Sho Sakurai’s motivation as an Olympics caster is “zero.” …… Why the “distrust” heard from the staff and athletic organizations?
Sho Sakurai (42), the main anchor for NTV’s coverage of the Paris Olympics, the ninth consecutive summer and winter Olympics, is said to be in a state of “zero motivation.
Sakurai is a veteran among the many Olympics anchors. His partner is Shinya Ueda, 54, of the comedy duo Kurimu-Chu, who was chosen to anchor the Olympics for four consecutive summers. Ueda is eager for revenge for the coronary infection he was diagnosed with on the first day of the Tokyo Olympics in 2009 and had to give up covering the games, but Sakurai’s motivation is not so high, he says. Why is this?
Sakurai says, “Originally, reading from a written copy of the news program “news zero,” for which he serves as anchor, and coming to the scene of an interview without doing any preliminary research were viewed as problems among the staff. It seems that the staff thought up almost all the questions for the interviews with the interviewees. I guess he is not very interested in sports to begin with.
Perhaps it is inevitable, though, since Mr. Sakurai has been at the forefront of the entertainment industry since he was a teenager and is a very busy man. …… I am sorry to hear that she is being used all the time just because of the station’s upper management’s idea of “getting viewership from the younger generation. In the first place, it is not clear whether Ms. Sakurai, who is 42 years old, will be able to attract the younger viewers. ……
The director of the station conducted a series of daily interviews with athletes with medal prospects, such as Yuki Ishikawa (28) of the men’s volleyball team, but all the questions were devised by the director.
The hardest part was that they came to the site unarmed, without looking up the rules and terminology. The busy staff had to produce “Sakurai memos” and make presentations. I could hear the staff sighing, saying, ‘We have more work to do during the busy period before the Olympics.
The staff’s heartache is immeasurable in the busy Olympics coverage field.
