Shocking True Story: Former TV TOKYO P reveals the reality of sexual harassment and power harassment… “The reality of female announcers at local stations
Interview with a person who worked as a freelance announcer at a local station
Sexual harassment, part-time problems, work style reform, disparity with full-time employees…
——————
What kind of image do you have when you hear the word “female announcer”? It is likely that you think of “glamorous,” “flamboyant,” “flirty,” and so on.
In the past, announcers had an unapproachable image of being “pretty,” “highbrow,” “reserved,” and “pure and untainted.” In recent years, however, the era of “announcer supremacy” has come to an end, with an increasing number of announcers working freelance without belonging to a station. We have entered the so-called “announcer warring age.
The reality of announcers working for local stations is so “harsh,” “extreme,” and even “cruel” that the word “fierce” can be applied to them.
Why, then, are their realities so “harsh” and “extreme,” and why does this lead to the word “cruelty”?
Let me make it clear at the outset. The reason for this is the fact that freelance announcers at local stations work under a storm of harassment, including sexual harassment and power harassment.
You are naive if you think, “No, no, that’s just not possible in this day and age. You don’t know the reality of the situation.
In this issue, we would like to share with you the sordid human drama that goes on behind the scenes of the glamorous world of television. There, far from “gender equality” and “work style reform,” the reality is that TV stations are still in the same boat. There is a stark disparity between regular employees and contract workers. Even in this age of compliance and corporate governance, these disparities remain like lees at the bottom of the society of local stations.
In this article, I would like to prove the above by conducting in-depth interviews with a person who worked as a freelance announcer at a local station. The story was so realistic that I feared that if I disclosed it under her real name, she might be harmed. For this reason, I will refer to her as “Naoko-san,” and will faithfully record her story. Naoko is now 33 years old. She moved to Tokyo upon her marriage and works as a freelance announcer.
Naoko’s tenure as an announcer lasted from ’15 to ’18, three years between the ages of 24 and 27. After graduating from university, she once worked for a general company, but she decided that she really wanted to be an announcer, so she attended an announcing school and joined a local station in Okayama as a freelance announcer on a program contract basis.
