumption respectively as the two most popular types of foreign content.

The significant popularity of anime in the Japanese market is evident in The Hollywood Reporter's interview with Netflix Japan's Head of Anime Kohei Obara, who explains that in Japan ‘at least 90% of our subscribers have been watching anime’ (Brezeski, 2022). An important question worth examining further is: what kinds of anime do viewers consume? It is imperative to point out that terrestrial broadcasters’ long dominance in the media ecosystem has enabled them to pick up and adapt the most popular manga titles into anime series. Manga publishers are also willing to partner with terrestrial broadcasters as this serves as the most effective way to further promote their titles’ popularity. Both local and foreign streamers have endeavoured to secure non-exclusive anime titles to drive consumption (Frater, 2022a). Importantly, these non-exclusive anime titles are largely the terrestrial broadcasters’ long-running anime series adapted from best-selling mainstream manga titles. Many of them are the most acclaimed and iconic Japanese anime series, with robust and long-lasting domestic and international fanbases, whose new and archival episodes can drive substantial viewership on each platform despite their non-exclusivity. By comparison, although foreign platforms have also endeavoured to produce Japanese anime originals, such originals tend to be brand-new stories or adaptations of much less renowned manga titles. As a result, they lack the established prestige and pre-existing fanbases that broadcasters’ anime titles enjoy, and they rarely surpass the popularity of the television broadcasters’ anime series.

The marketing and research firm GEM Standard (2023) surveyed online viewing across 18 major domestic and international SVOD services in Japan. In 2022, all the top five most streamed titles were television anime adapted from best-selling manga by major terrestrial broadcasters. TV Tokyo's Spy × Family (2022–) topped the ranking, followed by Fuji TV's Demon Slayer (2019–) and One Piece (1999–), NTV's Detective Conan (1996–), and NHK's Attack on Titan (2013–). Only three streaming originals were in the top 30 most viewed (the Japanese variety show Documental) Documental (2016–), co-produced by Amazon and the talent agency Yoshimoto Kogyo ranked 14th, Amazon's fantasy series Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022–) ranked 20th^, and Netflix's Korean thriller series Squid Game (2021–) ranked 25th. Notably, none of the anime originals from streamers ranked among the top 30 most viewed titles – an unsurprising outcome given that these streammers' anime titles are much less high-profile than the terrestrial broadcasters’ anime and other highly anticipated streaming originals.

The popularity of anime series from terrestrial broadcasters overwhelms all other content among Japanese viewers. This feature, in line with the popularity of TVer, again indicates that the viewers have not departed from terrestrial content. Insofar as the key terrestrial broadcasters continue to be the primary partners for high-profile manga's anime adaptations, their role as content producers and copyright holders remains central in the age of streaming. Meanwhile, both local and foreign streamers have been important in making anime more available across platforms, but they have not yet threatened key broadcasters’ role in originating anime production.

What do the popularity of US-based SVODs and the audiences’ preferences for local content tell us about online viewing of televisual content in Japan in the early 2020s? In recent policy debates in Europe and Australia, a key focus has been on how the requirements of local content quotas should be applied to foreign SVODs (Lobato, 2019). This is not a concern in Japan because of the market pressure from consumers to have a high percentage of Japanese content. Nevertheless, it is foreign platforms’ ability to secure and produce both local and foreign content that makes them increasingly competitive. As Lobato (2019) points out, Netflix's specificity for international television research lies in the fact that it can ‘combine the local and the global within the one platform and constitute itself as many different products simultaneously because of the magic of algorithmic filtering’ (2019: 161). Currently, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ all have this capacity. Besides their rich offering of international content, they also increasingly secure and produce local content that appeals to Japanese audiences.

By comparison, the key broadcasters have faced challenges in gaining subscribers for their own SVODs, partly because they have lower budgets for acquiring content. According to Inoue (2022), to stay relevant in the market, the key broadcasters are increasingly focusing on their roles as content providers, with some of their flagship dramas being released on Netflix or other platforms, domestically or internationally, shortly after they aired. At the same time, this strategy might also cause their own services to have less exclusive content and thereby become less and less appealing to viewers. Further, there have not yet been substantial debates on whether or how the foreign SVODs should be regulated, or whether local players’ interests should be prioritised or protected. It remains to be seen how the competition between the local and foreign streamers play out, and how online viewing practices continue to change.

Conclusion

This article has historicised the development of internet-distributed television and examined the implications of such developments for Japan's media landscape and the audiences’ evolving viewing practices. It explains how and why the long-term dominance of Japanese terrestrial broadcasters in the media ecosystem slowed down the industry's adoption of internet distribution, thus discouraging online viewing of televisual content from taking hold before 2015, as it had in many other developed countries. It also elaborates on how the development of internet-distributed television has shaped Japanese viewing cultures from the second half of the 2010s. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video played a key role in popularising the fee-based online viewing of professional programmes among audiences in the second half of the 2010s and challenged satellite television’s market in the early 2020s.

These foreign services, however, do not dominate the market. Backed by the key broadcasters, domestic streamers TVer and ABEMA have helped construct an audiovisual culture in which free online access to terrestrial content is gaining popularity. As a result, Japanese viewing remains strongly tied to incumbent broadcasters.

While the terebi banare discourse frequently claims that Japanese audiences have lost interest in television and are therefore ‘departing from it’, this article carefully consider from what ‘television’ the audiences are departing. Japanese viewers have access to a greater array of foreign content, and US and Korean TV series have been gaining popularity on streaming platforms, but the preference for Japanese content remains strong. Importantly, besides streamers’ original content, the majority of Japanese programmes being streamed and consumed online originate from the terrestrial broadcasters, including anime, dramas, and variety shows. This suggests that, while the ongoing decline in television ratings indicates that audiences may be ‘departing from linear broadcast television’, they are not yet departing too far from the terrestrial content. In this regard, the key broadcasters have continued to be core to the current media landscape, leading industrial developments and shaping audiences’ viewing in diverse ways. It remains to be seen how the key broadcasters collaborate with and compete against the US-based platforms as content providers, legacy broadcasters and local SVOD operators, and how video cultures in Japan evolve alongside such developments in subsequent stages of change.