Kantele’s “Man in the Middle” Reveals Drama Strategy: Fuji Affiliate But “I Sympathize with TV TOKYO!
In the recent drama industry, Kantele (Kansai Television) has attracted the most attention. Regarding the praise from viewers and industry peers for its “bold” and “aggressive” approach, Hideyuki Kawanishi, deputy director of the Tokyo Production Department of Kansai Television’s Production Bureau, says, “We don’t intend to be aggressive; we are just making what we want to make. The only words that come out are self-deprecating ones, such as, “Because he is a wild samurai,” “Weak people fight in their own weak way,” and “Tokyo is away from home.
Many dramas produced by Kantele have received high acclaim, including “Elpis: Hope or Disaster” (’22), which cut into a “taboo” in the TV industry. (Started in October, 2010. The following “Elpis” was aired in October 2010, and it was a hit. The subsequent broadcast of “War of the Trap” also attracted attention as the return of Kusanagi Tsuyoshi (48) to terrestrial drama productions, and the “Kantele of Drama” has been gaining ground. In addition to lead actor Yuki Sakurai (36), Shohei Miura (34), popular young actors Yuki Yagi (26) and Ryuya Miyasei (19) are currently appearing in the new drama slot “Tuesday Drama Eleven. Why does such a kantele treat itself as “weak”?
Not many people are aware of this, but television is governed by the Broadcasting Law, which is administered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. The terrestrial broadcasting business is based on an area-by-area licensing system, and broadcasting is basically based on the locality of each area. Kantele is a broadcaster in the Kansai area, centering on Osaka, and it is important for us to broadcast Kansai local news and other information,” said Kawanishi.
In our own broadcasting area, it is at the discretion of the station what to broadcast in all slots. If a program slot is a field, the station can decide what vegetables and fruits to grow in each field. If the viewers don’t think, ‘the produce from that field looks delicious,’ they won’t watch the program. Of course, we want to distribute the vegetables and fruits we produce not only locally but also nationwide.
But of course, the amount of fields that can be cultivated by a local station on a national network is smaller than that of a key station. There are four drama slots in the Fuji Television affiliate GP band, of which Kantele’s field is only the Monday night 10:00 p.m. slot. With only one drama per season, we can only compete four times a year, so we have to contend with a lack of economies of scale in terms of casting and budget negotiations.
In television, the “core stations” are the key stations in Tokyo, which are the main affiliated stations, followed by the semi-key stations in Osaka and Nagoya, and Kantele is a semi-key station. The difference in scale between key stations and quasi-key stations is significant. Incidentally, in terms of the number of employees, Fuji Television has about twice as many employees as Kantele.
Even when it comes to viewership ratings, the news broadcasts are always clipped from the Kanto region. For us, Osaka is our hometown, and Tokyo is our home away from home. The shooting location is different from Fuji Television, which has a set built in a studio in the bay area and can shoot for three months straight. There is a studio we can use in Tokyo called Lemon Studio, but we can’t leave the set there because we also shoot variety shows. ……
When Kawanishi spoke of the lack of manpower and budget, I pointed out that a key station other than the affiliate came to mind. He laughed and said, “TV Tokyo is a key station and is in a different position, but I feel sympathy for their attitude of competing with wisdom and ideas (laughs).
