<figure id="attachment_452106" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452106" style="width: 4629px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="1f5d102b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/35200de22a06a9e939d59d41752f2731.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452106" class="wp-caption-text">Masahiro Matsuoka (right) and Shigeru Jojima expressed their dissatisfaction with NTV&#8217;s response to Taichi Kokubun&#8217;s (middle) compliance issue.</figcaption></figure>
<h2> Nippon TV is &#8220;looking up&#8221; compared to other stations.</h2>
 In June of this year, NTV revealed that Taichi Kokubu (51) had a compliance problem, but it does not seem to be going away anytime soon.
 In November, Kokubu held an emergency press conference in Tokyo with his representative present, and as if to coincide with the timing, former TOKIO member Masahiro Matsuoka (48) responded to interviews by Shukan Bunshun and Shukan Shincho,
 Five months have passed, and Nippon TV has given no explanation.
 Isn&#8217;t that a violation of compliance?
 In response, Nippon TV responded with a letter to Matsushita, saying, &#8220;We have not received any explanation from Nippon TV in five months.
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 In response, Nippon TV sent a letter to Matsuoka and the group&#8217;s leader, Shigeru Jojima (55), on December 10,
 We are very sorry that our response was not sufficient to accommodate the feelings of the two men.
 The company also issued an apology to Shigeru Jojima (55), the leader of the group, on December 17.
 According to the &#8220;Daily Shincho&#8221; published on December 17, on December 9, the day before the statement was released, Nippon TV asked Jojima to come to the &#8220;DASH ministry&#8221; to &#8220;apologize and explain&#8221; to him! DASH‼&#8221; in order to &#8220;apologize and explain&#8221; to Jojima.
 According to the same website, the team approached him before the location visit, but he said, &#8220;I want to concentrate on the filming,
 DASH‼,&#8221; but Jojima refused, saying he wanted to concentrate on the filming.
 DASH‼,&#8221; but Jojima turned him down because he wanted to &#8220;concentrate on filming.
 Despite this, a senior executive from the production department and the producer in charge showed up at the location on the same day and again expressed his apology, but Jojima brushed it off, saying that he had already turned them down once and that it was not something he wanted to discuss at the location.
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 Nippon TV&#8217;s response seemed to disregard Matsuoka and Jojima, who have appeared on &#8220;Tetsuwan DASH&#8221; for 30 years. Therein lies the problem,
 That is the &#8220;essence&#8221; of NTV,&#8221; said a former executive of a private broadcaster.
 A former commercial broadcaster executive told our interviewer, &#8220;NTV&#8217;s long-established consciousness as a TV station is strong.
 I feel that NTV has a strong sense of being a long-established TV station. The fact that NTV is backed by the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Giants may have an influence on the &#8220;pride&#8221; that is unique to Nippon TV. It seems to be a part of the old corporate culture. The Hitotsubashi University academic clique was very powerful, and the talent often said that Nippon TV&#8217;s producers and directors in the past looked up to them more than those at other stations.
 The same was true for the subcontracted production companies; the number of production companies to which orders were placed was fixed, and the station was famous for making it quite difficult for newcomers to enter the market. The station was also known for its high viewership ratings and high profit margins, which contributed to its &#8220;pride.
 The following episode remains.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" Pride in leading the TV industry"></div>
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<figure id="attachment_452109" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-452109" style="width: 1957px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="77c3cd6f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2025/12/788a77c2eac0f2acb187852042ce7f0a-1.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-452109" class="wp-caption-text">Former TOKIO leader Shigeru Jojima (right) and Taichi Kokubun refused an apology from NTV executives.</figcaption></figure>
<h2> A TV station that takes no account of its contribution to the community</h2>
 When NTV had its headquarters in Kojimachi, tall buildings began to be built around it, and the difficult-to-view areas where radio waves could not reach spread. So, in 1968, Mr. Matsutaro Shoriki, then president of the Yomiuri Shimbun, decided to build a 550-meter high tower in Shinjuku, known as the Shoriki Tower. Other broadcasters had already built their own towers, but the &#8220;original&#8221; commercial broadcaster, perhaps out of pride and stubbornness, was reluctant to use the Tokyo Tower, which had been built mainly by the Fuji Sankei Group, a latecomer to the market.
 However, the year after the announcement of the &#8220;Shoriki Tower&#8221; project, NHK announced plans to build the &#8220;NHK Tower,&#8221; a 600-meter radio tower comparable to the Tokyo Sky Tree, even taller than the &#8220;Shoriki Tower,&#8221; on the site of the current NHK Broadcasting Center. In the end, both projects failed, but the competition between the two stations was a hot topic at the time. In the end, they joined forces to build the Tokyo Tower the year after Shoriki&#8217;s death,&#8221; said a former commercial broadcaster executive.
 The fact that they decided to build their own tower instead of using the Tokyo Tower is a sign of pride in being the first commercial broadcaster to open in Japan.
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 Broadcasting began in August 1953, six months after NHK. In the same month, it became the first commercial TV station to broadcast the Giants-Hanshin game. Thereafter, the station continued to broadcast a series of &#8220;firsts&#8221; for a commercial TV station, including TV dramas, serial dramas, live broadcasts of sumo tournaments, live broadcasts of horse races, the opening ceremony of the National Diet, and visits to the Imperial Palace.
 NTV was also the first commercial broadcaster in Japan to broadcast commercials, color broadcasting, sound multiplex broadcasting (a world first), wide clear-vision broadcasting, Japanese dubbing of foreign films, L-shaped screens, data broadcasting, one-segment broadcasting of original programs, live broadcasting with 3D stereoscopic images, online video distribution service, and free distribution of all episodes of dramas on air. NTV was the first commercial broadcaster in Japan to offer these services.
 In addition, NTV has also set numerous records in viewer ratings, including the &#8220;Four Annual Viewer Ratings Crown,&#8221; the &#8220;Four Annual Viewer Ratings Crown,&#8221; and the &#8220;Four Monthly Viewer Ratings Crown. It is no surprise that Nippon TV has always considered itself a &#8220;pioneer of commercial broadcasting&#8221; and &#8220;deserves to be praised&#8221; for the achievements it has made.
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 This pride has worked in a bad way in the case of the compliance issue with Kokubu. Although the company may not be legally blamed for its actions toward Kokubu, I felt that they were callous. One entertainment industry insider said,
 &#8220;It is unthinkable for a TV station to not take contribution into consideration at all.
 He is probably right.
 Nippon TV saw that many of its sponsors were leaving because of the Fuji TV problem, and it impatiently cut off Kokubu. And they probably had no idea how they would have to deal with Jojima and Matsuoka.
 In the past, TV stations had a strong sense of &#8220;getting the talent out of the way,&#8221; and Nippon TV was particularly strong in this regard. Nowadays, all stations are less conscious of this, but what they did to Matsuoka and Jojima in the current turmoil was the very essence of disrespect for the talents. It is the result of pride that has become the &#8220;bad part&#8221; of the situation.
 Matsuoka gave an interview to a weekly magazine, and this was exposed in the light of day.
 However, times have changed. Now that a new broadcasting medium has emerged that replaces or surpasses television, celebrities no longer have to rely solely on television. It would be a shame if Nippon TV did not realize that it was &#8220;out of date.

 Hiroyuki Sasaki (entertainment journalist)

 Shinji Hasuo

 Even at the end of the year, the uproar over the compliance issue of Taichi Kokubun still does not seem to have subsided. What is the "nature" of NTV that made Masahiro Matsuoka and Shigeru Jojima unhappy? ......

The “pride” peculiar to NTV that made Masahiro Matsuoka and Shigeru Jojima uncomfortable with the compliance issue of Taichi Kokubun

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