<figure id="attachment_240515" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 4000px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-240515"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="ec11dd5f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/04/aflo_99054689.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-240515" class="wp-caption-text">Matsuko Deluxe, who works with Shingo Murakami of &#8220;Kanjani Eight&#8221; as the MC of &#8220;Monday Kara Yafukashi&#8221; (NTV), has been the MC for 10 years, and the stability of their dialogue is outstanding even when the broadcast time slot changes.</figcaption></figure>
It is a common jinx in the TV industry that &#8220;late-night shows become boring when they move up to the prime time slot. The late-night shows that were able to take on challenges in the late-night slot tend to become &#8220;small and boring&#8221; in the golden and prime time slots, where there are strong restrictions and pressure for ratings.
I wonder if this jinx really applies to the extremely popular program &#8220;Monday Night Live,&#8221; which started in 2012, and after 10 years of good results in the Monday late-night slot, just started airing at 10 p.m. on Mondays from April 4 this year, or in other words, &#8220;this In other words, it is that program that &#8220;moved up to prime time with the April reshuffle.
In the first broadcast on April 4, most of the airtime was a &#8220;compilation of the past 10 years,&#8221; and the program was off the air on April 11, so I think it is fair to say that the broadcast on April 18 was in fact the &#8220;first prime time&#8221; broadcast. Therefore, based on the broadcast on the 18th, I decided to immediately analyze from a TV man&#8217;s point of view whether &#8220;Yofukashi has become boring since it went up to prime.
In conclusion, &#8220;Monday Night Fakashi&#8221; skillfully broke the &#8220;jinx of late-night programs. Although some elements of uneasiness remained, I think it is safe to say that the program was broadcast with the same interesting content as in the late-night days.
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<h3>The show successfully avoided the &#8220;barrier of vulgarity.</h3>
First of all, the element I was most worried about was the &#8220;wall of underlining&#8221;: &#8220;By moving up to prime time, I can&#8217;t talk about underlining in a leisurely manner anymore, and it might become boring.
In the first place, &#8220;Monday Night Live&#8221; is a program supported by the &#8220;humanistic undertones&#8221; of the characters and of Matsuko Deluxe and Nobugo Murakami in the studio, and I wondered if it would be possible to show the fun without the undertones. Without the underlining, one wonders if the show would be as entertaining.
However, in the broadcast on the 18th, this problem was skillfully &#8220;avoided. It is true that the show was a prime time program, so it was not possible to make a big deal out of the bottom line, as is the case in the late-night hours, and it was restrained, but the show did a good job of &#8220;hinting&#8221; at it.
In the beginning of the program, Matsuko and Murakami took some time to &#8220;tease&#8221; the audience in the studio, and one of the male audience members commented that he looked like an adult film actor, which drew laughter. In the VTR corner, a father who enjoys eating curry in a box introduced the comment, &#8220;I watch A V.
In this way, the word &#8220;AV&#8221; was used twice within a short period of time from the start of the program in &#8220;a flow that is not particularly underhanded,&#8221; and as the last studio talk topic, he brought a &#8220;soft-eyed underhanded topic that is well within the acceptable range&#8221; with &#8220;the case where the percentage of men using &#8216;pants window&#8217; was found. It was a &#8220;soft-eyed bottom joke that is well within the acceptable range.
In this way, we could surely see the strategy of &#8220;Monday to Night Fakashi&#8221; to successfully avoid the &#8220;barrier of underlines,&#8221; which is more severe than in the late-night days, by successfully placing words in the &#8220;non-underlines flow or soft acceptable underlines corner&#8221; in the future. Moreover, the fact that the soft bottom line talk was placed at the end of the program, i.e., as close to midnight as possible, was also an excellent performance that convinced me of the existence of a well-developed strategy.
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<h3>The &#8220;exquisite editing skill&#8221; was still alive and well.</h3>
In fact, I once heard this story from a fellow TV person. He was working with the writer in charge of &#8220;Monday to Night Fakashi,&#8221; and the writer had this to say: &#8220;Night Fakashi has a lot of messy editing.
 He said, &#8220;Yoru Fukashi has an editor who is a very good editor, and any street interview is edited in his hands to make it interesting. So as a writer, I don&#8217;t have much to do.&#8221;
It is not clear how much substance this represents, or whether it contains a great deal of modesty. However, I think it is a clever way of expressing what is interesting about the &#8220;Yoru Fukashi&#8221; program.
The &#8220;core&#8221; of what makes Yoru Fukashi so interesting is, without a doubt, its &#8220;interesting street interviews. The directors persistently film interviews in Shibuya, Asakusa, Kamata, Akabane, Kitasenju, Koiwa, Takenotsuka, and other &#8220;towns where interesting people might be found,&#8221; and then edit the large volume of interview material in an exquisitely paced and interesting way, creating an indescribably interesting atmosphere.
This &#8220;exquisite editing skill&#8221; was &#8220;intact&#8221; in the broadcast on the 18th. In terms of the material handled in the program, the two VTRs, &#8220;The case where we investigated the real solitary gourmet of people on the street&#8221; and &#8220;The case where we tried to solve the things that people on the street were bothered about together,&#8221; were edited in the same way as in the late-night era: &#8220;Street interviews in the streets where interesting people might be found,&#8221; and &#8220;The case where we investigated the local problems in the whole country &#8211; the case where we tried to solve the problems in the country -&#8221; were edited in a clever way. In &#8220;The Case of Investigating Local Problems in Saitama,&#8221; the same &#8220;Saitama tinkering&#8221; as in the past was still alive and well.
As long as the &#8220;basic concept of the program&#8221; and the &#8220;skillful editing&#8221; that supports it remain the same, I honestly felt that the fun of &#8220;Yoru Fukashi&#8221; would not change even if there was a slight decrease in the amount of undertones, and I was relieved to hear that &#8220;there is no need to worry about the late-night jinx when it comes to this program. I was relieved to hear that there was no need to worry about the late-night jinx.
<h3>What to do about &#8220;straddling commercials</h3>
Even so, however, there are still a few factors that make me a little concerned. One of them is the question of how to deal with the &#8220;commercial breaks.
Until now, late-night programs such as &#8220;Monday Night Live&#8221; have had a very special way of straddling commercials. The program has been known to use a &#8220;forward barrage,&#8221; as it is called, in which a series of announcements are made at the beginning of the program to inform viewers that &#8220;this is what we will be doing in the next episode of Monday Night Fakashi,&#8221; and most of the commercials are then digested, leaving the main program with only one or two commercial breaks. This was a very special and unique &#8220;CM straddling&#8221; method that was rarely seen in other programs.
In order to perform this &#8220;forward streak,&#8221; it is essential that the program be &#8220;overwhelmingly strong, with no enemies in the same time slot. This is because there is a high risk that a large number of commercials at the beginning of a program will bore viewers and cause them to drift to other programs in the same time slot. However, because the late-night program &#8220;Yoru Fukashi&#8221; was &#8220;overwhelmingly strong&#8221; enough to do so, it was able to keep the flow of the program uninterrupted by not running too many commercials in the middle of the program, and to take the tactic of &#8220;pulling in viewers with the fun of the corners and making them linger on and continue watching.
Unfortunately, however, this &#8220;forward slap tactic&#8221; is not possible in prime time. Prime time is not that easy, and if they tried that, they would surely lose viewers to programs on other stations.
Another similar tactic is the &#8220;backward strike tactic. This tactic is often used in late-night programs in particular, because in the late-night time slot, viewers tend to stay tuned to the program for a longer period of time. This is particularly common in late-night programs, because &#8220;viewers fall asleep faster and faster, and viewer ratings are sure to drop in the latter half of the program.
This strategy is also quite effective, but the definite disadvantage is that &#8220;the damage to the next slot is significant. So this too will be difficult with the current nightly show. The next slot is &#8220;news zero,&#8221; Nittele&#8217;s flagship news program, and a &#8220;backward hit&#8221; that would affect its viewership ratings would not be allowed.
In fact, I believe that the impact of interruption by commercials is greater for programs such as &#8220;Monday Night Fakashi,&#8221; which keeps viewers glued to the program with its editing tempo and the uniquely entertaining nature of its stories. In fact, on the 18th, although the program was skillfully interspersed with commercials, I still felt that it was a bit &#8220;demotivating&#8221;. The question of how to deal with the commercial interruptions will surely become an issue in the future.
<h3>Concern that the show will become a &#8220;Detective Night Scoop</h3>
There is one more thing that I am secretly concerned about. I have a vague feeling that &#8220;Yofukashi&#8221; may become &#8220;Tantei Night Scoop&#8221; in the future.
Let me explain what I mean. The first sign of the &#8220;Night Scoop-ization&#8221; is the slight tendency of the VTR to be more emotional in the broadcast on the 18th. In the &#8220;Investigation into the Real Solitary Gourmet of a Street Person,&#8221; there was a story about a woman who said, &#8220;My cooking is bad,&#8221; but when the program staff tried her cooking, they found that it was delicious.
It was a slightly touching VTR in which the woman realized that the reason she thought her cooking was bad was because she was eating alone.
I think it is probably not a good idea to go in this direction, saying, &#8220;Since the eroticism and vulgarity have been shut down, we are going in a more emotional direction. I think it&#8217;s okay because Matsuko Deluxe, who sensed this, attacked me in the studio, but I think there is a danger that the program will end up like &#8220;Detective Night Scoop&#8221; if it goes in the direction of &#8220;touching stories&#8221; too easily and too easily.
Of course, &#8220;Tantei Night Scoop&#8221; is a legendary show and a wonderful show, but &#8220;Monday Night Show&#8221; should be like &#8220;Monday Night Show.
And one more thing. On the 18th, the program aired a notice asking for information on &#8220;unsolved cases that are bothering you,&#8221; etc. If the program becomes a &#8220;viewer-submitted solution type&#8221; in which &#8220;things you want solved&#8221; are solicited and then solved, it will become a &#8220;viewer-submitted solution type&#8221; program, which is exactly what &#8220;Tantei Night Scoop&#8221; will become. Wouldn&#8217;t that turn out to be nothing more than &#8220;Detective Night Scoop&#8221;?
I have a feeling that they have been &#8220;soliciting information&#8221; from time to time since the late-night hours, but I would like Yoru Fukashi to be a &#8220;program that steadily conducts interviews on the street and discovers real interesting people on the street corner,&#8221; I would think.
Despite these slight concerns, I believe that &#8220;Monday Night Fakashi&#8221; has maintained its interestingness &#8220;as is&#8221; even though it has moved to prime time, judging from the broadcast on the 18th. As a fan of the show, I hope that the show will continue to bring laughter to viewers across the country on those dreary Monday nights.

 Joined TV Asahi in 1992. After covering the Great Hanshin Earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo cult as a reporter in the Social Affairs Department, he worked as a director for Super J Channel, Super Morning, and News Station before becoming a producer. He has covered many overseas events, including coverage of China and the Korean Peninsula and the terrorist attacks in the U.S. He also launched the ABEMA service. He also participated in the launch of the ABEMA service. In August 2019, he became independent and is active not only in broadcasting programs but also in various media. He is a part-time lecturer at Edogawa University and an instructor at MX Television Visual Academy. As a member of the Society for Public Communication, he studies local media and has researched and written articles on face-framing panels as his life's work. His recent books include "Dramatically Increase Access and Registrations! Video Production: 52 Professional Tricks" (Nihon Jitsugyo Shuppansha, Ltd.).

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